4 St Johnstone talking points: A good result in Dundee but do Perth side need Benji Kimpioka back to stay up?

The Premiership season pauses for St Johnstone with the Perth side still three points behind Dundee at the bottom of the table.

Neither team exerted significant control of Saturday’s Dens Park contest, with Saints the better team in the first half and Tony Docherty’s men finishing stronger and looking likelier to grab a winner.

As Simo Valakari observed, a draw was a fair result.

There will be frustrations for both.

The visitors that they couldn’t get into half-time with their 1-0 lead intact and the hosts that they couldn’t show the required composure in front of goal in the last 10 minutes.

Courier Sport looks back on the contest from a Perth perspective and looks forward to what it means for the top-flight’s basement battle.

Same story but with a difference

Last Sunday’s defeat to Hearts made it eight occasions this season that Saints have scored a goal and then conceded less than 10 minutes later.

Make that nine now.

Valakari knows it’s a thing.

He also suspects it may be a psychological thing.

“It’s almost too much in our heads,” the head coach noted in his post-match press conference.

Some of the nine goals have been conceded as a result of being too open as Saints chased another, some have come from retreating on the back of scoring, and some have been a consequence of switching off.

Though it doesn’t look good that Simon Murray scored less than three minutes after Makenzie Kirk, I don’t think the timing of this particular goal can be attributed to any of the three reasons above.

A good long-throw is hard to defend at the best of times.

Joe Shaughnessy was bigger and stronger than the trio of Saints players who tried to prevent him making first contact, and Simon Murray being quicker to react to the flick-on than Barry Douglas could have happened at any stage of the game.

In fact, it could happen to any defender, such is Murray’s form just now.

Fingers crossed, this is a red herring goal in the quick concession category.

Grinding out a draw

The other theme that the Hearts game highlighted was Saints’ inability to pick up a point in a tight contest.

This match was definitely a much-needed step forward in that regard.

Dundee weren’t laying siege to the Saints penalty area towards the end of the match but they were getting a few shots on goal and playing the game in that part of the pitch for a sustained period.

There’s a significant difference between three games in seven days (Dundee) and three in six (Saints).

Valakari’s side looked wearier than their opponents and had concentration levels dropped as markedly as energy levels, Dundee would have won this.

Not since January 2nd against Hibs have Saints had an ‘if you can’t win, make sure you don’t lose’ match-day.

They passed a character test at Dens.

Striker short

The St Johnstone second half substitutes were hard to argue with in theory.

They needed to try and gain a bit of control back around the hour mark. Replacing Jason Holt and Makenzie Kirk with Jonathan Svedberg and Graham Carey helped them to do just that for 10 or 15 minutes.

Nicky Clark for Adama Sidibeh also made sense on 77 minutes – the Gambian international’s effectiveness was diminishing.

However, it did highlight once again that this squad is a striker short.

In reality, Saints played without a number nine in the closing stages.

Clark doesn’t occupy centre-backs in open play like he used to and certainly doesn’t stretch them as a runner in behind.

He is an ‘off the striker’ operator now – the Dens Park problem being he was without the striker to play off.

It still feels as if there’s a lot riding on Benji Kimpioka getting his head in the right place to restore himself as a trustworthy selection option.

If he remains on the fringes and Valakari doesn’t see what he wants to see from the Swede on the training ground, staying up becomes much harder.

The big picture

The task from Hearts to Dundee was to make sure the points’ total was no less than four out of three games.

Combined with the fact that the Dark Blues only picked up one draw in that time, that’s a decent week’s work.

It’s a straight shoot-out, with only three points in it, and there’s a contrast between the two camps.

As a club and fanbase, St Johnstone are more unified than they have been since the cup double season.

Although Dundee halted a run of defeats, there are still plenty of supporters who aren’t enchanted with what they’re seeing – from the players or the manager.

Reaction in the ground and on social media tells you that.

It’s a factor in this relegation battle. Has to be.

For St Johnstone, the purported ‘season-defining week’ has been nothing of the sort.

They have neither made a potentially decisive move upwards, nor have they been cut a potentially fatal eight or nine points adrift.

But there’s a substantial enough body of work now to support the theory that the general form curve is upwards.

Dundee will have to show the same if they are going to stay above Saints.

Valakari’s men are not going away. They don’t look like folding. They will ask questions of the team above them.

I think every St Johnstone fan would have signed up for that a couple of months ago.