TOMMY Wright, the St Johnstone manager, is confident that his players will not be intimidated on their visit to Ibrox tonight, while the Northern Irishman also declined to consider the latest boardroom power struggle at Rangers as a positive for his side.
Indeed, he claimed that the growing influence of Mike Ashley was of no concern to his club.
The St Johnstone manager was more interested in maintaining the impressive cup form his team enjoyed last season. Wright memorably led the Perth club to triumph in the Scottish Cup, while also reaching the semi-finals of the League Cup. Victory in a League Cup quarter-final tie tonight would raise hopes of further silverware.
"What's happening at Rangers won't affect us and that's all I'm concerned about," said Wright, who suspects that the Rangers squad have become immune to the persistent off-field distractions. "I genuinely can't see how it affects them either because so much has been going on.
"Rangers are favourites [to win tonight]; they are the team scoring plenty of goals while we are coming out of a bad wee run. But, no matter who they play, Rangers tend to be favourites. Kris Boyd and Kenny Miller are still a force to be reckoned with. Boydie was on one of those runs where nothing seemed to go right for him, then he got a soft one against Raith Rovers and followed it up with a great header at Dumbarton.
"They are a threat. In the Championship, I think they will get 40 goals between them this season. But they have other threats as well. Lewis Macleod looks a very good player, Nicky Clark and Jon Daly can come off the bench, so they have four really good strikers.
"They have won their leagues and they will want to do better in the cup competitions. I would imagine that is their motivation, same as us. But we have to go there and stamp our authority on the game. We have to take the game to them. It is a tough tie because they have a squad full of players experienced at the top level. But we won't be intimidated. We have to make the most of an opportunity to reach another semi-final."
Wright believes his players can draw from previous cup successes. "We beat Aberdeen at Ibrox in the Scottish Cup semi-final last season but all our experiences in the cups and one-off games in recent years can help us at Ibrox," said the St Johnstone manager, who has doubts over forward David Wortherspoon as he recovers from a virus.
"We had a great run in both the cups last season and in Europe we beat Lucerne this season. We have to use all that experience and bring it to the table."
Brian Graham, the striker on loan in Perth from Dundee United, has special reason for helping the club to more cup success this season. The forward is fed-up being the butt of cup final jokes, having been in the United squad which lost out to St Johntone in the final on May 17. It is a day which his new team-mates have not let him forget about.
"We had a great Scottish Cup run with Dundee United last season. Even though we didn't win the final, it was a fantastic experience," said Graham. "Obviously, St Johnstone won the cup and we were all devastated but, if I can be celebrating this season, that would be brilliant. I've had a few digs here and there about that [the cup final] result. It wasn't just the first day here; it's still going on!
"There's always somebody who'll have something to say. Dave Mackay's the biggest pot stirrer you will ever meet. He carries a wooden spoon with him to training. He's the captain, though, so you can't really say too much back. It's all a good laugh.
"I was on the bench when United beat Rangers in the semi-final. The atmosphere was fantastic. There was a lot of off-field stuff but we took that in our stride and we got a great buzz when we saw the size of the crowd. United won it quite comfortably. There's talk of a crowd backlash for this one but we're not interested in that."
Graham admits it would the ideal time for recent arrival James McFadden to score his first goal in a St Johnstone jersey. "You see the quality James has in training every day. He's a big game player, he's done it in the past. You never know, James might get a wee 40-yarder again . . ."
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 hereComments are closed on this article