Praise for Connor from Barry

Positives were a little hard to come by on Friday in Perth, but at least one arrived in the shape of Connor McLennan when he came on as a second half substitute to give an accomplished performance. Connor is only 16 and joins just a handful of players who have played for the club at that age.

After the game Barry Robson, who is mere 21 years older than Connor, spoke highly about the youngster on RedTV.

“I thought Connor was so good when he came on. For a young boy, coming on at a very difficult situation, he did very well. You could see the energy in him, you could see his bravery to get on the ball. I like to see that. You could also see his happiness at getting on the pitch. He had a smile on his face when he played.

“We should have done better for him. He should have been able to enjoy his debut a lot more than that. He now needs to go away and keep working at his game to become a better player. I am sure he will do that. He has a big future ahead of him.

“I thought Michael Rose did very well too, but unfortunately he felt his hamstring early on which was very tough for him. He will go on and be a good player. I have a lot of time for Michael”.

Whilst full of praise for the youngsters, Barry was honest as ever about the overall performance.

“The manager was not pleased with the performance and rightly so. Right throughout the team, we did not perform the way we should have done. We have to give some credit to St Johnstone, I thought they played very well on the night and played the conditions. They were very well organised.

“We had a bad night. We know that it was not good enough for our fans. The players understand that. It was not like us. That is not the way we usually play. All over the pitch, we struggled. We were a little bit short in every area and the boys will admit that.

“The two and a half years I have been here, there have been very few performances like that but they do come along sometimes. We have to make sure it does not happen again. When it has happened, we have always bounced back and we are now desperate to do that against Motherwell.

“Losing three away games in a row is very disappointing. Again, we have not done that a lot since I have been here and away from home this season we have had a lot of good results and have been good to watch at times. “You can’t just sit there and look at the negatives all the time. We have to stay positive and that is the way we do it at this football club. We prepare properly for every game. The manager is very demanding and that will not change until the last ball is kicked this season.

“We will prepare the way we always do. We still have four big games left. It does not matter where you are in the league, you have to have pride in yourself. We have got that and we want to win football games. We have to do it for the fans as well as ourselves.

“We prepared properly for the St Johnstone game. We spent a lot of time working on our shape, we spend a lot of time looking at video analysis. Sometime in football you can do all that and sometimes you still just don’t get it right on the night.

“St Johnstone have done well against us all season. We are a bit of a scalp now and that is the way you want things. You want teams to come and challenge you as it makes for a better game. We have players who can deal with that type of game but on the night, we did not do it.

“Although we maybe struggled without the size and presence of Ash, St Johnstone might have struggled with our skill and trickery, but they managed to impose their game on us. We did not get it right on Friday and that can happen in football.

“It was a bad night for us. We will sit down through the week and speak about what went wrong. I don’t necessarily think there is a lot to sort out. We just individually and as a team had a bad night.

“We are still sitting second top of the league. We have some fantastic players, we have a great support, we have a good club. We have to go out and show what we are made of every time we go and play. Everyone faces adversity in life. You just have to get on with it and get through it. We will make sure we do that

“We have players who want to go to the Euros, we have players who are out of contract. There are so many things to play for in football.

“Every single game should matter to you, whether you are an older player or a youngster like Connor”.