If Saturday’s Tayside derby is anything to go by, St Johnstone fans are in for an entirely different type of season for better and worse.
“I haven’t watched much Scottish football on television and I’ve been positively surprised at the quality of the game.
“I haven’t set myself an exact number of goals I want to get while I’m here, but what I do want to do is start games and do my very best for Dundee United.”
Saturday’s six-goal thriller was full of unexpected twists and turns.
United made the perfect start when Barry Douglas finished off a slick move to put them ahead after just 41 seconds.
For the next half hour a second from the visitors probably looked more likely than an equaliser.
That all changed when Johnny Russell was adjudged to have booted former team-mate David Robertson in the face when he was attempting an overhead kick clearance.
Russell and manager Peter Houston thought the penalty award was harsh, and even Derek McInnes admitted to being surprised that his team were given it.
There was no fight over who would take it for the Perth men this time, as Fran Sandaza had been given the nod prior to kick-off in the wake of Craig’s miss against Dunfermline, and the Spaniard tucked it away.
Five minutes later Jody Morris won a free-kick 25 yards out after Garry Kenneth was penalised for climbing over him – another decision Houston disagreed with.
Craig drilled home the set-piece.
He may have given up penalties to Sandaza, but he won’t be passing on dead ball duties outside the box anytime soon.
He said: “I spoke to Fran about the penalties and it’s all about the team. He took his brilliantly. You can see how confident he is just now and I was always going to let him take it. I’ll still be taking the free-kicks, though.”
In stoppage time Saints completed a remarkable first-half turnaround when Sandaza took advantage of a Kenneth slip-up to make it 3-1.
A home win looked a certainty for the bulk of the second period but a Gary Mackay-Steven close-range finish with just over 10 minutes to go, after United had worked a quick free-kick, changed all that.
The momentum was now with the Tangerines and it was all square when Gavin Gunning headed in a Danny Swanson corner in 83 minutes.
Scoring three goals in any game was virtually unheard of for the Perth class of 2010/11 but neither would you expect last year’s McDiarmid Park side to surrender a two-goal lead with 10 minutes to go.
Marry their new found cutting edge with their old miserly ways at the back and this Saints team really will be one to reckon with in the SPL.
With the late collapse from 3-1 up to 3-3 still fresh in his mind, however, it was understandably hard for Liam Craig to see his glass half full.
He said: “Five or 10 minutes of madness at the end have cost us and we’ve thrown away the chance to cap off what would have been a fantastic six days for us.
“To have won at Parkhead, progressed comfortably in the cup and then won a derby would have been brilliant way to go into an international break, but it wasn’t to be and it will feel like a long two weeks before we get to play again.
“We were in total control. For their second goal they caught us out with their free-kick and the third was a corner we could have defended better.
“We were very switched on at Parkhead but that wasn’t the case against United and we’ve let ourselves down. To score three goals at home you expect to win the game.”
There’s been no shortage of people lining up to give Scottish football a caning over the last few days, but new Dundee United striker Lauri Dalla Valle won’t be joining the queue.
If the young Finn had picked up a newspaper since he arrived in this country he’d have been forgiven for thinking Fulham boss Martin Jol had farmed him out to a footballing backwater, such has been the fall-out from all our clubs being knocked out of Europe before the end of August.
The teenager, who spent time at Internazionale and Liverpool in his formative years, loved every minute of his United debut.
More of the same for the rest of his spell north of the border will do for Dalla Valle, who was as impressed by the standard of play in Perth as he was the level of excitement.
“I enjoyed my first game a lot, really a lot. I’ll definitely enjoy myself here if the matches are all as good as this one,” he said.
“I can already see that the football here is very competitive, fast and physical, and teams try to play on the floor. There are good players and it will do me a lot of good to play in Scotland.
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