Tommy Wright’s refusal to panic when results were going against St Johnstone earlier in the season has paid dividends according to his assistant, Callum Davidson.
At one stage the Perth club had racked up five consecutive Premiership defeats, and were perched just above the bottom two.
Wright insisted their fortunes would turn round, keeping faith in his squad, and so it has proved.
Confidence could easily have ebbed away from the Saints players but the Northern Irishman made sure that didn’t happen – and the end result has been five games unbeaten rather than five without a point.
“Tommy helped steer the lads through the bad run,” Davidson pointed out.
“He doesn’t get agitated or anxious because that can feed to the players. That’s a conscious thing from us.
“We knew ourselves it was always about confidence.”
Dundee are now on the same points total as Saints, with Kilmarnock just one away. But Davidson has got his eyes fixed even further up the table.
He explained: “Hamilton are now a realistic target to have in our sights (they have seven more points). We have to try and hunt them down. If we maintain confidence and keep players fit we have every chance.
“Hopefully we can put together 90 minute performances when it comes to the games against the likes of Inverness and Aberdeen, even Killie on Saturday. The lads want to get that right. It will come. We will get there.
“We are building momentum. Football changes pretty quickly. If you has asked me six weeks ago there might have been a bit of doom and gloom. But results have turned in our favour.
“The lads have got themselves back challenging for the top six.”
The Saints number two admitted that the defeats of a couple of months ago were hard to shake off.
He said: “When you win on a Saturday it is a great feeling. But when you lose you are watching the video the next morning or in the case of Tommy that same night. Sometimes you have to remind yourself how you got there in the first place.
“My wife knew exactly how things had gone when I came in the door, without asking the result.
“As a player if I played as well as I could and we lost I could compartmentalise it. Even if I had played poorly and we had won I could have accept it. I was always grumpy if I had played badly and we had lost.
“As an assistant manager it is black and white.
“Maybe if you lose playing well against Celtic you can just about accept it but against any other team in the league it is different because we believe we can beat them all.
“My wife wants the run to continue over Christmas for the sake of the family! But we have hard games coming up so we have to get it right to maintain our good run.”