Jim Goodwin admits fatigue played a big part in their Jekyll and Hyde derby performance last night.
The Buddies were dominant in the first half but woeful in the second as they lost their lead and almost lost the game as rivals Greenock Morton threatened to win in Paisley for the first time since 1999.
The Saints did end up seeing out a draw and winning the bonus point penalty shootout, putting them in the driving seat to outgun their rivals and shoot into the next round of the League Cup with a positive result against Queen’s Park on Saturday.
Goodwin told Express Sport: “Without making too many excuses, you could see the fatigue setting in as we had a really tiring game against Dundee United here on Friday.
“The lads have only had half a dozen sessions in the last four weeks so the fitness levels aren’t anywhere near where they need to be.
“We made changes throughout the game to freshen things up but unfortunately we’d lost our rhythm at that point. We were hanging on at times.
“The goal certainly rattled us.
“We had a couple of opportunities late on in the last five minutes on the counter attack.
“We needed to be better in those instances and pick a pass instead of just fizzing a ball across the face.
“I’m glad I’m standing here on the end of the right side of the penalty shootout.
“We’re sitting on seven points and now we know what we have to do on Saturday.
“We’ve got to go there and win the game and then we’ll be top of the group.”
While the Buddies were battling a SPFL investigation off the pitch yesterday, they certainly knew they were in a war against rivals Ton last night as there was plenty of needle and rash challenges throughout the tense match.
Gaffer Goodwin could only admit that Morton were the better team in the second half.
He said: “The first half was excellent and I thought we dominated possession, as I would expect with us being the Premiership team.
“We did everything we spoke about before the game in terms of getting the ball wide and putting balls into the box and we had two or three other really good chances to add to the good goal we scored.
“I was very pleased with that because we work hard on corners but Morton came out with all guns blazing in the second half and didn’t allow us time on the ball to pick out passes.”
