St Johnstone’s Premiership survival hopes suffered a major body blow on Saturday.
After recovering from the loss of an early goal and producing a generally underwhelming first half performance, the Perth side rallied superbly to earn a 2-1 advantage over St Mirren with only nine minutes left of the 90.
Not for the first time this season, though, they conspired to find a way to undo all their good work in the closing stages.
Courier Sport analyses where it all went wrong, a controversial decision by the referee, reasons to be fearful and reasons to be optimistic.
The referee
Letting play continue before summoning a player or players back for a warning or a card is good refereeing practice.
So too is giving the attacking team an advantage.
That was the case even before officials were handed a VAR safety net.
Ordinarily then, Euan Anderson deciding against blowing his whistle when Jack Sanders grabbed Toyosi Olusanya’s shirt and the St Mirren player responded by pushing the Saints centre-half to the ground, would be viewed as a job well done.
If you were a St Mirren fan, you would claim there were two wrongs, which made a right, and that Anderson made the correct call on that basis.
But applying the rules of football doesn’t work like that.
And given Olusanya’s actions were at the very limits of what could be deemed worthy of yellow rather than red (high and far more aggressive than a run-of-the-mill shove) it jarred when Anderson let this incident pass.
It wasn’t an area VAR official, Steven McLean, could enter into but the retaliation was of a level that warranted what had been a justifiable St Mirren advantage to be revoked by the referee.
In short, Anderson should have blown his whistle.
Terrible defending (again)
With all the late chaos that dominated post-match talk, the manner in which Saints conceded the opening goal slipped down the discussion pecking order.
I would imagine it won’t escape Simo Valakari’s attention.
It was an all-round shocker.
That Mikael Mandron was afforded the time on the edge of the box to take a touch on a square ball, turn and thread a pass through to Killian Phillips without any pressure was bad enough in itself.
But even worse was the fact that Saints had SEVEN outfield players behind the ball, while Mandron had only ONE team-mate he could attempt to pick out.
Despite the fact that Phillips pointed to where he was about to run to with an out-stretched and bandaged arm, six of those seven were caught ball-watching and the only one who wasn’t (Lewis Neilson) didn’t have the awareness to step-up and play the attacker offside.
For the visitors’ second goal, the error count was even higher.
Sanders should have opted for distance rather than accuracy on his attempted clearance, or just put the ball into the East Stand.
Drey Wright got his body position wrong at the back post.
Bozo Mikulic switched off to let Phillips get in front of him and nobody tracked the goal-scorer, Evan Mooney.
Josh Rae got next to no power on his punch but I would actually say the goalkeeper was the least culpable.
The situation should have been Mikulic’s to deal with and Rae was at full stretch so getting more distance on his clearance off his left hand was easier said than done.
More disappointing for Rae was misjudging his spring off the line for Mark O’Hara’s penalty. That’s the sort of repetition you ingrain on the training ground.
The broad point is this, though – Saints are still conceding dreadful goals.
We’ve been saying it for months and, for all their improvement between the boxes, it remains the case that unless there is a significant and sustained decrease in the basic error count, it will be Championship football at McDiarmid Park next season.
The return of David Keltjens
St Johnstone have a dearth of players for whom full-back is their natural position or are physically robust enough to start game after game in that part of the pitch.
On the left, hopefully Andre Raymond will be available again soon, but he’s more of a wing-back.
Barry Douglas is a left-back but is on the long-term injured list and he’s of an age (35) when it’s possible his body might give up on him at this level of the game.
Neilson is predominantly a centre-half/central midfielder, as is Aaron Essel, while Drey Wright is doing as well as you could hope for a man whose career was built on a skillset more suited to the attacking third of a football pitch as opposed to the defensive third.
David Keltjens is basically the only fit, out and out full-back Saints currently have on their books.
That points to recruitment gone wrong in the summer, of course.
But, now that Keltjens has returned to the team and produced a good second half display against St Mirren, you would imagine the Israeli will be in the side to stay for the festive period.
Positivity warranted
There will be plenty of people (those not watching St Johnstone regularly) who will deride a glass half-full mentality in the fan base and point to a league position that is worsening rather than improving.
Supporters will be disappointed their team didn’t press well enough or pass well enough in the first half, which was more down to mentality than formation, in my opinion.
They will be infuriated by the defensive slackness mentioned above.
And they will also be cursing the fact the players allowed the game to be far too open in the closing stages and that the head coach decided not to turn to his bench to help address that.
But they are not kidding themselves on when they speak of a team and a manager now worthy of their emotional investment.
There is an obvious comparison to draw.
That was late September, the first game after Craig Levein’s sacking.
In terms of how St Johnstone were playing then and now and their competitiveness in games then and now, however, it’s night and day.
Saints had no control in the Highlands and didn’t create a single chance in open play.
These days, they are consistently going toe to toe with their opponents in terms of possession and passing numbers.
Saturday was a case in point.
Saints had 65% of the ball to St Mirren’s 35%.
They had 427 accurate passes to St Mirren’s 187.
They had eight shots inside the 18-yard box to St Mirren’s five.
They won more duels – in the air and on the ground.
There’s a strong chance this team will be bottom of the Premiership by the turn of the year and there’s no margin for error when it comes to the success rate of their January signings as a consequence of the recruitment mess of successive windows.
But anybody trying to paint a picture of the Craig Levein and Simo Valakari eras blurring into one straight line of continued under-performance really hasn’t been paying attention.
There’s far more nuance to the St Johnstone first half of the season story than that.
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