St Mirren 0 St Johnstone 0 - When Saints Become Sinners

 St Mirren 0 St Johnstone 0 - When Saints Become Sinners

Surprisingly, none of the encounters between these sides last season finished level; in truth, nobody was shocked to see this end up as a stalemate. Both teams were in dire need of a victory to galvanise their campaigns and, despite failure to achieve that, neither should feel too disheartened. As the focus of this webpage is always St Mirren, we'll rummage through a few talking points from our perspective.

The first problem for the Buddies was the painful inability to retain possession; we averaged 41.2% on Sunday. This is quite a marked difference from last season, when we actually had the majority of the ball in 3 out of 4 encounters. The Scottish Cup semi final (44.8%) was the sole game where we fell short of this; our home match last campaign was skewed by Jason Kerr's red card - so we managed over 65% possession - and even at McDiarmid Park we mustered 53.5% and 56.4% respectively.

Now, as I'm sure many of you are thinking, retaining the ball doesn't matter a jot if you can't utilise it well enough to create chances and score goals. However, we're diminishing our chances of success by not giving ourselves a foothold in the game. It's been abundantly clear for a while that Jake Doyle-Hayes should be top of any power rankings for summer departures that we miss the most:

1. Jake Doyle-Hayes: significantly better than the alternatives as a deep-lying central midfielder.
2. Dylan Connolly: we miss his pace badly, even if he wasn't the most talented winger to depart.
3. Jon Obika: a clear upgrade on Erwin.
4. Ilkay Durmus: Silky Ilkay was great at times but, if we persist with this system, Scott Tanser has ensured his departure is not a massive loss.

Why could we not keep hold of the ball? The obvious answer is playing centre back Conor McCarthy at central midfielder, however let's take a look at his compatriot Charles Dunne. The chart below shows Dunne's long passes from the St Johnstone encounter.

The first thing to point out is the lack of accuracy - 33% is poor. The second, rather perplexing observation to make is that Shaughnessy and Fraser don't have anywhere near the same propensity to hit as many long passes. They made 6 combined, 4 of them by Marcus Fraser who, as the other outer centre back, is a fairer comparison. Such a stark difference between the volume of long passes attempted is strange.

No personal vindictiveness is meant towards Charles Dunne here. He was defensively sound on Sunday: he won 100% of his defensive duels; 60% of his aerial duels; and made 4 interceptions and 3 clearances, exactly the same as Marcus Fraser. This is still imperative and he enabled us to keep a clean sheet. To leap to the ex-Motherwell man's defence again, surely the club has someone on the coaching staff able to instruct him to do otherwise. This is also assuming he isn't actively being encouraged to play these long balls, which are normally in the direction of Curtis Main.

Our identity as a team who keep the ball on the deck and are easy-on-the eye, established in the modern era by Danny Lennon and restored by Jack Ross, has dwindled now. We should aim to restore this style of play, albeit our primary benefactor might yet leave the club. 

Jamie McGrath had a strange match, in the sense that he was performing very strongly and then, all of a sudden, couldn't do anything right. Rumours that this is because I said out loud "McGrath's been excellent today" are thus far unsubstantiated. In all seriousness, he was yet again our only creative fulcrum and nearly created a goal for Curtis Main in open play. From set plays, he had some tremendous deliveries, one of which Richard Tait so nearly profited from.

Assuming he stays for the remainder of his contract, we need to maximise the Irishman's talent while we can. His passing accuracy was a more-than-respectable 83% on Saturday, however he's getting the opportunity to get on the ball less often this term. In 2020/21, McGrath received on average 18.62 passes per match; this term, it's down to 13.49. There is a caveat, since it's a small sample size for 2021/22, although it is a key metric which needs to trend up to get us back challenging for a top half berth in the league.

The video clip above demonstrates a lot of the issues we had second half and, despite occurring in the 89th minute, would also foreshadow another event. We grew weary and St Johnstone asserted themselves more in the match. The substitute strikers, Dennis and Erwin, yet again failed to threaten or look as if they were capable of contributing. They do nothing to stop Muller bursting past and then Erhahon looks absolutely shattered - like a 5s player in the final throes of an end-to-end doozy - feebly attempting the stop the move but unable to do so.

Shaughnessy concedes a freekick which nearly costs us dearly; Middleton, who scored from a similar situation in the Scottish Cup at Hampden, very nearly repeated the trick. The ball hitting the woodwork sounds far sweeter when it is in favour of your team. Just when you thought the action was over, however, Erhahon ensures we elongate our red card streak to 3 in our last 3 league games. He was unlucky to have the ball pinched off him by Ali McCann, the Northern Irishman was great but also fortunate to avoid a red card himself, and Erhahon responds by lunging in. 

It was a daft foul but Jim Goodwin must have known this was a real risk. Unused subs Ryan Flynn and Cammy MacPherson were surely watching on dismayed and angered. Remarkably, Google did correctly predict Conor McCarthy would be played in centre midfield prior to kick-off. Alongside Ethan Erhahon (Google lose brownie points here, as they had Erhahon LWB with Tanser in midfield) he put in a steady but unspectacular performance early on. In fact, McCarthy had a better passing accuracy - 82% versus 78% - in addition to predictably being better defensively and in the air.

However, it is a not an experiment we should be rushing to repeat. The new addition Connor Ronan will supplement us there, as will the eventual return of Alan Power, and there may be more signings before the deadline closes tonight. Shouts for a winger or two are understandable, although if we're sticking to this 3-5-2/5-3-2 system, the demand for a player of that ilk at the club may not be high at all. The international break allows the coaching staff time to reflect on where we've been and where we're going.

Keep the faith. 'Mon the St Mirren.

Thanks for reading,

Lewis.