St Johnstone are better away from home, admits Graham Carey – but upturn on the road can’t be taken for granted

For a team that hasn’t won a home game for over a third of a year, having three away matches out of their last four to preserve their Premiership status may be no bad thing.

But St Johnstone playmaker Graham Carey admitted that if they continue to shoot themselves in the foot, their decent record on the road won’t count for anything in the battle to stay ahead of Ross County.

“It’s strange that we’ve been doing better away from home for whatever reason,” said Carey, who was back in the starting line-up for Saints’ 3-1 weekend defeat to Hibs.

“It was the same last season.

“The onus isn’t on us to take the game to other teams and maybe that suits us better – sitting off and counter-attacking.

“It won’t matter if we play like we did in that first half, though.”

A slow start for St Johnstone

Saints were determined to make a fast start as the post-split phase of the campaign got underway.

But the opposite turned out to be the case.

“No keeper will save their free-kick into the top corner (when Emiliano Marcondes opened the scoring from 25 yards after just six minutes),” said Carey.

“But it just felt like they didn’t really need to play that well to get some chances.

“We kind of made it easy for them and then at the other end of the pitch we have to work so hard to get chances of our own.

“All in all, it was too easy for them – especially in the first half.

“It wasn’t down to a lack of effort.

“We tried to take the game to them and press them high.

“But we can be more aggressive on the ball. We were off it and they punished us.

“The manager wasn’t happy at half-time and rightly so.

“Second half was better but maybe them taking their foot off the gas a little bit had something to do with that.

“But it seems to be that we can’t put 90 minutes together at the moment.

“Sustaining things for a whole game will be our focus.”

Belief hasn’t drained out of the Perth side, according to the Irishman.

“I don’t think the confidence has gone,” he said.

“It’s about teams scoring too easily against us and not taking our chances at the other end.

“We’re making life hard for ourselves.

“If that keeps happening it will come back to bite us. We’re putting ourselves in a hole over and over again.”