St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright is still doing his homework on Spartak Trnava despite being back home.
Wright has returned to Northern Ireland on compassionate leave and will attend his mother’s funeral there before travelling to Perth to take charge of his club’s Europa League third qualifying round first leg.
Assistant boss Callum Davidson, who took training at Stirling yesterday, revealed that, despite his personal tragedy, Wright is still determined to do his bit to help defeat the Slovaks.
Davidson said: “He has asked for videos of Spartak Trnava to be sent to him back home so he will be watching them, working out the set-plays and stuff like that before speaking to the lads when he gets back.
“We will do a chunk of preparation work before the game and will sit down with the lads and go through some videos we have of them.
“The boys take care of themselves anyway and you very rarely see a bad training session here.
“They know what is expected of them and what they expect from themselves so the fact the manager isn’t here won’t impact on things one bit.
“The boys will make sure their standards are kept high. They always do anyway. The main thing at the moment is that Tommy is at home with his family, especially his dad.
“They have the funeral and then he will be back on Thursday, so it’s not a problem. We have been in constant contact.”
Davidson also stepped in when his gaffer was hospitalised with gall bladder traouble last March so is well equipped to get on with the job.
“It’s a little bit different to when Tommy was in hospital but he still wants to know everything that’s going on just as he did back then,” he added.
Davidson is expecting Trnava to be a different proposition to silky Swiss side Luzern, whom Saints knocked out on penalties to get to this stage.
“It has been more difficult to get information on them than it was for Luzern but we’ll get there,” he added.
“We had them watched and have a report. They will be physical.
“They get the ball forward quickly and are strong at the back so it’s a different test to last week and it’s going to be a difficult game.
“It might be more similar to the Minsk game last year but we know the intensity has to be there in our play. The one thing I would say from the Luzern tie is that we need to improve on our ball retention.
“We gave it away too much against the Swiss and this week we want to be better on the ball.
“If we can keep it tight at home, take our chances and then have something to go across there with that would be great.
“Not losing an away goal would be huge for us so we will have that in mind.”