Saints 3 Clyde 0
Team ::
Main,McQuillan,Davison,Kane,Weir,Griffin,Scott,Tosh,Grant,Georgio,Jenko
Subs :: Preston,O'Halloran,Monakino
Not as convincing a performance as the scoreline suggests with Saints struggling for long periods to get any effort on target against a Clyde team which organised its defence well and if that failed resorted to major hacking tactics.
Saints started well enough with Fergie dropped and replaced by Rod the God. Has to be said tho that he still looks to be less than 100% fit and tired long before the end of the second-half. Luggy had plenty of opportunity to allow new boy Fabrice Monakino to make his debut but seemed to settle for the 3-0 win.
The first 20-25 minutes was all Saints pressure with new Clyde left-back Donaldson showing why Luggy off-loaded him. Tosh basically gave him the runaround and he was booked within 5 mins for a hack on Scott. Georgio and Roddy looked lively enough if a little slow but were not given much time on the ball from a packed Clyde defence (their tactics obviously aimed at hitting Saints on the break). In defence we looked solid enough although Callum Davidson came in for a lot of rough treatment and it was no surprise when he was replaced by Preston late in the second half.
Saints midfield was always going to be important and with Dino out, new signing Paul Kane made his home debut and looked surprisingly good for someone so short of match practice. Obviously the competition for places in the new midfield line-up will help matters. Scott and Tosh both benefited from this with plenty of opportunity to move forward, although Jenko did his usual inept display - perhaps Monakinos inclusion in the pool will spur him on.
The deadlock was finally broken in controversial circumstances at the end of the first half when Jenko apparently dived. He took the resultant free kick to send Davidson down the wing where his cross was headed home at the back post by Georgio. Jenko then wound up the Clyde supporters with some sort of gesture during the celebrations - not IMHO a good idea (especially if he tries it in front of the larger species of Wegie Unwashed).
Second-half started in much the same way for Saints. Danny made it 2-0 with a similar back-post header after 55 mins and Georgio got another header to make it 3-0 from an O'Halloran cross. Rhino had come on for Tosh and had a good game overall - O'Neil may struggle to get into the team with Tosh and Rhino playing so well.
However, after this Saints went off the boil and were lucky to keep the clean sheet after several Clyde efforts went wide - even Euan the Reject managed an attacking run. From my view in the East Stand El Luggino was not overly enamoured of the Saints players attitudes. One booking for Kane and sponsors MoM went to Weir who had another good game.