St Johnstone boss, Simo Valakari, has revealed that his players smashed the season’s ceiling for “crazy running” in their Scottish Cup victory over Livingston. The McDiarmid Park head coach explained that Monday night’s fitness statistics were a double-edged sword. They highlighted the fact that Saints had the capacity and willingness to run themselves into the artificial ground to keep the quarter-final scoreline level.
But the numbers also showed that controlling a football game is far more achievable with the ball compared to without. “They were the highest metrics for the season,” Valakari confirmed. “I’m talking about high intensity sprints and averages.
And it was for many, many players. “That happens when you are not right tactically. “If you can’t control the ball the only thing you can control is – ‘I need to run’.
“If we hadn’t done that crazy running, we would have lost that game. “We gave ourselves a chance through our relentless work-rate and relentless running. You could call it stupid running, but we needed to do it because we were not in the right positions.
“Then in the second half we found the right positions, started to control the game and everything became much easier.” Valakari added: “We always train for the worst-case scenario. “We need to have this capability to run, and we showed on Monday that we have that.
“Of course, I would rather we had 75% of the ball and hadn’t needed to show it. “But because of .
