Worrying about Motherwell’s Premiership plight will be put on hold tonight for Fir Park old boy James McFadden.
The Scotland international has one focus, he insisted, getting a first win in eight for his current club.
McFadden was kept on the bench for Saints’ League Cup clash with Rangers in midweek with this evening’s vital game in mind.
Now the experienced striker is chomping at the bit to face his boyhood team in a competitive fixture for the first time in his career. And there’s no room for sentiment.
“There can’t be,” he pointed out. “We’re the same as them we need to start winning games.
“They want to stop the rot but we’re looking after ourselves and want to get back to winning ways.
“I played against them in a friendly. That was part of the deal when I went to Everton.
“But this will be the first one that has actually meant anything. It will be strange, but it’s part of the job.
“I played against Everton when I went to Birmingham and when I was at Sunderland so I’ve been in the situation before, but this is a wee bit different because it was the club where I started and having been so many years there as a youth player as well.”
McFadden added: “I went to watch Motherwell against Hamilton in the League Cup.
“I know their boys will be hurting just now with the way they’ve performed and the results they’ve had. It’s very similar to ourselves.
“It has to turn at some point. Usually when you’re doing well and you play against a team on a bad run you fear that you’re the ones they’ll get it right against.
“But we’re both in the same boat. It will be an interesting game.”
Motherwell are three points worse off than Saints but, when speaking about Stuart McCall’s side, McFadden could just as easily be describing the Perth team’s predicament as the Lanarkshire club’s one.
Both teams have been accustomed to life near the top of the table rather than the bottom.
He observed: “It’s hard for a club like Motherwell to maintain the same level year after year with budgets getting cut.
“At some point it’s got to level itself out. It’s the same here.
“At the minute it’s just a bad start and there’s definitely no reason we can’t start climbing up the table.
“The success that the two clubs have had brings expectations from the fans and the players. It sets standards.
“We’re both looking to bounce back.”
Saints are looked much more like their old selves at the back against Partick Thistle and then Rangers, but goalscoring is still a live issue.
And that’s where McFadden hopes to come in.
He said: “I want to contribute goals. When you’re a striker that’s what you’re judged on.
“As a team we’ve not been scoring enough of them or creating enough chances.
“We’ve got to put that right. Hopefully it will start tomorrow.”
McFadden would have loved to have started at Ibrox, but he admitted that manager Wright did the right thing in keeping him in reserve until late on.
He said: “I was desperate to play. I felt good on Monday. But I understood where the manager was coming from.
“If he’d asked me, I would have played but looking back, maybe it was for the best considering I haven’t played much football and I’ve got to manage my knee properly.
“I would never ask not to play – look at the backlash Raheem Sterling got – but it was probably the right decision looking at the bigger picture.
“Years ago when I had my operation the specialist said it would be best if I didn’t play three games in a week.”