St Johnstone star Craig Bryson has warned people not to underestimate his side against PSV or Galatasaray in the Europa League.
Turkish giants Galatasaray and Netherlands cracks PSV face-off in a Champions League qualifier, with the loser dropping down to the third qualifying round of the Europa League, where they will host St Johnstone on August 5, before travelling to Scotland seven days later.
At the moment it's looking likely to be Galatasaray, with PSV Eindhoven 5-1 up after the first leg.
Midfielder Bryson isn’t daft enough to say Saints will definitely go through, but says anything can happen in football, which the Perth club proved, by winning an historic League Cup and Scottish Cup double last season.
He said: “That will be quality. A year ago we were away to Kelty Hearts in the Betfred Cup group stages.
“When you look at that and you see the hard work that has gone in since then until now, I think it’s something we deserve.
“Nobody gives us a chance against either of those two teams, but nobody gave us a chance last year of winning the double.
“I’m not sitting here saying we’re going to beat them, but don’t write us off – upsets do happen in football.
“It’s the old cliché that they’re going to need to have an off-night and we’ll need to be on top of our game, but it’s a game that all the lads, staff and fans will be looking forward to.
“And I think it’s something that we deserve for the season we had. Just to know that we’re going to have a minimum of four games in Europe [losers drop down to Europa Conference League] will be tremendous.
“Hopefully by then the fans can travel to the away ties as well, which will be a good experience.
“Hopefully we can get a lot more than 2000 at McDiarmid Park for the home ties.
“We want to try and get to the Europa League group stages and we know it’s going to be incredibly difficult, with the teams we’re going to come up against.
“But if we can do it, I think that will be incredible for the fans to see their club play in Europe until December.”
Bryson says it will be hard to top what Saints achieved last season, but just to maintain that level would be great.
He said: “When you take the cups seriously, I think all the sacrifices the lads made, to do everything properly and give everything in every game and training session, to go on and win both cups is just rewards for that.
“It’s an incredible achievement and I still don’t know if it will sink in properly – maybe when the fans can get back in and get to see the cups.
“They were up at training the other day and it still doesn’t feel real that we went on to win both in the one season.
“It will be hard to see how we’re going to beat last season, but I think the main aim will be to get back in the Premiership top six again and try to have a good cup run.
“But a good run in the cups and finishing in the top six has got to be seen as success this season, considering the size of squad we’ve got and everything that happened last season.”
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