St Johnstone needed that.
Their supporters needed that.
A win against Aberdeen and, more importantly, a performance full of the ingredients missing all too frequently since the Premiership season resumed after the winter break, had the feel of a ‘statement result’ the Perth club have been crying out for.
Time will tell if that proves to be the case.
For the moment, Courier Sport picks out three talking points from the midweek Pittodrie triumph as minds turn to a clash with Livingston.
Like a glove
Formations don’t win football matches.
But there’s no doubt that Craig Levein changing St Johnstone’s was a significant factor in how this game played out.
It was 4-4-2 in possession and closer to 4-5-1 out of it.
The switch carried risk.
Neither centre-back, Ryan McGowan nor Liam Gordon, is likely to win a foot race with a Benji Kimpioka-type centre-forward.
And when a first ball header wasn’t won just before the hour mark, they were exposed to Leighton Clarkson bursting forward from central midfield and needed Dimitar Mitov to come to their aid.
But the two centre-halves managed Bojan Miovski superbly in the main.
And no system gives you everything.
What can be said without fear of contradiction, though, is that the pros of the set-up by far out-weighed the cons on Wednesday night.
Start with the full-backs.
That was Luke Robinson’s best performance since he returned from Wigan.
And it was David Keltjen’s best performance since he signed.
Aberdeen’s wide players, Jack Milne and Jonny Hayes, were marshalled superbly.
Robinson and Keltjens are decent to good wing-backs but they’re good to very good full-backs.
Saints didn’t look any less solid for having a man less in their back-line.
That in itself is a ringing endorsement of the change.
Levein isn’t a manager wedded to a formation – he’s shown himself over a long coaching career to be happy to adapt to suit the players at his disposal, the circumstances and the opposition.
At this moment, with this squad, it looks like he’s found one that could aid getting the survival job done.
The attacking key
Defensive solidity is all well and good but this game wouldn’t have been won – and wouldn’t have been potentially transformational – without the midfield and forward bit clicking as well.
Click it did.
Sven Sprangler’s ground-covering prowess was important, as was Dan Phillips’ positional awareness, Matt Smith’s adaptability and Nicky Clark’s football brain.
The two key men, however, were DJ Jaiyesimi and Benji Kimpioka.
Even before the pair of them linked up for Saints’ second and game-clinching goal, they had combined superbly as a duo and had been vital cogs in a well-functioning team.
It’s taken a while but Jaiyesimi was at his most comfortable as a St Johnstone starter in a wide left role.
He was just as reliable an out-ball on the flank as he had been a couple of months ago up front – even more so probably.
Jaiyesimi expertly judged when to buy his team-mates some time to move up the pitch by taking a few touches and when to quickly shift the ball on to Kimpioka.
For the Swedish forward, making an off the centre-back’s shoulder run time and time again in the second half got its reward.
And, as in Dingwall, the finish was that of a striker you would expect to hit double figures over the course of a full season.
I suspect that just as pleasing for Levein will have been Kimpioka’s back to goal work.
This was not the same player who was bumped and barged off the ball at Airdrie.
The pace was never in doubt but the rest of his striker-play is now catching up.
Same again
It will be said and written a lot over the next couple of days – already has been – but that’s because it is undeniably the dominant pre-Livingston theme.
Saints simply have to back up their Pittodrie performance.
Livi are a punch-drunk boxer with their chin unguarded.
Opening up a 14-point gap on them would end all fears of automatic relegation.
It could well be Levein’s easiest team selection yet, albeit there’s a Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday schedule to factor in.
The fact that the Aberdeen game was the latest he’s left it before making his first substitution (80 minutes) tells you how content the Perth boss was with what he was seeing.
It’s never as simple as saying ‘same again’.
But there would need to be a pretty compelling reason for tweaking a starting line-up that delivered what their manager demanded of them so impressively.
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