DUNDEE WERE the opposition when Gregory Tade netted his last SPL goal for St Johnstone, and the Frenchman wants more than anything to repeat the feat this afternoon.
Nobody is more frustrated than the 26-year-old himself at the fact he hasn’t scored in the league since that 3-1 win at Dens on September 29, but Tade is confident his luck in front of goal will change soon as Saints bid to turn their recent run of draws into victories.
The Perth club’s stalemate at home to Inverness on Saturday was their sixth draw in nine league outings but Tade noted: “We are trying to play football and get into the opposition box, and if we continue with that we will score goals.
“We are a very good team, I just think we are just going through a rough patch trying to turn draws into wins.
“Myself and my colleagues have to put away the chances. I don’t think we are where we should be in the league but now we have to do everything we can to beat Dundee at home.
“We played well against Dundee United and it is another derby for our fans, so we’re looking forward to it.”
Despite drawing another blank at the weekend, Tade refused to be downbeat and is taking plenty of positives into today’s game with Dundee.
“We showed how we could match a team like Inverness who are having a great season,” he added. “We kept them very quiet for 90 minutes.”
As for looking further forward, Tade revealed he is keen to stay with Saints for the foreseeable future and cooled transfer talk for the time being.
“I’m happy here and I am sure the club will speak to me in due course,” he said. “The future in football is always uncertain and you never know what will happen from one year to the next. But I will work hard and scoring against Dundee would be good.”
Saints boss Steve Lomas is hoping his side can seize an early initiative after a lucklustre beginning to Saturday’s game.
“We didn’t start great to be honest and Inverness nearly took advantage of it,” he said. “We want to get a win and sign off before the break with a win, so we’ll certainly be trying to do that.”
Lomas added that he hopes on-loan Aberdeen winger Peter Pawlett will be allowed to stay beyond January, although there is no news on that front just yet.
“We have made our intentions pretty plain that we wanted to keep Peter but obviously it’s down to Aberdeen and down to whether they feel they’ve got enough in their squad to let Peter stay here.”
csmith@thecourier.co.uk