It will be the most lucrative match in St Johnstone’s history – a winner-takes-all clash with LASK to secure Europa Conference League group stage football and the £3 million that goes with it.
Courier Sport looks at one of the most important team selections Perth manager Callum Davidson will ever make and whether crisis talk concerning their opponents has been exaggerated.
Changing a successful game plan
That St Johnstone are a better side with three-time cup winner David Wotherspoon in it, we can all agree upon.
There’s no debate.
As was shown against Dundee United at the weekend, the absence of his creative touch in a tight, arm-wrestle of a game can define it for Saints in a way they wouldn’t wish.
He’s their best bet for opening up a defence with one of his tricks or deft passes.
Saints don’t score many open-play goals at McDiarmid and those qualities make Wotherspoon an automatic starter against LASK.
That will almost certainly mean benching either Michael O’Halloran or Glenn Middleton because Chris Kane has to be the attacking focal point.
Against most opponents, with Ali McCann and Murray Davidson in central midfield, this would feel like a well-balanced Saints side. It is a well-balanced Saints side.
However, it was a tactical masterstroke by Callum Davidson in Austria to try and get at LASK with both his speedsters.
A great chance for St. Johnstone to double their lead! 😮
Glenn Middleton just couldn't get the ball under control to get the shot off 😬 pic.twitter.com/35O4Uzje7A
— Premier Sports (@PremierSportsTV) August 19, 2021
And it would be with a degree of reluctance that he gives up that advantage from the start.
LASK crisis talk
The depth of supporter dissatisfaction with LASK’s start to the season in general – and their performance against Saints in particular – was hard to gauge last week as there were only a few hundred who made the three-hour car journey from Linz to their temporary European competition home at Klagenfurt.
It wasn’t as if the players were booed off the pitch, that much I can say.
They have only lost one of their five league games, drawing three and losing one.
That’s a better start than Saints.
But there is a tangible feeling that this is the weakest LASK team of recent years and that the Perth men are catching the Austrians at a good time.
They were without three defenders in the first leg and their main midfielder playmaker, Lukas Grgic, picked up a serious shoulder injury when he fell awkwardly after fouling Middleton, and hasn’t travelled to Scotland.
Dominik Thalhammer is certainly a manager under more pressure than Davidson and the fact that he has made five substitutions in each of their last four games tells you he isn’t close to getting a grip on his strongest 11.
Taking off their biggest attacking threat against Saints with over 20 minutes to go, Mamoudou Karamoko, was a very strange call.
LASK are not as good a team as Galatasaray and there isn’t the fear that they have two or three gears to go through, as happened with the Turks in the second half at McDiarmid Park.
The post saves St. Johnstone! 💥
Nakamura's header hits the woodwork and is cleared quickly by Jamie McCart 👏 pic.twitter.com/MKz7LAc4UR
— Premier Sports (@PremierSportsTV) August 19, 2021
Saints had a nagging doubt going into that match that their best might not be good enough, such was the high bar Galatasaray were capable of reaching if everything clicked, and so it proved.
Against LASK, their best will likely see them into the group stage.
You can’t ask for much more than that going into a contest of this magnitude.
