Davidson hopes St Johnstone are 'disgusting' against LASK again

Callum Davidson has joked that he hopes St Johnstone’s European opponents LASK are “disgusted” again, after being frustrated in the first leg of the play-off tie last week.

The Perth side punched above their weight in Europe once again, drawing 1-1 with their opponents in Austria and giving themselves a fighting chance of reaching the Conference League group stage.

LASK boss Dominik Thalhammer had said that his side had known to expect a ‘long ball’ team and that “It was disgusting to play against them”.

Davidson pointed out that Chris Kane’s goal had come from an incisive attacking move and said that he would take the comments as praise for his side and hope for more of the same.

He said “If you look at our chances, they were all really good football and we counter-attacked them really well. I think we created great space and it was good movement for our goal so I would take it from that that we are really hard to play against.

“I would definitely take that as a compliment.

“Hopefully we can be disgusting again on Thursday night.”

The St Johnstone manager is expecting another big support at McDiarmid Park and believes that his side shouldn’t be written off on what will be a noisy and exciting night in Perth.

He said: “They’re a good team but we showed last week that we’re a good team as well, so we need to replicate that type of quality and energy in the second leg and hopefully we’ll make a game of it.

“I’m pretty relaxed about it. Nobody really expects us to win.

“We’ll have a big backing from our support so it’s more about enjoying it and making sure we play with confidence and courage. If we do that, I think we’ve got a chance.”

Davidson also took heart from being able to call on creative midfielder David Wotherspoon after the 31-year-old missed four matches after catching coronavirus.

“David didn’t really have any symptoms so he’s looking pretty good,” he said. “He’s trained really well and it’s great that he’s back.

“We’ve definitely missed him because he’s got that bit of quality and composure on the ball that sometimes we need to get up the pitch.

“He can definitely be a big player for me on Thursday.”