St Johnstone’s 10th placed 2023/24 Premiership finish is in the history books.
It won’t be the most cherished league season for supporters by a long stretch but the primary aim was achieved – staying in the division to make it 16 top-flight campaigns in a row.
Courier Sport followed Saints every step of the way (more downs than ups) and chose 10 end of season awards.
Pass of the season
Dan Phillips and Matt Smith produced some superb switches of play, particularly in the first two or three months of Craig Levein’s time in charge.
And Graham Carey showed why managers are tempted to play him in a deeper role by spraying the ball about with pinpoint accuracy as well.
But this award goes to Dylan Levitt.
The Hibs midfielder lifted his head and drilled a 30-yard ball from his six yard-line that meant Carey only needed one touch to control, another to shift it out of his feet and a third to smash a shot past David Marshall for a winning goal.
Textbook stuff.
Cross of the season
This is all too small a field.
Put simply, Saints didn’t send balls into the penalty box with anything approaching acceptable regularity over the course of the season.
Game after game, they lacked width.
In the final match at Motherwell, though, Carey showed that you don’t have to go past a full-back if you can get movement and pace on a cross from deep.
Nicky Clark was alive to the ball coming in from the left but the quality of the Irishman’s service made it a simple finish.
Skill of the season
Carey always has his moments.
But I’m giving this to Fran Franczak.
There are few things in football to top a young player trying something off the cuff that hasn’t been coached out of him.
A 16-year-old Perthshire boy showing the chutzpah to deceive a Hibs midfielder with a Zidane-esque pirouette on his first Premiership start – and hearing the reaction from the fans to it – was one of the highlights of a season that was a grim slog in the main.
Tackle of the season
Luke Robinson put in a few old school full-back challenges over the course of the season and the Perth fans loved him for them.
One on Kyogo got the full social media treatment.
But two last-ditch tackles stand-out.
The runner-up is David Keltjens in stoppage time to prevent a tap-in Livingston winner when the teams met at McDiarmid Park in March.
And the winner is Sven Sprangler for the acceleration, anticipation and timing of his intervention against St Mirren in December after Dan Phillips coughed up possession for Jonah Ayunga on the edge of the box.
Block of the season
This is an award specially created to recognise the contributions of Ryan McGowan and Liam Gordon to the last day Fir Park heroics.
It deserves to be shared between two defenders who, not for the first time, rose to the occasion when big characters were needed.
Theo Bair and Lennon Miller couldn’t believe they didn’t score from inside the six-yard box and, with over half-an-hour still on the clock, if 2-0 had become 2-1 when the Perth defensive duo denied them, Saints could well have been play-off bound.
Goal of the season
Carey looked like he had this one wrapped up as well.
The build-up play and finish for the only goal of a win over Ross County in early November put him out in front for the majority of the season.
Dj Jaiyesimi to Benji Kimpioka at Pittodrie was another contender but you can’t beat an overhead kick (a proper one).
So Adama Sidibeh is the winner for his spectacular finish against Dundee.
This isn’t a man for the boring tap-ins. Expect more where that came from next season.
Player of the season
I actually had Robinson in front when the season was paused in January but the on-loan Wigan defender didn’t hit the same heights on returning from his parent club.
Phillips’ form tailed off significantly over the last couple of months after picking up a few man of the match accolades earlier in the season, while Matt Smith was another whose best football was seen in 2023 rather than 2024.
Even in a good team, Dimitar Mitov would have been the best player.
In a poor one, he was the one and only starting gun to finishing tape performer.
He was in the top three goalkeepers in the country and Saints will do very well to keep him.
Whatever happens in the close-season, though, Mitov kept St Johnstone in the Premiership and for that, he’ll forever be revered.
Signing of the season
I’m going to choose Sidibeh over that man, Mitov.
We expected the goalie to be very good but we had no right to expect a man who was playing in the English seventh tier to score five goals in eight games and shoulder the biggest share of the attacking burden of a relegation-threatened side.
You could see from his first substitute appearance in Dingwall that here was a proper centre-forward.
Rough edges, definitely. But enormous scope to smooth them out.
Prediction – Sidibeh will end up making Saints more money than Mitov in the transfer market.
Save of the season
Mitov made more technically-impressive saves than the penalty stop at Fir Park.
But you just can’t look past it in terms of significance.
In St Johnstone’s recent history – not so recent history as well – the save to deny Theo Bair when Saints were 1-0 up is now in the ‘most important’ mix with Zander Clark’s in the double season.
And it was undoubtedly a Mitov save as opposed to a Bair miss – the perfect combination of homework, agility, timing and nerve.
Best support of the season
The December win against Hibs was a peak in terms of Saints fans feeling comfortable with, and satisfied by, a whole game of football at McDiarmid Park.
It was a real shame that didn’t turn out to be a platform for more.
Performances in Perth reverted to being all too bitty and frustrating in the months that followed.
Sorting that out is arguably Levein’s biggest challenge.
Special mention should be given to the diehards who journeyed to Pittodrie at the end of February having just seen their team lose (in Paisley) for the fourth league match in a row – and lose badly.
They got their reward.
But the support that made the biggest difference to the season was undoubtedly at Livingston.
Instead of rancour and defeatism on the back of two lacklustre post-split defeats, the fans brought passion, positivity and ebullience to West Lothian.
They didn’t get their reward. Not on the day, anyway.
But they helped ensure an ‘ach, it’s our time to go down’ vibe didn’t take hold.
Even in a period of St Johnstone’s history when concerns about the direction of travel on the pitch and off it were well-placed, that’s the definition of what supporting a club is all about.
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