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St Johnstone v Kilmarnock: Wright happy with Graham’s start at Saints

Brian Graham challenges St Mirren goalkeeper Marian Kello in the air.
Brian Graham challenges St Mirren goalkeeper Marian Kello in the air.

It may have not made the headlines as a consequence of St Johnstone’s poor recent run of results, but Brian Graham’s impressive start to his Perth career hasn’t gone unnoticed by his manager.

Tommy Wright couldn’t have been more pleased with the impact Graham has made since arriving on a season-long loan deal from Dundee United.

The McDiarmid Park boss revealed that, after working with him for a few weeks, the centre-forward has proved to be an even better player than he believed he was getting.

“Brian has come in and will only get better,” Wright pointed out.

“He hasn’t played many full games over the last year. He has more about him than even I thought. I didn’t see a lot of him last season but at Raith Rovers he impressed me.

“Brian is quietly confident in his own ability and I like that about strikers. And he has proved that if we give him the service he will score goals.

“He should have five already.

“We lost the St Mirren game because we made two mistakes and were on the wrong end of two refereeing decisions which stopped Brian taking his tally to five for the season so far.”

Wright explained that Graham’s success at Saints – which he expects James McFadden to emulate – comes off a familiar script.

“Every year we have lost players who have done well for us in terms of scoring goals,” he said.

“We lost Fran Sandaza and people wondered how we would replace his goals. The next season they were shared around and then the same question arose when we lost guys like Liam Craig, Gregory Tade and Rowan Vine.

“We lost them and in came Stevie May and Steven MacLean.

“We have good players, a good team and a good squad here. And in Brian Graham and James McFadden we have goalscorers.”

Wright added: “Last season Kris Commons scored one or two more goals for Celtic than Stevie May did for us.

“Take that sort of firepower out of any team and you face challenges. It is difficult to replace and it was compounded for us by the injury to Steven MacLean.

“But there are goals in this team.”

Saints are on a four-game losing streak in the league going into the clash with Kilmarnock, but Wright only needs to look at the turn around in his country’s fortunes to see that everything in the garden could be rosy again very soon.

“We are in one of those wee runs like Michael O’Neill had with Northern Ireland,” he noted.

“He couldn’t buy a win for a spell there but the Northern Ireland authorities kept faith with him and now they are sitting top of the group after three games.

“All of a sudden that all changes and belief grows. We know things can change very quickly in football.”

Scott Brown and Chris Millar were back in full training on Thursday and could be in a squad that is chomping at the bit to get going again after a fortnight without a match.

“When you lose a game ideally you want one right away but you can analyse these things too much,” Wright observed.

“Everyone said the previous break came at the wrong time for us because we had won. It really all boils down to the result you get on the back of an international break.

If we beat Kilmarnock everyone will say it came at a good time for us.

“We have tried to do something different this time with some of the older players getting more time off than others and we organised a bounce game as well. Speaking to other managers they have done much the same.

”I like the break and we have tried to make use of it. We had planned for it and the players know they have to look after themselves. There is a real edge and enthusiasm amongst the players.

“This week it has been business as usual with our preparations. Now it is all about the performance.

“It has given us time to work on James McFadden and to a lesser extent Simon Lappin.

“Simon missed a big chunk of pre-season and we have seen him getting to the match fitness levels we would like and James scored against Dundee and scored. He has looked really good in training.

“We have been going for two or three weeks more than the other clubs because of the build-up to the European games so the older players will benefit from some time off.

“We have to come up with full 90-minute performances. That doesn’t mean being on top of teams from start to finish. It is about making sure you are doing the right things, including when the opposition has a good spell.”