This piece is an extract from yesterday's McDiarmid Memo newsletter, which is emailed out at 6pm every Thursday.
To receive our full, free St Johnstone newsletter including this type of quality discussion and analysis straight to your email inbox, click here.
Wednesday’s win felt like a huge moment for St Johnstone. It was far from pretty, but what a monumental three points that could be come the end of the season.
Again, Saints looked solid defensively and despite not carrying a huge threat up front, there are clear signs of improvement all over the park.
I was delighted to see Chris Kane positively step up to take the penalty, and despite it going in via a sketchy rebound, hopefully, that will be a big goal for his confidence too.
Kano is out of contract in January, and it remains to be seen whether he will be offered a new deal. The frontman has been a great servant to SJFC, but if that is to be one of his last goals for the club, his celebration was a fitting way to sign off in Perth. Pure scenes!
Despite not being a prolific figure in front of goal, Kane supplies different attributes to the club. On his day he is key to getting the team up the pitch with his hold-up skills and his work rate is second to none.
I still think Kano has something to offer at the club, but if he does depart McDiarmid in January he will go down as a top servant who played a vital role in our historic cup double-winning season.
Another member of that team, and our now skipper Liam Gordon deserves a major shoutout for his performances of late.
Liam will be honest enough to admit that his levels dipped at the start of this season, and he looked like he was struggling with confidence. It is a tough role for the former Perth High pupil, leading and captaining the club that he loves so much.
When the team are going through a tough time, it is going to impact him mentally more than most. He has left that in the past now though, and since Levein has entered McDiarmid Park he has been very much back to his best.
Gordo has gone back to basics, what he does best, defending for his life and putting his body on the line to help produce important points in tight matches. He also performed brilliantly to win the all-important penalty against St Mirren.
The vast majority of the defence deserves a shoutout for their standards in recent matches, Andy Considine, Ryan McGowan and of course, Luke Robinson have all been excellent.
Saints are beginning to turn McDiarmid Park into a bit of a fortress again, and that had to happen as for too long it was an easy place for visitors to come and pick up points.
Now the target for Levein, Andy Kirk and the team will be to turn things around away from home. We are still without an away win this season and we have the perfect chance to right that statistic on Saturday when we visit Motherwell.
Stuart Kettlewell’s side have suffered eight defeats in a 12-match winless run and pressure is mounting on the Fir Park manager heading into this weekend’s fixture. It would be no surprise to see him lose his job if Saints were to pick up the three points, especially given our past history of finishing off opposition managers.
