Both camps have been on message to stress that the first St Johnstone v Rangers match of the week will have little or no relevance as far as the second is concerned.
Take into account priorities, motivation and team selection, the theory is that Saints faced a shadow Light Blues side at McDiarmid Park on Wednesday evening and, as such, the slate will be wiped completely clean when the focus switches from Premiership to Scottish Cup.
There is of course some truth in that, as Steven Gerrard’s chosen starting 11 was much further away from his likely Sunday line-up than Callum Davidson’s.
However, that doesn’t mean head-to-head sub-plots should be dismissed as an irrelevance.
If there’s one match-up we saw in Perth that will almost certainly be reprised at Ibrox, it’s Shaun Rooney v Borna Barisic.
January and February were undeniably the peak months of the season for Rooney.
Who knows, they may turn out to be the peak months of his career, considering the heights he hit.
In short, for about six weeks he was the best performing right-back in the country.
As everybody knows, the man who couldn’t get in Davidson’s team until Danny McNamara returned to Millwall scored twice to help send Saints through to the Betfred Cup final, headed the winner when they went back to Hampden with the trophy at stake and got another couple of goals in the league against Livingston and Celtic in between trips to the national stadium.
In short, for about six weeks he was the best performing right-back in the country.
It would be exaggerating the point to say there has been a slump since then. Just a mild drop-off perhaps. One that was probably inevitable, especially when you factor in the injury he picked up at Hamilton a couple of days after the cup triumph.
In midweek, he looked back to the Rooney of old – aggressive, energetic and penetrative shuttling up and down the right flank and causing a nuisance in the opposition penalty box for the penalty that was, then wasn’t.
If your Opta touch numbers are greater against Rangers (66), than they were against Aberdeen (63) and Ross County (64) in your other recent league starts, that’s a significant jump when taking into account the standard of opponent.
The man who was pulling him back for the penalty incident that took a couple of minutes to sort out was the man who was given one of his hardest matches of the season domestically – left-back Barisic.
Saints have played Rangers four times this season but this was the first time these two full-backs of contrasting styles were directly up against each other for nearly a full match.
Danny McNamara was the wing-back for the first two fixtures (in the second of which Rooney was deployed as the right-sided centre-half), then it was James Brown who started the 1-0 defeat at Ibrox in February, his debut.
The Opta heat maps of McNamara-Barisic in December, Brown-Barisic a few weeks later and now Rooney-Barisic tell you that Saints won a significant game within a game for the first time this week, giving themselves a chance to assert themselves down their right and negating one of Rangers’ most potent weapons on their left.
Rooney spent far more time in the opposition half than either McNamara or Brown managed to achieve and, conversely, Barisic far less time in the Saints one.
That the Croatian coughed up possession more than any other Rangers player on Wednesday (23 times in his 79 minutes on the pitch) is another telling statistic which highlights that Rooney and his right-sided team-mates were putting very effective pressure on him.
It wasn’t as if Rangers had a weak link on the other side – James Tavernier will be a strong contender for their and Scottish football’s player of the season.
Yet they heavily favoured the left in midweek – 47.9% of their play on that flank as opposed to just 34.6% on the opposite one.
And what made this a key battleground was that Saints wanted to play in the same part of the pitch – 43.5% their right to 37.7% left.
It would be a shock if Davidson doesn’t attempt to do so again.
But it will be intriguing to see if Gerrard changes tactics and attempts to get his players to focus more on their right.
It would be a feather in Rooney’s cap should he do so, however the more Saints can get their Hampden hero involved on Sunday, the better their chance of going back there in a couple of weeks as Scottish Cup semi-finalists.
They will need Rooney to win his contest with Barisic again.
Rangers will raise their game and St Johnstone need to as well, says Liam Craig
