Following the 0-0 draw in Perth, Derek McInnes was full of praise for his players for a committed and, at times, impressive display but frustrated that his side couldn’t turn their dominance into a win.

“First half I thought we were very good, we found some good pockets of space and areas to work in. We were good up to a point, the point being that final bit in and around their box. We were just looking for somebody to put their hand up and produce a bit of quality to create or score a goal and we didn’t get it.

“In general play, I thought we were good in that first half. Kennedy was very influential, the running power of Hedges, Wright and Hayes gave good support to Cosgrove. At the other end, we were solidly defensively, even after Tommie Hoban went off so early on. By and large, I felt we were the better team.

“Second half, it was more even, St Johnstone squeezed the game a bit more, the spaces afforded to us in the first half weren’t quite there and the game became more back and forth, cancelling each other out a wee bit.

“Joe made a save at the end but that was the only thing of note he had to do and that tells the story. We’re just disappointed we haven’t turned what was a good away performance, especially first half, into a brilliant one with a brilliant result.

“We take the point, we take a second clean sheet in a row which is a good response after Ross County, but clearly we’ve still got work to do to improve on this performance in terms of scoring goals to win the game. We’ve done so much right in the game, with the effort, the commitment, getting up the pitch quickly, but we need to win more of these games rather than getting draws.

“That said, we were up against a good team tonight, St Johnstone have shown that time and time again as they did in beating Hibs 3-0 on Saturday. We knew we wouldn’t get it all our own way, but as an away team coming here, I thought we grabbed the game and owned it in the first 45 minutes, but we didn’t turn that into all three points.”

Speaking about the criticism Scott Wright has taken since news of his pre-contract agreement with Rangers emerged, the manager was quick to defend the player, pointing to the quality of his performance on the night.

“It becomes a fine balancing act for a club when a player signs a pre-contract elsewhere and the first thing you look for in those circumstances is to see if he’s still focused. Nobody can say we got anything other than a fully committed performance from Scott tonight, he was full of running, he was bright, he worked back.

“I have the luxury of seeing the players every day in training and nobody plays in a game if he isn’t fully committed. That will always be the case. Scott remains our player at present and as long as we’re getting that from him, why should we weaken ourselves and suffer by leaving him out?”

There was good news about the injury to Tommie Hoban after he left the field in the sixth minute after a sickening clash of heads with Ross McCrorie.

“Tommie got a deep flesh wound above the eye, it’s unfortunate to be in an area where it does bleed heavily and it can take eight or nine minutes to stitch. He was compos mentis, absolutely fine in that sense, but we weren’t prepared to play with ten men for that long. Hopefully though he should be fine for the game at the weekend.”

Finally the manager gave an update on Funso Ojo who was not involved tonight.

“There is nothing I can clarify at the moment. All I can say is that he is down south with a view to having a loan until the end of the season with a club in England. It is up to that club and Funso to sort it out and get that concluded. Hopefully that can be the case. He was originally in the squad, but things moved a bit last night and we were happy for him to go down and try and get that loan deal sorted.”