Despite the fact that neither underfoot nor overhead conditions were conducive to attractive football at McDiarmid Park on Sunday, St Johnstone and Hearts served up a decent game which, as both managers admitted, could have gone either way.
A draw would have been a fair result, but Saints don’t get many of those – which is one of the big reasons they are where they are in the Premiership table.
Time is running out for Perth hard luck stories, with crucial games against Ross County and Dundee to come over the next few days.
Courier Sport picks out four talking points from the defeat to Hearts and casts an eye forward to a couple of fixtures that warrant the “season-defining” tag.
Better balance
The biggest theme to emerge from the previous weekend’s defeat at Rugby Park was the need for the Saints players to be less wedded to a ‘play it out from the back’ gameplan.
Too often they fell into Kilmarnock pressing traps and, as Valakari, subsequently explained, he would rather see a mixture of long and short, with circumstances dictating which strategy his goalkeeper and defenders adopt.
In the main, Saints struck a far better balance.
Unlike against Killie (and St Mirren) it never felt as if they were about to unnecessarily pass their way into trouble.
Andy Fisher delivered balls into the Hearts half that gave Adama Sidibeh a fighting chance of winning and, although he didn’t make his mark on the contest in a footballing sense, Jonathan Svedberg helped get his team up the pitch by contesting long passes that came his way, forcing throw-ins deep in opposition territory on a couple of occasions.
The central midfielders shouldn’t have allowed a passing lane to open-up for the visitors’ winning goal.
Lawrence Shankland’s first touch was superb and Elton Kabangu’s run and finish matched it for quality – but Saints needed to be more compact in that moment.
Broadly speaking, however, Valakari’s side were a match for Hearts between the boxes.
It was what happened in and around the two penalty areas that settled this contest.
Vulnerable after scoring
The victory over St Mirren had raised hopes that Saints were finally becoming a streetwise team – maybe not quite masters of game-management, but certainly far improved in that regard.
Sunday was a regression.
And it was the third 2-1 defeat to Hearts.
They deserved nothing from the Tynecastle fixture but the storyline at the weekend wasn’t all that different to the narrative when the two sides first met at McDiarmid in early November.
Both games should have been draws.
On those occasions – and five others this season – Saints have scored a goal and then conceded less than 10 minutes later.
If they go down, this will be one of the big factors.
Top of the league Celtic will be happy that they have only drawn three league games, bottom of the league St Johnstone certainly shouldn’t be.
Duke-McKenna from the start
It’s too early to be writing report cards for the seven outfield players recruited in the January transfer window.
But, so far, the player who appeared to be the biggest gamble is making the biggest first impression.
Put plainly, St Johnstone look far likelier to score with Stephen Duke-McKenna on the pitch than without him.
Giving the former Everton academy player a licence to roam from one side to the other, and operate anywhere in between, is a real show of faith from his manager.
‘Free roles’ aren’t common in a team fighting relegation.
But Duke-McKenna has justified that faith.
He commits defenders, can take the ball wide or inside and his crossing is becoming increasingly effective.
Duke-McKenna has been given three-quarters of a game and two halves since arriving on deadline day.
A first start against Ross County is the natural progression. It has been earned.
Points target
There is only one team Saints have a realistic hope of catching.
Dundee.
So, as in 2022, the Dark Blues’ fortunes are now almost as significant as their own.
If Saints draw with Ross County on Wednesday night, it’s an acceptable result only if Dundee don’t win at Fir Park.
Every game-day is about bettering or, at the very worst, matching what Tony Docherty’s side do.
However, Saints of course have a six-point gap to bridge and are very much in the “if not now then when?” stage of the season.
It’s hard to imagine how they are going to stay up if they don’t get pick up four points from the next two games.
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