Barry Robson has warned his Aberdeen players that they have not achieved anything just yet after the gap between the Dons in fourth and Hearts in third was cut to a single point.
Andrew Considine’s early dismissal put the men from Pittodrie in the driving seat at McDiarmid Park before Remi Matthews’ first-half own goal gave Robson’s side the advantage.
Graeme Shinnie’s stoppage-time sending-off led to a nervy final few minutes but the Aberdeen manager was pleased to see his team hold their resolve in the face of heavy pressure.
“I thought we were quite comfortable but St Johnstone did well in the last 10 minutes,” Robson said. “They had to come out and have a go, we knew that.
“My message to them at half-time was 'keep a clean sheet' because if we do that we'll win the game. We're at the stage in the season where pitches are poor and we need to get points.
“This is such a hard place to come and play, and that's credit to Callum and St Johnstone. Our remit was to come down here and win, and we did.
“We've not achieved anything [yet]. The most pleasing thing was that we were in control of the game. I didn't think St Johnstone were going to score a goal apart from the last five or 10 minutes, which we knew would happen.
“I didn't want to do anything silly in the game because we were a goal up. We probably didn't switch the ball or play things through quick enough.
“You could see we had boys away on international duty - Duk, Bojan [Miovski] and [Ylber] Ramadani are big players in the team and they didn't get back until Thursday or Friday, so we couldn't properly match-prep them.
“We were in control, we were okay, but when they came at us in the last 10 minutes we showed resilience, kept another clean sheet and won away from home again, which we've not done well as a club for years.
“I said to the players we can be better, but get the heads down, keep working, move on.”
