Simo Valakari has spoken about “crazy football” possibly being a factor for St Johnstone against Celtic on Sunday.
And one former Perth player knows better than most that the hope can become reality.
Back in November 1998, when the champions from the season before visited McDiarmid Park, Vidar Riseth attempted a clearance the like of which Saints supporters hadn’t seen in the ground before and still haven’t seen since.
After the Norwegian smashed a ball across his own six-yard box under pressure from Nathan Lowndes, rather than put it out for a corner, Kieran McAnespie got in the way of it to head home an unlikely winning goal and secure the home team a famous 2-1 victory.
McAnespie has quite a claim to fame – scoring goals in victories over both Glasgow giants in one season.
The injury-time finish against Rangers a few months later might have been more textbook, but the most unexpected of back post headers to defeat the Hoops was just as sweet, if not sweeter, for the former Scotland under-21 international.
“People speak to me more about the Rangers goal because it was live on Sky,” McAnespie told Courier Sport.
“But my first goal in the SPL, or whatever it was called in those days, was against Celtic.
“Back then I just trained and played. I didn’t really know what I was doing in the grand scheme of things.
“But I certainly didn’t get nervous.
“Keith O’Halloran got injured in the first half so I came on and played down the left. I was up against Jackie McNamara.
“In the big games we basically played a 4-5-1.
“Because of my fitness levels I was able to get up and down the park all day.
“I saw Nathan chasing the ball down on the other side of the box. In my head, I was already thinking about taking the corner.
“There was no way I was expecting Riseth to hit it right across on to my head.
“It was Tony Warner’s first game on loan from Liverpool that night. He must have been just as surprised as me!
“I didn’t have the time to try and direct it – I just made sure I got my head on it.”
Bad start
There was some career symmetry for McAnespie in scoring his first top division goal and first winner against Celtic.
“I actually made my first appearance in the league at the start of the previous season after we had gone up,” he recalled.
“I came on with 10 minutes to go and did my knee.
“Callum (Davidson) had dinked a ball over Jackie. I lost the flight of it, misjudged it, lunged and my knee twisted.
“I played on, but it didn’t take long for my knee to swell up after the game.
“I told Davie Henderson (the Saints physio) my knee was too sore to do a run the next day and he knew right away that it was a bad one. I had torn my medial.
“That was me out until the following March.”
Last weekend
McAnespie, who was a hamper boy with Craig Brown’s Scotland squad at the 1998 World Cup in France, earned a big moved to Fulham in the summer of 2000.
His first club have always remained close to his heart and he was a spectator at Easter Road last weekend for Saints’ 3-0 defeat to Hibs.
If that performance was the sign of things to come in the Premiership run-in, he fears that Simo Valakari will be faced with the same task Paul Sturrock ended up with – bringing them back from the second tier.
“I was speaking to Yogi Hughes, who was doing the ambassadorial stuff for Hibs, and he was praising Saints for the way they play the ball out from the back,” said McAnespie.
“But on Saturday they didn’t go anywhere with it. It was static.
“There are lots of situations you can analyse but, for me, their play was devoid of any creativity.
“It was a bit like pass the parcel. ‘You have it’. Nobody was taking responsibility.
“They didn’t lack effort.
“Up top, you couldn’t fault Makenzie Kirk’s willingness to run.
“But Hibs played a high line and when the centre-halves pushed up, he just followed.
“An experienced player would hold his position to stretch the game and create space for others.
“Space hurts teams more than anything else.
“The two Hibs centre-halves were on the halfway line, and he was with them.
“If he had stayed higher, they would have had a decision to make.
“More than likely, they would have come back because even though he would be offside if the ball was played to him, he wouldn’t be if one of the wide players got the ball and it came to him in the next phase of play.”
Big job for Valakari
McAnespie added: “When I go to a game these days, I look at players’ technical ability – how they receive the ball and how they move it.
“Maybe it’s not fair but I can’t help but compare it to the team I was in, with guys like Paul Kane, Roddy Grant, Gerry McMahon, Keith O’Halloran and Danny Griffin.
“These boys were technically exceptional.
“On Saturday, I was seeing the ball bouncing in the air, players not controlling it and passing it well.
“These things matter.
“If your pass is bobbly or you’re facing the wrong way to control it, the team’s phase of play is dead, and you have to start again.
“Simo will have given them a plan but the problem you’ve got as a manager is that once they cross that white line, you’ve got no control over it.
“I could see Simo trying to micro-manage the game from the touchline, which is difficult.
“He was a very good player who understood the game – I played against him. He sees things that some of these players can’t see.
“I watched Simo pointing and telling them. The difficulty he’s got is probably the calibre of player he’s working with. There are so many contributing factors.
“It’s a tough gig he’s got. He’ll see the same things as us.
“For me, it takes three years for a manager to build a team.
“That was the case for Luggy.
“You just have to compare the quality of player when he took over at St Johnstone to the quality of player when he left.
“Sandy Clark inherited a back four of Gary Bollan, Jim Weir, Alan Kernaghan and John McQuillan, with Alan Main behind them. That says it all really.”
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