The St Johnstone supporters were absolutely magnificent at Livingston.
The travelling fans cheered their team into the tunnel after the players completed their pre-game warm-up, played their part in the best start a Saints side has made in many a long month and made sure their backing didn’t peter away as the game drifted deep into injury-time.
After the final whistle, though, they didn’t know whether to boo, applaud or get to the nearest exit as quickly as possible.
You probably had families who, between them, did all three.
It was that kind of afternoon, that kind of conclusion.
It’s been that kind of year, that kind of three years.
Bigger issues about how a club riding as high as Saints were in the relatively recent past now finds itself in this position – teetering on the brink of a second relegation play-off in 36 months – will soon be front and centre.
In the here and now, however, the most important bit of the 2023/24 story hasn’t yet been written.
Given the cruel late twist to Saturday’s game – a new way of finding a familiar result – there’s a persuasive argument that this is a season doomed to failure.
But there’s also evidence out there which can serve to reinforce the belief of the optimists among the Fair City fan base.
Courier Sport sets out five reasons for both.
St Johnstone supporters – is your glass still half-full or are you down to the tasteless dregs?
Half-empty
1 Finding new ways to lose
Teams going down put their fans through torture. It goes with the territory.
Most of the time they’re beaten by the better team.
That certainly wasn’t the case on Saturday.
But the fact that Saints produced their best concerted attacking display of the season yet still lost feeds into the fear that this is only going to end one way.
David Martindale was quite right to point out this sort of scenario is all too familiar to him – Livingston’s late defeat in Dingwall when they were pushing for a winner springs to mind.
It’s what happens to sides heading out of a league.
2 Self-inflicted wounds
St Johnstone are showing no signs of cutting out glaring mistakes.
They were at it again.
How on earth a team can leave a player in five yards of space to score a goal at the back post from a corner is beyond me.
It’s the most basic of basics.
Livingston’s second wasn’t quite so bad but DJ Jaiyesimi was weak in his half-way line challenge and David Keltjens failed to track a runner.
The continuation of self-inflicted wounds is another big box ticked for a team not learning lessons and setting themselves up for more defeats.
3 Form
For the second time this season, Saints have clocked up four league defeats in a row.
This run is worse than the previous one when you compare the opponents (no Rangers or Hearts) and the timing.
They now need to win two matches on the bounce but haven’t done that since November, 2022.
It’s quite clearly not a fact-based theory to expect it to happen over the next week.
4 Goals
They simply don’t score enough of them.
There were probably more good saves than bad misses at Livingston but, as a general rule, it’s no wonder the Saints defence is under extreme pressure to be next to perfect when their forward-thinking team-mates are so unconvincing in front of goal.
A season was summed up in a minute – Nicky Clark making a mess of a bread and butter striker’s finish at one end and then it all going horribly wrong at the other.
Ross County, Partick Thistle and Raith Rovers all look a better bet to score goals than Saints.
5 Psychological scars
The Ross County players should have been a group of broken men after being thrashed on their own pitch by Motherwell.
Instead, news of Saints’ capitulation will have given them a pick-me-up when they didn’t deserve one.
As the team in front, County will feel they’ve got away with one. A big one.
Craig Levein said all the right things after the match but do this group of players have it in them to absorb such a painful sucker punch, drag themselves to their feet and win on Wednesday night, then win again?
It will be one of the most impressive displays of collective inner strength if they do.
Half-full
1 This isn’t a mountain
Right, it’s time to be positive.
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory happens every weekend in professional football, more so at this stage of the season when one side is pushing harder than normal for a win and the other has no result-driven pressure.
Footballers are programmed to move on quickly and this was not a last-day twist.
Saints only have to beat a team that fell apart even more spectacularly than them and they will be going into the last game of the season holding a one-point lead.
There have been many more unexpected and unlikely swings than that.
For Levein, it isn’t really a hard psychological sell.
He can point to their opponent’s weaknesses, to the fact County’s away form is utterly dreadful and to so many good things that happened in West Lothian.
2 Have to go for it again
If this was an 800 metres race, Saints haven’t made their run for the line with a lap to go or even approaching the final bend.
They’re in the home straight.
That might be no bad thing, though.
Had Saints won in Livingston and been a point in front, there could have been muddled strategic thinking from management and players.
The temptation to think a draw is OK would have been powerful.
They played like a team who had only one thing in mind on Saturday and were all the better for it. Win.
That’s now the only mindset open to them on Wednesday.
County are the team who may struggle with a ‘stick or twist’ dilemma, not Saints.
3 Cometh the hour
Clark will have been hurting on Saturday. And Sunday.
But you don’t have a career like the one he’s put together without showing an ability to bounce back and bounce back stronger.
He’s been far more impactful as a creative focal point in the last two games and the chances are now coming his way.
Clark will know he’s in the spotlight and he’ll relish it.
Brian Graham missed an easier opportunity than the Perth forward in the first leg of Partick Thistle’s play-off quarter-final against Airdrie but shrugged it off to be the match-winner in the return fixture.
Nicky Clark is cut from the same cloth.
4 Comeback impact
Levein has spoken on several occasions about the significance of Drey Wright and Cammy MacPherson becoming end of season selection options.
Saturday was proof of why.
Wright completed his first full league game of the season, was solid defensively and a willing runner in the opposition half.
MacPherson nearly managed the 90 as well and was the pick of Saints’ central midfielders.
Combine their contribution with some superb passing from Graham Carey and Levein has three in-form creative players going into the County game and beyond.
5 Play-off hopes improve
After the Hibs defeat and, to a lesser extent, after the Aberdeen loss, I struggled to see a roadmap to Premiership football next season for St Johnstone.
Even through a play-off.
Providing the emotional damage isn’t too severe post-Livingston, the weekend actually topped up my faith that all is not necessarily lost.
Put it another way – if I was a Raith or Partick scout I’d have left the ground more fearful of Levein’s side than when I arrived.
Should Saints end up facing Raith they showed they can play well on plastic.
And they have also shown they can cut a defence open through patterns of quick pass and move football.
Game-management – on the pitch and/or off it – concerns remain but man for man and 11 against 11, St Johnstone shouldn’t be out-gunned by either of the two Championship sides left standing.
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