St Johnstone hampered by work permit delay for new boss Simo Valakari

Simo Valakari will again be kept at arm’s length from his new St Johnstone charges as a work permit delay thwarted his dugout appearance against Ross County on Saturday.

The former Finland international was appointed as Crag Levein’s successor on October 1 and paper work issues meant he had to watch their first game from the directors’ box at Ibrox as St Johnstone – led by interim duo Andy Kirk and Alec Cleland – lost 2-0 to Rangers in the William Hill Premiership.

Valakari was expected to be able to take the team at McDiarmid Park in the first game following the international break, but the Perth club issued a statement to the contrary.

The statement read: “We can confirm that Simo Valakari will not yet be able to take his place in the dugout for this weekend’s William Hill Premiership fixture against Ross County.

“Despite extensive work behind the scenes at McDiarmid Park, the scheduling of a necessary governmental appointment could not be obtained in a timely manner. The scheduling process for such appointments is completely outside of club control.”

Chief executive Fran Smith said: “Fans can be assured that the club is doing everything it can to speed up the process.

“Simo is understandably itching to get started and to take his place on the touchline. We will provide a further update to supporters as soon as possible.”

“The best thing in this situation and we said this at the very start, it’s just to focus on the football, get the players on the training pitch, put our principles across and try to work as hard as we can and keep the focus basically on that,” added Kirk, who confirmed Croatian centre-half Bozo Mikulic, signed this week on a deal until the end of the season, was also awaiting clearance.

“Obviously the players know a new manager is coming in the building very, very soon and so they’ve been very upbeat last week, this week.

“Training has been good, energy’s been good. And that’ll be exciting for him when he can actually start.

“I have constant dialogue with him. I speak to him every day, two or three times a day.

“We video training so he’s able to watch everything we’re doing so that he’s kept in contact.

“He gets to see the players. He gets to see what they like on the training ground, how they train and their body language and things like that.

“So that part’s been important, that myself and the manager have had that constant dialogue.”