Saints 1-0 Morton Match Report

Saints made two changes from Monday's match with Motherwell. Out went Sergei Baltacha and Junior Mendes, both injured. In came Mark Yardley and Jamie McGowan, both back from injury. The clever ones will notice this left Brian McGinty, Mark Yardley and Martin Cameron up front, possibly one of the tallest and bigges strikeforces in division 1 if they play together. It became pretty obvios, hiwever, that Mendes will be playing instead of Yards. His first touch was poor, and the one good chance saw him and Cameron take it in turns to smash it into Morton's dodgy goalkeeper before he eventually held it. Yards is extremely unfit and it isn't worth playing him to win a few headers. He'd do well coming on for the last thirty minutes against teams, the way Jose Quitogo should have been used.

Morton did very little of note as well in the first half, but probably did a lot more than Saints. They caused us trouble, just couldn't finish it, which is worrying. If a third division side can do this, what the hell will Ayr, St. Johnstone, Falkirk et al going to do? Morton's best chance of the first half came when Ludo Roy made a great stop from a Warren Hawke header.

Before half time Saints lost two vital players. At a Saints corner, defender Greg Denham collapsed in a heap. There was no challlenge or anything, he just went down. He was stretchered off and was replaced with recent signing Richard Robb.

Then, a few minutes later, Cameron made an appaling challenge on a Morton player. In a normal game he would have been sent off, however escaped with a quick word from the referee. He had injured himself making thechallenge however (a challenge which saw him receive an ovation from the Northbank) and was shortly replaced with Simon Lappin.

Half time saw 9 Saints changes, the only survivors being Robb and Lappin. All the Saints side were reserves, with only Lappin, Graham Guy, Ryan Robinson and David Lowing having featured in the first team before. Morton made no changes, and continued to have the better of the play.

Then on 68 minutes Saints went ahead. A free kick was won, though just after it was given Robinson decided to shoot into the crowd anyway. Guy took a shocking free kick, which took a massive deflection off the Morton wall and ended up wrong footing Morton's naff goalie and going in. 1-0 Saints.

However the fun and games wasn't over. Morton kept attacking and after Lowing won the ball from a Morton player the referee decided enough was enough and gave a penalty. Hmmm. Justice was done when the Morton bloke put the ball past the post and into the stand, and the match finished 1-0.

Some of Morton's players looked reasonably good, such as the number 6 and the number 10. In fact, they are possibly too good for that team as most of the other players weren't in position to take the good passes they made.

On the Saints side, the number 8 looked good who turned out to be a Swiss trialist (who in Scotland would have such a shocking mullet?). Guy was terrible up until his free kick and then his play improved slightly. Lowing, Robb and Kirk Broadfoot did well in defence and overall the youngsters probably performed better than the seniors.

Roll on Tuesday then, with the visit of Celtic. Chance of an upset? Doubt it!