Danny McNamara’s premature return to Millwall is a short-term blow for St Johnstone, Callum Davidson has admitted.
But the success of the full-back’s half-season loan spell in Perth will have a long-term benefit for the club.
Davidson is understood to be lining up another Lions defender, James Brown, as McNamara’s replacement when he heads back to London in the new year.
‘He has performed at a high level’
And given the impact the Republic of Ireland under-21 international has made in the Premiership, selling McDiarmid Park as the perfect place to fast-track your career shouldn’t be a problem.
“Danny came in and played very well,” said Davidson. “So it shows that young players can come here to develop.
“Danny has had a good season so Millwall want to take him back and give him an opportunity to play there.
“The reason he came up here was to progress his career and he has performed at a high level.
“It’s always a danger with loans because they have clauses that mean you can go back if it’s not working out or your club wants you back for doing well.”
On the possibility of Brown arriving as McNamara’s successor, Davidson said: “Nothing has happened yet but hopefully we’ll get something sorted.
“Losing Danny in January is a bit of a blow for us but we have one or two things in the pipeline.
“Hopefully we can get someone in the door who is just as good as him.”
Meanwhile, Davidson stressed that cutting out costly mistakes is the priority for Saints at Pittodrie as they seek to end a six-game winless run in the Premiership.
“The games are coming thick and fast so we need to dust ourselves down,” he said.
“We have to move on quickly because we have three massive games coming up (Hamilton Accies and Ross County are their opponents after Aberdeen).
“I was pleased with how they didn’t stop fighting against Rangers and we’ll need that in the next three games.
Fighting for points
“We are going to need to fight and scrap for points.
“The big thing we have to do is make it much more difficult for teams to score against us.
“The disappointing thing for me in the last few games is that we have allowed teams to score goals without doing much.
“We need to make the opposition work much harder to score, which takes discipline and concentration.
“So that’s what we need to see more of in the games we have coming up.”
