St Johnstone are unbeaten under their new manager and no longer a basement side after months spent looking up at the Premiership pack.
But weekend match-winner against Ross County, Graham Carey, believes the Saints squad are yet to feel the true benefit of the fresh start at McDiarmid Park under Craig Levein and Andy Kirk.
“It’s taken longer than we would have hoped to get off the bottom of the table but that win has capped off a really good week for the football club,” said the Irishman.
“We’re starting to show signs of being a really good team and hopefully we can continue that.
“The international break will help.
“The coaches will get the chance to put their ideas across because we haven’t been able to change very much with playing two games so soon after each other.
“We knew how important this week was.”
Life spent as the league’s lowest-placed side comes with psychological baggage, Carey explained.
“Everybody writing you off knocks your confidence,” he said.
“A win, then a draw was good for our confidence and going into the Ross County game, it was the most optimistic we’ve been as a group.
“The togetherness in the group was unbelievable this week.
“The first half was scrappy and we knew we had to finally play well in the second half, which we haven’t really done all season.
“It was great to get the win.
“The three centre-backs were unbelievable in the way they defended our box.
“We’ll still make mistakes and we can get even better on the ball but if we keep working on the right things we’ll get stronger.”
Class act Smith
Matt Smith was a man of the match contender.
“Matt is so tidy on the ball,” he said.
“When you’ve got players like that in your midfield you have to use them.
“We’ve also been using Kano (Chris Kane) and Nicky (Clark) well.
“We want to play football but we can go a bit longer if we need to and they’ll hold it up.”
Saturday was almost a year to the day since Carey had scored for Saints.
That was a penalty against St Mirren.
And you had to go back to August, 2022 for his last open-play strike, a superb strike at Tynecastle.
“It was great to finally score,” said Carey.
“I’ve played in a lot of different positions but a big part of my job is contributing goals and assists.
“I hadn’t been doing that as much as I would have wanted.
“Hopefully now I can keep doing that.”
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