STEVEN McLean believed Tommy Wright would be standing in the Aberdeen dugout at McDiarmid Park this evening, writes Gordon Bannerman

And the St Johnstone striker was absolutely sure that the man who actually will take that place tonight would instead be at Ibrox on Saturday when his side go there.

As it was, Derek McInnes stayed at Aberdeen, who are at Perth tonight, meaning Wright also stayed in Perth.

“Like everybody else, I thought Derek was away,” said MacLean. “Then when I heard he’d stayed I was kind of shocked.

“I thought we might have been facing our gaffer on Wednesday and Derek on Saturday! I’m sure he would have had a massive chance of getting the Aberdeen job if Derek had done to Rangers.

“So my initial thought was ‘well, our gaffer will be staying.’

“It’s hard to comment on why Derek made the decision to stay at Aberdeen because you don’t know what’s gone on.

“But Aberdeen will be delighted - and so are we.

“You don’t know if our gaffer would have got the Aberdeen job but he would definitely have been linked with it.

“So both sides will have taken a lift from it.”

MacLean believes St Johnstone must atone for their loss at Aberdeen earlier in the campaign.

“We were poor at Pittodrie,” he admitted. “That can happen but they out-worked us and scored from three set-plays, which is very poor.

“You can lose games by the other team playing better but it’s not acceptable when you don’t do the dirty stuff.

“At the very least we need to make sure we’re hard to beat and well organised. I’m sure we will be.

“We’ve always had good games against them here and it’s one we’re really looking forward to.

“I don’t think it was a great performance but they showed they can win games both ways.

“They’ll be looking to get second place again this season.”