STEVIE MAY insists St Johnstone won't take anything for granted in the battle to beat the drop even if they give their top six ambitions a boost against Motherwell.
The Saints head to Fir Park on Wednesday night having collected just three points in the Premiership since their return to action after the World Cup.
Callum Davidson's side battled well in the 2-0 defeat to Rangers at the weekend as the red card shown to Nicky Clark undermined their chances of a shock result.
Now May is determined to get back to winning ways and put some more breathing space between the Saints and those below them in a congested table.
May said: “Saturday was a tough one to take. Nicky’s red was the one I didn’t actually see but from the way he was talking and from what I saw afterwards, it was very harsh.
“Considering we had to play at Ibrox for an hour with 10 men I thought the boys did really well against Rangers for the second week in a row. We actually moved the ball as nicely as I can remember in a game there.
“Overall, it was a good performance without getting any points obviously. Saturday’s fixture is one of those that gets called a free hit.
“We’ve now got some huge ones coming up, starting with Motherwell on Wednesday night.
“We can’t let ourselves look at it like that (as a crossroads fixture), regardless of what the result of the game is.
“It’s so tight at the bottom that even if we won we wouldn’t be clear of the battle to stay up. It’s the same as far as top six is concerned.
“We do know how important it is to pick up points against teams like Motherwell who are in and around us. We’ll be disappointed with anything less than three points.
“Last year we were in a far worse position. The run of games we’ve had was really tough and we wouldn’t have been expected to take a huge amount of points from it but we would certainly have liked to do a lot better."
