Steven MacLean will get at least one game to stake a claim to be the next St Johnstone manager.
The 40-year-old, who was a hero of Saints’ 2014 Scottish Cup triumph, has been given the task of taking charge of the Perth team for Saturday’s clash with Hibs.
MacLean has been Callum Davidson’s assistant for the last three seasons after retiring as a player in 2020.
Courier Sport picks out four big challenges ahead of the last fixture before the Premiership split.
What formation does he choose at the back and who does he select for it?
Arguably more than any other club in the Premiership and for longer than any other club in the Premiership, formation has been a dominant theme with St Johnstone fans.
Davidson has deployed every conceivable system from midfield to front and set his team up with a back four on a few occasions – Livingston at the weekend the last example.
But, by and large, he’s been a three centre-backs manager.
Andy Considine was suspended on Saturday and Alex Mitchell was injured.
The former will be available for Hibs and the latter might be too.
The players are more familiar with Davidson’s three but a back four, even though that was the system at Livingston, offers a bigger opportunity to make MacLean look like a change candidate rather than a continuity one.
There are plenty of senior centre-halves at McDiarmid. He won’t be able to keep them all happy.
Can he get his players to cut out the mistakes?
The message may have become repetitive but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t based in truth.
Davidson was (is) right – his players have been shooting themselves in the foot by making basic errors, particularly at the back.
It’s been happening far too often.
Sharpening up focus is easier said than done. You can take a horse to water.
But if Saints are a switched-on unit, who get tight to their opponents and react quickly to second balls in their penalty box, it will go a long way to ensuring MacLean gets more than one match for his audition.
Who does he pick up front and can he get Saints scoring again?
Making St Johnstone a harder team to beat is probably a more realistically achievable task than turning them into one that will create a steady supply of good chances and put some of them away.
Since Nicky Clark was ruled out for the season through injury, they’ve found the net once in five games.
And that was a spectacular long-range striker from Drey Wright.
There have been a few clear-cut opportunities missed over that period but not many.
Nobody knows the value of an effective link-up forward better than MacLean, who enjoyed a stellar playing career in that role.
And nobody knows the qualities needed to be a foil for Stevie May better either.
He was that man.
May had a poor game on Saturday – he had plenty of company in that regard – but it’s highly unlikely MacLean will stand him down for this one.
There isn’t a potential May-MacLean or May-Clark partnership at his disposal but if Zak Rudden, Theo Bair, Jamie Murphy, David Wotherspoon, Melker Hallberg or Graham Carey suddenly sparks into life and proves to be a game-changer against Hibs that would go a long way to securing a much-needed win and a job for the interim boss through to the summer.
Will he be a fresh enough voice and is that all this team actually needs?
These are the two great unknowns and the keys to it all.
The level of input MacLean has had on Davidson era tactics, training, team selections and in-game management is unquantifiable.
So too is whether this side can now be elevated by a change of voice as much as a change of football ideas.
Until we see a St Johnstone team not managed by Davidson we won’t discover whether MacLean is largely a continuity coach, tweaking at the fringes or someone who wants to make fundamental alterations.
There’s risk inherent in both.
The success of MacLean and Saints on Saturday will have a lot to do with his instinct for how heavy he needs to push down on the change pedal.
It’s a judgment call Barry Robson and Stuart Kettlewell have got spot-on.
MacLean needs to be equally astute.
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