Tommy Wright stopped short of labelling Saturday’s McDiarmid Park clash with Motherwell as a “must-win” contest for St Johnstone.
But, with the fixture list starting to look more appealing after a daunting start, the Perth boss doesn’t need to be reminded of the importance of putting together a good run of results in the near future.
“I wouldn’t say this is a must-win game but we need to start picking up victories or we will have a really difficult season,” Wright admitted.
“The good thing at the minute is that we are only four points off sixth place.
“It is still early days. But we aren’t sitting here being blasé about it.
“It has been a terrible, terrible start for us, even going back to the Betfred Cup.
“There have been glimpses of us turning the corner but we keep giving away stupid goals. That has to be eradicated.
“We have played five out of the top six from last season.
“I’m not happy with three points because I think we are better than that.
“But we have to get back to keeping clean sheets and stop putting pressure on ourselves.”
The blueprint for Saints in the Wright era (and indeed under Derek McInnes and Steve Lomas) hasn’t changed that much.
“Our success has been built on solid defences,” he said.
“We have more attack minded players in the squad now.
“When we got into Europe normally we played with one winger and were stiffer on the other side.
“On paper we have more creative players.
“But any successful season is based on clean sheets.
“Teams similar to us that have had a motto like ‘if they score four we will score five’ don’t survive in this league. You need clean sheets.
“Going behind in games is killing us. That has to stop.”
Wright, who will bring recent recruit Jason Holt back into his team on Saturday, added: “Jason will help us in that midfield area but the main reason we are not winning games is that we are not keeping clean sheets.
“We create chances and had three or four opportunities against Rangers.
“But we can’t keep losing the first goal. That’s happened in every league game.”
