St Johnstone will need bold and brave to be their mantra this season if Steven MacLean’s vision for his team is to pan out as he would wish.
Instead, they started off with timorous and torpid.
MacLean wants aggressive, front-foot, relentless football – pressing and attacking with equal conviction.
He’s talked about it, he’s trained his players to adjust to it.
And, even though he’s yet to make an outfield signing, his recruitment strategy will reflect it as well.
Letting David Wotherspoon, a player whose athleticism is diminishing with age, leave McDiarmid Park spoke volumes in that regard.
If Saturday’s opening day defeat at Stenhousemuir is to serve a purpose it will be as a template of how Saints can’t go about their weekend work.
In the first half it was the type of performance that would have seen straight sixes out of 10 awarded from back to front.
Nothing was glaringly bad but every player was too safe and unambitious.
One Drey Wright cross that was begging someone to attack it, a neat exchange of passes between Graham Carey and Stevie May down the right and a last minute Andy Considine diagonal that was nodded down for May by Ryan McGowan was pretty much the total of the creative output.
Mistakes like Liam Gordon’s to tee-up Stenhousemuir’s opening goal at the start of the second half will happen – certainly in mid-July – but the collective lack of a significant gear change to adapt to an increasingly perilous situation was far more concerning.
Easy afternoon for Stenny keeper
As Stenny manager Gary Naismith noted, goalkeeper Darren Jamieson’s afternoon was defined by taking of crosses and commanding his box rather than flinging himself about to deal with wave after wave of attacks and shots.
It isn’t cutting insight to point out that making around four Premiership-ready signings is required and has the potential to transform this team (not to mention the return of Dan Phillips, James Brown, Nicky Clark and Cammy MacPherson from injury).
A pacey centre-back, a door-unlocking midfielder, a striker whose natural habitat is the 18-yard box and a wide forward whose primary instinct is to stretch a game wide of and behind a full-back are all missing attributes from the squad.
League Cup group games are tightrope occasions at the best of times.
European qualification often meant Tommy Wright’s sides didn’t have to navigate their way through a mini-campaign that has in-built levelling factors working to the advantage of the lower league clubs and the detriment of the Premiership ones.
"It sums up our campaign – disastrous".
St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright says young players failed to take their chance as his side lose to League One side Forfar Athletic in the Scottish League Cup.https://t.co/1TEam4KLct pic.twitter.com/gvI4UjZIxw
— BBC Sport Scotland (@BBCSportScot) July 27, 2019
But there were misadventures in the Northern Irishman’s time in charge at McDiarmid Park nonetheless.
It’s almost inevitable.
That’s why this wasn’t a Kelty under Callum Davidson or a Stenhousemuir in Paul Sturrock’s era – mid-season horror shows that had far greater emblematic significance.
High stakes in Alloa
Yes, Saturday highlighted where Saints are in their 2023/24 evolution – short of a few reliable first team starters and lacking the collective dynamism their manager demands.
Neither is likely to be wholly transformed by the time they next play against a part-time team on an artificial pitch, Alloa Athletic on Saturday.
If it’s a case of more of the same in Clackmannanshire we’ll be talking about a recurring theme and all that goes with it rather than a fleeting throwback to this time last year.
A couple of new players in the starting line-up, another two or three back from injury and a shared determination to banish patient and ponderous will get the Viaplay Cup group campaign back on track in the short-term and calm everything down in the bigger picture.
Undeniably though, there is now unwanted, early-season pressure.
