AFTER watching his side stumble to yet another defeat at home, where they have failed to win a league match in eight attempts, Tommy Craig stopped in St Mirren Park's media room to grab a cup of tea before facing the waiting Press pack.
AFTER watching his side stumble to yet another defeat at home, where they have failed to win a league match in eight attempts, Tommy Craig stopped in St Mirren Park's media room to grab a cup of tea before facing the waiting Press pack. To his frustration, only coffee was left. An omen perhaps, as the old Glasgow saying would have it, that Tommy's ??tea?? is ??oot???
St Mirren's manager, though, remained defiant at the end of an afternoon in which his luck was also well and truly out. In a match played through freezing squalls, football's fortune blew in favour of the visitors. When St Johnstone midfielder Michael O'Halloran fired in a shot in the eighth minute, it found a deflection off a St Mirren defender that sent it arcing past keeper Mark Ridgers into the net.
By contrast, any time the home team got an effort on target it found the gloves of Alan Mannus. The goalkeeper from Northern Ireland was in inspired form. Three times in the second half he defied Callum Ball, a half-time replacement for St Mirren's 36-year-old striker Steven Thompson.
The save Mannus pulled off in the 63rd minute was a stunner, as he somehow parried a point-blank header from Ball then saw the rebound hacked clear by his defenders. The St Johnstone goalkeeper also made three saves from long-range efforts fired in by Kenny McLean.
Afterwards the St Mirren midfielder took the positives from his team's battling second-half display while bemoaning their lack of luck in front of goal. ??That's the way it's been going for us,?? McLean said. ??They take a shot and it gets deflected in but everything we hit was saved by their keeper. Even the rebounds wouldn't fall for us. We showed great character after the break, though.??
As regards his manager, who again faced calls for him to resign from frustrated St Mirren fans, McLean added: ??We're all 100 per cent behind Tommy. We owe it to him for the way he trusts us, gets us playing and keeps things upbeat. We're still doing the same things we did two years ago when we had success here.??
It was telling, though, that McLean had to resort to shooting from outside the box in a match in which St Mirren failed to improve their awful scoring record at home, where they have netted only three goals in eight Premiership games, in six of which they have drawn a blank. Until the closing minutes, they played with one striker up front against an experienced and well-organised St Johnstone back four.
Craig gave home debuts to two 18-year-old players, the defender Jack Baird and the midfielder Stevie Mallan, who both acquitted themselves well. St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright, meanwhile, started with six wise old pros aged over 30, including the ever-entertaining James McFadden.
The former Motherwell and Everton star came close a couple of times to extending his side's advantage, as did O'Halloran and Brian Graham. Ultimately, it didn't matter; one goal was always likely to be enough.
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