St Johnstone are happy to do “the ugly side of the game”, according to midfielder Murray Davidson.
But there’s a lot more to the Perth side than that, he insisted.
Saints did a brilliant job of nullifying Aberdeen’s attacking threat on Saturday, with Davidson at the heart of it as usual.
And it’s not something they should have to apologise for.
“People who know football know there is more than just silky football,” he said. “You need to have people who will win the ball and do the ugly side of the game.
“You need to defend well.
“If people want to call us more direct, it’s something which myself and the players take no notice of. It’s about trying to get positive results and doing what you need to do to win.
“Our performances in the last couple of weeks show that we are a lot more than being physical or long ball, or whatever people may label us.”
With Danny Swanson injured at Pittodrie, Davidson believes the performance and result underlined the strength in depth there is at McDiarmid Park these days.
He said: “We were missing Danny on Saturday who has scored 12 goals this season and has probably been our biggest threat.
“But to go into the game without him and still create so many chances shows we’re doing something right. Now it’s about building on that.
“We have so many games coming up and we have an extremely strong squad. We are going to need that in the next few weeks.
“Michael Coulson has come in and has been excellent in training. But because the boys that have been in have been doing so well, he has had to be patient.
“He’s played the last two weeks and we’ve picked up four points so it shows when people are needed they can come in and make the step up.”
Davidson added: “Going up to Aberdeen and coming away disappointed with a point shows how well we played.
“As a team we were excellent and I don’t think there is any doubt that, over the course of the game, we created the best chances. And we managed to restrict Aberdeen to so little.
“The League Cup game popped into my head after David Wotherspoon’s free-kick and I thought ‘here we go again’.
“It was almost identical to the cup match with how it hit the post so late in the game but it’s one of those things. It’s unlucky and on another day it hits the inside of the post and goes in.
“It wasn’t to be but we take the positives and on Saturday there were plenty of those.
“I wouldn’t say we have the measure of Aberdeen. That’s three games this season and they will look at it as we haven’t beaten them.
“Aberdeen beat us in the cup and there’s been two 0-0 draws in the league. They always seem to be tight games and very rarely are there a lot of goals.
“Both teams respect each other and if you can get the first goal it can make a difference. Hopefully next time we play them we can take a few of the chances we create.”
Next up are Motherwell at McDiarmid on Saturday.
Davidson said: “We’ve been a little bit disappointed with a few of the home defeats. Last week we targeted the Inverness game as one where we needed to try and get three points.
“We managed to do that and built on it on Saturday with a good point at Aberdeen. If you had offered us four points in the last two games, then we probably would have taken it.
“We have a very tough game against Motherwell but I’m sure if we do what we’ve done in the last two games then we’ll be fine.”
