St Johnstone boss Simo Valakari wants falling to the bottom of the Premiership to be their “reset” moment.
The Perth side hit rock bottom as a result of their 2-1 defeat to Hearts, with James Penrice and Blair Spittal scoring either side of a Graham Carey penalty.
Valakari knows that Saints won’t get any favours from their top-flight rivals but they do have the time to drag themselves out of the hole they have dug.
“It’s not a good situation but there are no excuses,” said the Finn.
“Football gives you a second chance and we need to grab our second chance.
“What I mean by a second chance is there are still plenty of games to play but we can’t think ‘we’ll be OK, we’ll win this, this and this’.
“We need to start to win football matches.
“It’s worrying and it’s disappointing but it’s a reset moment.
“There’s nobody behind us. We don’t have to think ‘what was their result today?’
“We have put ourselves in this position and we are the only ones who can get us out of it.”
The first goal was conceded from a cross ball, while the second had a self-inflicted element to it as well.
“When you are bottom of the league it’s more likely these sort of things happen,” said Valakari. “It’s football logic.
“We are not a team that an opponent needs miracles against to score a goal.
“It’s our job – my job – to turn it around. They are honest players who are not making excuses about the situation.
“They are suffering.
“Are they at maximum confidence? Of course not. We are losing football matches.
“But we need to show what we are made of.
“Our next home game is our first opportunity to start climbing the table.”
As against St Mirren last weekend, Saints were far better in the second half than the first.
“We knew they would come at us hard from the start,” said Valakari.
“For most of the first half we were a yard off them.
“I needed to change our formation in the middle of the first half. We had planned to press Hearts high but they played through our press with long balls and we didn’t have the players to win the second balls.
“We were under a lot of pressure.
“We got more players into the middle in the second half, got closer to each other and started to connect more passes.
“In the second half we looked more like ourselves. Deservedly we got to 1-1 but we can’t let an opponent comeback that quickly – it killed our momentum.”
Given Hearts’ recent form, and the fact that Tynecastle had turned toxic on Thursday night after their European exit, this was a game Saints needed to start well to crank up the heat on an under-pressure team.
Valakari’s men produced the exact opposite.
There were two close shaves in the opening four minutes when their opponents got in behind a new-look back four.
And it came as no surprise that the hosts took the lead on 16 minutes.
Adam Forrester crossed the ball from the right and neither Aaron Essel (playing at right-back) nor Jack Sanders could prevent Penrice from meeting it and sending a powerful header past Josh Rae.
It was nearly 2-0 shortly after, with a Bozo Mikulic near-post clearance almost turning into a mishit own goal.
Saints’ first promising counter-attack came just after the half-hour mark when Benji Kimpioka sent Adama Sidibeh on a run down the left. Unfortunately, the cross the Gambian international sent over for Makenzie Kirk didn’t give his team-mate a realistic chance of keeping his header on target.
VAR reprieve
It took a VAR check, which revealed an offside before James Wilson had found the net on 38 minutes, to keep the score at just 1-0 at half-time.
Saints were fortunate the deficit wasn’t larger.
And they took advantage of that good fortune by levelling the contest on 53 minutes.
A Penrice handball was spotted by VAR and referee, John Beaton, awarded a penalty after being sent to his pitch-side monitor. Half-time substitute, Carey, gave Craig Gordon no chance from the spot.
It was only an even scoreline for four minutes, however.
Penrice’s corner came back to him and after his cross was again cleared, Spittal was unmarked at the edge of the box and volleyed the ball past Rae.
Despite working a couple of promising crossing situations with good build-up play, Saints couldn’t carve out a clear-cut opportunity to grab an equaliser and Hearts saw out the game fairly comfortably.
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