St Johnstone will be facing a Motherwell team which isn’t as fit as their caretaker manager would like.
Steven Hammell took charge of the Fir Park side after Graham Alexander left in the wake of their home and away European defeats to Sligo Rovers.
Motherwell managed to beat St Mirren in their Premiership opener, while Saints were losing at home to Hibernian, but Hammell believes they are not yet fully match fit.
And he has tried to address that by arranging a closed-doors game against Dundee in midweek.
“In and out of possession we need to be better,” he said. “Obviously the squad needs a little bit of tweaking, the balance isn’t quite where it should be, but we need to be more than we showed last Sunday.
“We are not saying we are going to be re-writing football here but we need to be more of a threat in the final third, we need to be creating more, we need to be more positive with our running, we need to be a little bit fitter and stronger.
“We played a bounce game against Dundee on Tuesday and got minutes – much-needed minutes – into some of these boys’ legs.
“That has been a challenge because the levels they are at, naturally, aren’t where we want them to be in terms of being able to make wholesale changes. But we are getting there. It’s not a massive concern but ideally we would be in a better starting position.”
Suspensions
Motherwell are without suspended duo Callum Slattery and Ricki Lamie, with Paul McGinn an injury doubt.
For Saints, Murray Davidson is banned but Liam Gordon and Ali Crawford are available again.
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