St Johnstone’s Premiership survival mission got a fraction harder after another weekend of top-flight football.
With Hearts drawing in Aberdeen, and the Perth side losing 3-1 at Ibrox, the gap between 12th and 11th has grown to nine points.
Saints need wins – and plenty of them – to pull off a football miracle.
Even though Rangers have been struggling on the road, their home form is that of potential champions, and the Perth bounce-back, if it is to happen, was highly unlikely to start on Sunday.
Courier Sport picks out four talking points from the contest as minds turn to the Scottish Cup next weekend.
The system
A trade secret – journalists working at a game of football don’t see it all.
With deadlines looming in the last 10 minutes of the match in particular, it’s a balancing act between keeping an eye on the action and making progress on your match report.
Even earlier in games, you still have to pick your moment to jot down incidents that may or may not make the final cut.
Crowd noise usually keeps you right and alerts you to a goal in the making – my excuse for missing Guy Melamed’s Bergkamp-esque touch in the dying minutes at Hamilton.
I’ll get to the point.
No team has ever made me miss the full build-up to a goal more often than the current St Johnstone one.
Twice it happened at Ibrox.
When a ball gets played out by Andy Fisher to Aaron Essel in the right-back area in nearly 10 yards of space, the threat level for a side conceding from that position should have been next to nil.
Ten seconds later, goal.
When a ball is in the centre circle and Saints have only two players ahead of it (Rangers have three), again this should not be a time when you’re thinking “danger”.
Seven seconds later, goal.
Those two (and the third) speak to the fact that, if anything, the shooting themselves in the foot and conceding out of nowhere factor is worsening, rather than improving.
It also undermines the “change the system” default narrative that many people are screaming when they see Saints letting in three goals in the space of 10 minutes.
The team’s set-up undermined the chances of victory against Hearts and St Mirren before Christmas but, other than that, it’s a red herring.
Saints conceded the first at Ibrox because a player made a bad decision and was then slow to react to it; they conceded the second because two members of a well-spaced back-four didn’t play the sole attacker offside as the other two did; and the third was a centre-back choosing the worst of several options available to him.
The post-match data shows that Valakari’s men filled the middle third of the pitch for the full 90 minutes, which is what you would hope to see.
The system looked more compact in the second half only because the players made it that way and didn’t throw their opponents any gifts.
The goalkeeper
St Johnstone’s issues in the goalkeeping position have been well-documented.
Fisher wasn’t brought to McDiarmid Park on loan to provide competition, he was brought to start.
Valakari needs the 26-year-old to spread calm across his defence, to make the right decisions about when to come for a cross and when to stay on his line, to save shots he’s expected to save and to save a few he isn’t.
There are valid arguments about the wisdom of Saints playing it short from the goalkeeper more often than they play it long, with Rangers’ first goal emboldening those who want a more direct approach from back to front.
But Fisher was reliable with his distribution around his 18-yard box and even better than reliable when it came to the mid-range diagonal passes out to the touchlines.
He was also quick out of his box, and decisive, when he needed to be – twice thwarting a Rangers attacker who looked like he could be in on goal for a one v one.
Fisher wasn’t actually called upon to deal with many crosses.
You would imagine that area of his game will be given a more thorough investigation in the back-to-back fixtures against Motherwell.
And he wasn’t peppered with shots either.
He did make one superb save, though, which gives hope that Valakari has recruited a good goalie.
A 66th minute Oscar Cortes shot on the angle would have found the bottom right corner of many Premiership keepers’ nets.
Not only did Fisher get a strong hand to it, he also managed to divert the ball out of the danger area and deny Rangers a tap-in rebound.
All in all, this was an encouraging debut.
Ibrox farewell?
There’s a big chance Saints won’t be back at Ibrox for a while.
The run of league defeats in Govan has been extended to nine and putting that right will have to wait until next season if you’re an eternal optimist, or whenever promotion from the Championship is achieved if you’re not.
At least they put a line under one dispiriting statistic.
Jack Sanders’ second half header was the first St Johnstone goal at Ibrox in seven games and the first in a league fixture in 11 (September, 2018).
Short-term goal
It should come as no surprise that Valakari remains a bundle of positivity.
If the Finn ever betrays any signs of being worn down by this situation and the glaring weaknesses in his squad that need addressed, then you really will know that staying up is mission impossible.
Whether he is proved correct with his post-match comments that the ocean liner has already begun to turn, time will tell.
A substantive and sustained change of direction will depend on the number and quality of the signings Saints are able to complete before the Premiership resumes a week on Saturday.
For me, Ross County are the only team they can hope to catch.
Of course, given the Highlanders’ recent form, even that feels wildly and unrealistically hopeful.
Saints have four league games to play before County, who have in-form Hibs and then Rangers next, visit McDiarmid at the end of February.
The aim for this spell of fixtures – Motherwell (H), St Mirren and Kilmarnock (A) and Hearts (H) – should be to cut the gap to the Highlanders by three.
They would then have a shot at getting to within four points in the match at Perth.
Sorting their own form out is, as has been the case from day one, the hard bit.
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