St Johnstone secured back-to-back league wins for the first time in nearly two years.
It was a grim, club record of a slog that endured for 72 matches.
And they couldn’t have picked a better place – or a more dramatic way – to end it.
Dens Park, whether it’s a ‘derby’ or not, is the Saints fans’ favourite away trip of the season and their favourite away win if their team can get the job done.
That the decisive goal was at their end, and in the last minute of the 90, made it all the sweeter.
Courier Sport picks out six talking points from a dramatic contest in Dundee.
Deserved winners
Simo Valakari would have taken a victory in any way it came.
But to win, having thoroughly deserved it AND after overcoming the adversity of an early Simon Murray goal which joined the long list of shambolic ones Saints have conceded this season, will give Valakari cause for hope that this isn’t a new manager bounce without substance.
Saints had 20 shots to Dundee’s eight and there were at least five good chances amongst those.
And they dominated possession as well – 63.9% to 36.1%.
Those are emphatic numbers for an away side in any circumstances, let alone after their opposition won impressively the week before, with their manager describing the display from his players at Fir Park as “complete”.
It’s for Dundee fans to mull over Tony Docherty’s post-match game-plan comments that his team “were really comfortable to allow the St Johnstone centre-halves to have the ball”.
But the longer this match went on, the more Saints were able to exert control and, more importantly, keep Trevor Carson busy on the back of it.
The Perth team haven’t produced a complete performance yet but, strip away the defensive errors for the Murray goal, and this was the closest thing to it.
The long wait
It was torture for the St Johnstone players and fans and it was probably a few minutes longer than it needed to be.
But Kevin Clancy came to the correct conclusion.
Scottish football doesn’t have the best VAR infrastructure that money can buy but even in England, there have been occasions when video evidence can’t clear up a game-defining incident.
Anthony Gordon’s goal for Newcastle against Arsenal last year springs to mind.
The on-field decision had to stand at Dens.
And, as Simo Valakari pointed out, Clancy deserves credit for explaining the ins and outs of the six-minute process to the two managers before eventually pointing to the centre-spot.
Docherty has had good reason to be infuriated by VAR and the officials who operate it over the past couple of seasons.
The Simo effect
Early days. Very early days.
But Valakari has got off to a dream start.
St Johnstone, and the people who follow them, have needed this.
The geography of Dens lends itself to a manager like Valakari.
And he didn’t miss his opportunity to get the crowd going from the moment he walked out the tunnel next to the away end for the warm-up.
Once the game started he was a calm and focused presence at the edge of his technical area in the main and animated when there was cause to be.
Then, when the post-match celebrations were in full-swing, he was right in the middle of it as the players and 1,500 fans showed their mutual appreciation.
Managers have to be true to themselves but the circumstances demanded Saints appoint a pied piper-type leader who would be able to marry football acumen with raw passion.
You’d think it would be a given but it’s amazing how often managers don’t get the club and the fanbase – or by the time they do, it’s too late.
Nobody needs to worry about Simo Valakari and St Johnstone on that front.
No harm to Tiernan Lynch, but the thought that Craig Levein’s successor could have come from Larne rather than Latvia will now be enough to keep supporters (and owners) awake at night.
Changing the game
You don’t become a successful head coach by whipping up a crowd and saying the right things before and after matches.
Shrewd in-game management is required.
Valakari didn’t disappoint on that front either.
Replacing Matt Smith with Graham Carey proved to be an inspired substitution.
Six minutes after the change, the Irishman scored the equaliser.
It wasn’t a case of Smith – one of Saints’ most consistent performers this season – playing poorly or tiring. Far from it.
It was a strategic intervention on the head coach’s part in light of attacking opportunities on the right side of the pitch he felt the team weren’t taking full advantage of.
Valakari explained: “One reason why we needed to make this change, to take Matty out and put G there, was because we needed to stay out first and then come in with his left foot. I’ve seen it many times in training.”
On the subject of subs, Kyle Cameron deserves a mention as well.
He came on at the same time as Carey – an injury to Andre Raymond prompting this one – and didn’t put a foot wrong on the left-side of central defence, with Lewis Neilson pushed out one to left-back.
Midfield balance
Levein’s last signing may prove to be his most important.
Game after game, Jason Holt is a man of the match contender and this was another such occasion.
Holt shares Dan Phillips’ ability to do the simple things very effectively but his experience gives him a heightened sense of where he needs to position himself.
And he’s also showcasing an appreciation of when to keep things safe by going sideways or backwards and when to inject some attacking thrust into his midfield work.
But in the middle of the park, it wasn’t just a story of his excellence.
The balance between Holt, Smith and Sven Sprangler was the platform for Saints being able to dictate the play.
Mo Sylla has been the main man in this fixture on more than one occasion but not on Saturday.
Even before his half-time substitution, Saints were finding ways to pop the ball around him and get at the Dundee centre-halves.
It was a tactical victory for Valakari, of course, but the Finn needed diligence and physicality from Sprangler. And he got it.
The best holding midfielder at Dens was the Austrian – highlighted by the fact that Lyall Cameron created next to nothing for the hosts, which is unlike him.
Sprangler got a run of four games at the end of September/start of October when it was inevitable it would take time to get his game rhythm given he’d barely been used in pre-season or the competitive matches up to that point.
It looks like he’s now found that.
Clark’s new role now working
Saturday was Sprangler’s best performance of his six by a country mile.
It was also the most effective Nicky Clark has been in the nine-and-a-half role Levein first tried him in.
Even though he scored two stunning free-kicks in Dingwall last month, Clark’s team-mates have toiled to use his strengths in open play.
In the second half at Dens, without Sylla protecting the backline, the Dundee midfield and backline struggled to get on top of him, allowing the canny veteran to find pockets of spaces and release Benji Kimpioka, in particular, to run at Billy Koumetio.
And he was also timing his runs into the box for shots at goal just inside or on the 18-yard line.
Ironically, though, the moment that mattered was Clark hanging about the goal-line.
They haven’t fully taken the pure number nine out of him yet!
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