ST JOHNSTONE manager Callum Davidson is adamant he will battle to save his job after his side’s Scottish Cup exit at the hands of Kelty Hearts.
The Premiership strugglers succumbed to an embarrassing 1-0 defeat in extra-time when the League Two side clinched a fifth-round encounter with St Mirren.
For Saints, it was a 10th straight loss and Davidson accepts there are question marks over his ability to cope with the growing pressure.
He said: “I’m fighting, I am up for the fight. I want to fight, be here, change things and get results. We need the players to do that too.
“St Johnstone is a club close to me, so I won’t stop – I will be fighting until I get to the day I’m told not to. It’s not in my character to do anything else.
“In the first half I was really disappointed that we didn’t do what we worked on. The second half was a bit better.
“And then to lose the goal in extra-time the way we did was really poor. There were loads of mistakes in there. It was our corner and we’ve lost a goal from it.
“After that confidence fell right out of the team.
“That’s probably the lowest I’ve been as a manager here.”
For Kelty, it was a famous victory for a club in their first season in the SPFL following promotion from the Lowland League last summer.
The Fife outfit are seven points clear in League Two and manager Kevin Thomson, the former Rangers and Scotland midfielder, admits they always had belief they could pull off a shock.
Kallum Higginbotham’s extra-time strike was enough to separate the teams on a day that belonged to the part-timers.
Thomson said: “We were playing against a team three leagues above us, a Premiership team, and we knew we would have to be disciplined and patient.
“And when we did get the ball back we had to be good on it.
“I think you could see with the subs we made, we wanted to try to win and, to a man, I have to say the boys were unbelievable.
“I said to them at the start of the game, ‘if you trust our shape and show a bit of quality, you will get chances’.
“When those chances come, you hope they fall to the right player and, thankfully for us, it did with Kallum.
“What we achieved was through sheer quality and desire and drive.
“I said to them before the game that we ain’t here to make the numbers up. This isn’t a free hit for us.
“That’s not the way I want us to think. I wanted us to think we were capable of winning this game.”
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel