TOMMY Wright is planning a burst of transfer deadline day activity in an attempt to lift St Johnstone from their League Cup semi-final disappointment. Despite question marks over the veracity of the penalty claim which Jason Cummings converted to open the scoring on Saturday, the Perth side deservedly went down to Hibs at Tynecastle and Wright feels the urge to freshen up his squad for the latter part of the season.
"We’ll see if there’s going to be any movement in the market [between now and Monday]," said Wright. "We probably feel that we need to freshen it up a wee bit, give the lads a bit of a lift by getting someone in. I’ll have to speak to the chairman [Steve Brown] but there’s a couple of things we’re working on and hopefully that might happen.
"We’ve always used the January market pretty well," he added. "Danny Swanson came in last year and had a big influence on the squad once we got him fit. The season before, James Dunne came in and made an impact. In terms of numbers, it will not be huge. But if we can get one in, it will give it a lift. If we can get two in, it will be even better."
As far as targets for the rest of the season go, the first thing Wright has in mind is consolidating their top six place, then pushing on in the hunt for European qualification. One man who appears ready to become a key contributor is Irishman Joe Shaughnessy, who scored a fine goal and generally put in an assured performance for a young man in a national semi-final. "Right now it doesn’t feel very good because we lost a semi final," he said. "But I was happy enough with how I did and I was quite comfortable playing in central defence."
Whether Michael O'Halloran leaves the club during this window remains to be seen, but that long-running saga too will be settled one way or another in the next 24 hours. While the Rangers target wasn't overly involved on the day, Shaughnessy insists that the intrigue over his future wasn't a distraction.
“I don’t think it affected us at all," said Shaughnessy. "Personally it didn’t affect me and it didn’t have any affect on the training ground. We just got on with it and it didn’t affect Mikey either. People may think it did but it didn’t. Do I expect him to stay here now? Yes, I would expect so. I don’t really know what’s going on but I hope he does stay."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here