First Team
Tayside Derby preview
24th August 2018
Saints welcome Dundee in the first Tayside Derby of the 2018/19 season at McDiarmid Park tomorrow, with both sides looking for their first league win of the new campaign.
Tommy Wright's men go into the match on the back of last weekend's 4-2 extra-time victory against Queen of the South in the Betfred Cup, while our opponents suffered a 3-0 defeat at the hands of Scottish Championship outfit Ayr United.
Saints started the campaign with a 2-0 defeat at Rugby Park before picking up the club's first point of the campaign against Hibs. Neil McCann's side suffered defeats in their opening two league fixtures, losing out 2-1 and 1-0 to St. Mirren and Aberdeen respectively.
Ahead of tomorrow's clash against our Tayside rivals, the manager believes that if his side can put in a good performance then the home fans will be going home happy and celebrating the first win of the new season.
"The matches against Dundee are always very competitive," Tommy said, "and there is always that extra bit of an edge to them. It's a game that everybody is desperate to win so that we can get our first win on the board.
"The atmosphere is always good in the derby clashes and I've got no doubts that it will be the same again tomorrow. We're going into it on the back of two good performances and positive results while they've not had a good start, but form often goes out the window in games like this.
"We've just got to concentrate on ourselves and if we put in a good performance then I'm more than confident that we'll be able to win the match tomorrow."
Midfielder David Wotherspoon is a doubt for the weekend after the player rolled his ankle in training before the Betfred Cup clash with Queen of the South, and defender Brian Easton remains sidelined. However, veteran centre-back Steven Anderson has trained this week and will return to the squad.
All three of the club's summer signings will be in contention to start the match this weekend and the manager has been impressed by each of their contributions so far this season, in particular the goalscoring form of Tony Watt.
"They've all been excellent," Tommy commented, "and they've settled in very quickly and have shown everyone what they can do.
"Obviously Tony grabs most of the headlines because he's scoring goals and that's always going to be the case but all three of them have been excellent in the opening fixtures this season.
"I've been really impressed with Tony since he came here and there's a lot more still to come from him. He missed out on a lot of football before he came here so he's still finding his fitness and that match sharpness.
"From the moment he arrived we've tried to make it a happy environment for him to go and play his football and I've no doubts that will help his ability to shine through and he can go on to score a lot of goals for us this year."
The fixture list has thrown up a tough run of games for the club next month but Tommy isn't looking any further ahead than this weekend's match.
"A lot of people have made reference to the run of games we have coming up," he said, "but my focus is entirely on Dundee.
"Every club in this league will go through a run of tough games at some stage in the season and we're no different. People may look at it and say we have to get points against Dundee and Hamilton because we have Aberdeen, Rangers, Hearts and Celtic to come but I don't see it that way at all.
"Every game we play I think we can win it. And I won't look any further ahead than one game at a time starting this weekend. After that, we'll switch our attention to Hamilton and so on.
"Confidence is high in the camp because we've been performing well and we'll be looking to keep those performance levels high when Dundee visit here tomorrow."
Tomorrow's match is a 3PM kick-off at McDiarmid Park and the referee is Steven McLean.
The match sponsor is John Callum Ltd. Potato Merchants.