BOTH on and off the field, St Mirren continue to trail forlornly in Motherwell's wake.
The Fir Park club in the past fortnight have appointed a new manager and successfully implemented a change of ownership. St Mirren have designs on doing those things as well but remain somewhat shy on both counts. Perhaps even more significantly, they also now find themselves six points behind Motherwell in the SPFL Premiership table, a situation that heightens the prospects of second-tier football in Paisley next season for the first time in nine years.
This was Ian Baraclough's first match in charge of Motherwell. Whether he is a good manager remains to be seen, but on this evidence he is certainly a lucky one. His team were largely ineffective despite playing against 10 men for the majority of the match following Steven Thompson's contentious sending off but still found a way to win, John Sutton scoring from one of the few chances that came his way. The laborious nature of his team's performance will give Baraclough plenty to think about as he chews over his Christmas turkey and trimmings later his week but, regardless of how it was achieved, there is little doubt that the picture now looks much rosier for his team as they stretch the gap over Ross County in the play-off spot to five points, with St Mirren a further point back in the automatic relegation place. A few more victories and Motherwell can start to look up the table rather than down it.
"It was a massive game, with us and St Mirren being down there in the dogfight," said Josh Law who claimed an assist for Sutton's goal from close range, "But it's a great start for the manager and gives everyone at the club a lift. I wouldn't say we can relax as we have two massive games coming up against Partick and Hamilton. But if we win them, we are looking up rather than down."
In the opposite dug-out, Gary Teale wouldn't have known whether to laugh or cry. His wish to graduate from caretaker to permanent manager will only be helped by results rather than performances, and despite an encouraging display on Saturday, his record now reads two defeats out of two. St Mirren have still not won a league game at home all season, nor kept a clean sheet in any match.
Teale may feel the fates conspired against him on Saturday. As well as losing Thompson for a tussle with Motherwell's Mark O'Brien that many at the time thought had been awarded the other way, a number of other incidents seemed to go against St Mirren; a Kenny McLean header that on first viewing looked to have crossed the line, a penalty award for a trip on McLean not given, plus an erroneous offside flag that ruled out a strike from Jeroen Tesselaar. Should the board ultimately overlook him when it comes to unveil Tommy Craig's permanent successor, Teale will likely look back on this afternoon and wonder.
"It's hard to take," said defender Jim Goodwin. "Confidence is low, as you'd imagine. The first day of the season at Motherwell was probably the best we've played and they beat us that day, too. Whether we deserved to win here is another matter, maybe not, but we certainly deserved at least a point for effort alone."
Teale's situation is made more complicated by the emergence of an Argentinian consortium keen to buy St Mirren having, ironically, been rebuffed in their efforts to take over at Motherwell. The interested party were visitors at the game on Saturday, even popping their head into the fan zone erected just outside the ground, and their next move is awaited keenly by interested parties both inside and outside of the club.
"I'd like the manager's situation sorted out as soon as possible," added Goodwin. "I'm very loyal to Tealey and would like him to get a crack at it. But we need to wait and what happens with the club itself - there's a consortium buying us, then it's off, then it's on again - so until that gets sorted first I doubt if there'll be any long-term decision on a manager.
"A dressing room's a strange place - the stuff in the boardroom doesn't really get to us, it doesn't really affect is, even if we do want the manager thing sorted out. Tealey and Davy Longwell are good lads and they couldn't have done more to get us organised and shape us up. They just need the breaks to go with their hard work."
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