Simo Valakari dismisses notion that St Johnstone cannot beat Celtic once again

Simo Valakari dismissed any notion that his St Johnstone side cannot complete a double over Celtic in the space of a fortnight.

Saints stunned the Hoops in the William Hill Premiership the Sunday before last, and the two teams meet again in this weekend’s Scottish Gas Scottish Cup semi-final.

Valakari does not believe the fact his team beat Celtic so recently reduces their chances of pulling off another upset at Hampden.

“Let’s start from the Celtic point of view, of course I don’t know how they came here in the last match (at McDiarmid Park) but now they are awake,” said the Saints boss, anticipating that Brendan Rodgers’ side will have renewed focus for Sunday’s rematch. “They can hurt us if we are not ready.

“From our point of view, many people have said that it’s not possible to do it two times in a row, but I see it the other way around. Because let’s say last match we played them here, we would have lost by three, four or five and they would have battered us.

“We would have been sitting this week thinking ‘what can we do? How can we come out with something different?’. Now we have played a very good performance and we got the result so we know what we need to do.

“As I said, Celtic will be ready so we need to play better than we played this last match. But it gives us the confidence that it’s possible.

“It’s almost like a free hit. If we lose, it doesn’t affect the league. If we win, it can have massive consequences.”

Former Saints boss Callum Davidson, who oversaw an historic League Cup and Scottish Cup double in 2021, suggested this week that a cup semi-final may be “a hindrance” in their quest to climb off the bottom of the league. Valakari disagreed, stressing that Saints are delighted to be in the semi-final.

“As a club, we want to win trophies and we are still in the cup competition, one game away from the final,” he said. “We would be stupid if we would say that we don’t want to be here. Yes, 100 per cent, we deserve and we want to be here.

“I agree very much with a lot of things Callum says, but I’m not agreeing with this. I’m very, very happy to be here in the semi-final.”