St Johnstone captain Liam Gordon has dismissed any prospect of Celtic Park wounds being allowed to fester.
And the centre-back is confident that the Premiership run-in will bring out the best in the Perth side.
Saints were blown away by a magnificent seven-goal blitz from the soon to be champions.
Careless defending and a lack of intensity from the visitors played its part in the Parkhead mauling.
But even more significant was the quality of football produced by Ange Postecoglou’s men.
And Gordon insisted there will be no McDiarmid Park hangover carried into the high stakes, post-split fixtures.
“Listen, we were up against a very good side,” said the skipper.
“We’re disappointed with the way we went about our business. Our standards have been much higher than that recently.
“They’re the standards we need to hit every week and they weren’t there today.
“As bitterly disappointed as we are, we need to put it behind us really quickly because there’s too much at stake in the next month or so to dwell on it.
“We’ll park it and move on.”
Sitting deep not in the game-plan
Saints had to live off possession that barely got above 15% and counter-attacks of significance were few and far between.
Sitting in deep and soaking up pressure certainly wasn’t tactical, though.
“With the way they move the ball and keep it, it’s very hard to get up the pitch,” said Gordon.
“Being camped in our own half wasn’t in our game-plan whatsoever.
“We wanted to put them under pressure in good areas – which we’ve done here in the past – but they made that very difficult for us to do.
“I hate getting beat from anyone and I certainly hate getting beat by that scoreline.
“But it’s from the league leaders, who are a top side.
Celtic went 9️⃣ points clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership after thrashing St Johnstone 7-0 🟢
Which was your favourite goal? Plenty to pick from 😉👇 pic.twitter.com/O4cSKHhh0t
— Sky Sports Scotland (@ScotlandSky) April 9, 2022
“It’s not as if we’ve been well beaten by a club in and around us. That would have been much harder to take.
“We know that we’ve got five cup finals coming up.
“It’s about getting straight back to the good performances and results we were enjoying.”
With Saints five points above Dundee and six behind St Mirren and Aberdeen, it’s all to play for as far as automatic relegation and the play-off are concerned.
“We would have taken that (the advantage over the Dark Blues) a few weeks ago for sure,” said Gordon.
“But we know that it can quickly close if we don’t play well.
“There are teams above us who get dragged into it if we start well after the split.
“We believe we can put a real push on, get the points on the board and keep ourselves in the league.”
Fixture order
Gordon won’t spend any time worrying about the post-split fixture list sequence that will be revealed this week by the SPFL.
“It doesn’t both me what order we play the teams,” he said.
“We’re going to play them all and we’re aiming to take points off them all.
“This is an opportunity to produce our best run of results of the season.
“I read somewhere that we were about sixth in the form table since the turn of the year, which shows you that we’re back on course.
“This was a blip and we need to make sure that’s all it is.
“I’m confident it will be.”
