St JOHNSTONE provided the perfect riposte to Brendan Rodgers’ barbs as they won for the first time at home in five months to resurrect their top-six hopes.
Rodgers had criticised Saints for only lifting their game to play his side and Rangers, but a first-half Murray Davidson double earned a first
McDiarmid Park victory since September and proved they can rouse themselves for the run-in, leaving manager Tommy Wright targeting an end-of-season revival.
“We’re still only five points behind Motherwell [in seventh] with two games in hand,” he said, with Craig Curran’s late red card compounding Ross County’s misery. “We’ll remain positive, we’ve always tried to remain positive, and it’s for other people to be negative.
“We’ve done our job, we can be happy with our days’ work and we’ll recover and get ready to go again on Tuesday night [against Rangers]. There’s enough games left and enough points available for us to continue to move up the table, and hopefully we’ll do that.”
A poor match was lit up by the opener in the 29th minute. Scott Tanser played a neat 1-2 with David Wotherspoon on the left and the Saints full-back’s superb cross was intelligently nodded down by Steven MacLean for Davidson to sweep into the net from eight yards out.
Saints then doubled their advantage 11 minutes later as County failed to respond to going behind. Chris Kane’s determination earned him possession at the right apex of the box and his cut-back was curled into the net by Davidson, despite Scott Fox getting his hand to the dipping shot.
With County skipper Marcus Fraser crashing a miscued clearance off his own crossbar shortly after, it almost got worse for the visitors, who could not spark a comeback in a poor second half that got even worse six minutes from time. Saints took
exception to County not giving them the ball back after they had knocked it out to allow treatment for Davis
Keillor-Dunn, and Curran received a second yellow card for pushing
over MacLean, who was also booked.
It left County with just one win from their last 16 league games and three points adrift at the bottom, but manager Owen Coyle is remaining positive his side, who had taken four points from a possible six before this showing, can still rescue themselves.
He said: “Our destiny’s in our own hands and we can shape that by winning games, but not with performances like that.”
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