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St Johnstone’s determination will edge semi-final (maybe)

Tommy Wright and Alan Stubbs.
Tommy Wright and Alan Stubbs.

You would have a better chance of guessing who Donald Trump will antagonise next than predicting the St Johnstone against Hibs League Cup semi-final.

There’s no recent history of the sides meeting, of course, but that’s not the only reason it’s so hard to get a grip on how it will pan out.

Do you look at the night Saints blew away Rangers their last step into the unknown against a high-flying Championship team?

Or do you look at the way Hibs battered the last Premiership club they played in this competition, Dundee United?

You can put together a compelling argument for both clubs on the back of those two games alone.

And what does recent form tell us?

Hibs are playing better, but you come back to the standard of opposition they’re facing. The third best team in that league is Falkirk, and Dundee took care of them in midweek relatively comfortably.

As for Saints, they are winless in six, but two of those matches have been against Celtic and one against Hearts. Also, their performances haven’t been as bad as the stats suggest.

Both teams are blessed with potential matchwinners. The likes of Cummings, Stokes and McGinn for Hibs, and O’Halloran, Cummins and MacLean for Saints.

If the Edinburgh side was a Premiership one, I think they’d be in about the same position as the Perth men top six, not quite strong enough to challenge Aberdeen and Hearts but strong challengers for fourth.

What about the managers and their tactics?

Tommy Wright learned from what went wrong two years ago in the League Cup last four against Aberdeen, then got everything spot on for the Scottish Cup re-match and then the final.

There’s much to admire about the way Alan Stubbs sets out his teams but he’s unproven at this stage of a cup competition. He may yet be shown up as another Hibs boss with more style than substance, or we might be talking about a Celtic manager in waiting.

The reason I think Saints will sneak it? Pure determination.

From Dave Mackay knowing this could be his last chance of cup glory to Murray Davidson’s hurt at sitting in the Celtic Park stand on May 17, this is a team filled with highly-driven players.

When you’re fighting on three fronts the edge can be taken off your desperation. Lose at Tynecastle and Hibs have two more shots at redemption.

The average age of Stubbs’s team will be a lot younger than Wright’s. In your mid-20s you think there will always been another opportunity.

Saints will want this a bit more, and that is as near to a decisive factor as I can come up with.