Both sides had come into the game on the back of bruising defeats – St Mirren at home to bottom side Livingston and Dundee in their city derby.<\/p>\n
They were also minus influential players – on-loan Birmingham winger Scott Wright failing a fitness test for the hosts, while St Mirren had Declan John and Jonah Ayunga injured on top of Alex Gogic’s suspension.<\/p>\n
It was St Mirren who appeared to be affected the most, missing the bite and drive of Gogic, whether in defence or midfield, as on-loan Hearts playmaker Dhanda was particularly prominent in that opening 45 minutes. <\/p>\n
Pressley’s men must fancy their chances of avoiding relegation trouble, especially with now relegated Livingston next up at Dens Park.<\/p>\n
For all the plaudits counterpart McLeish has received since the 36-year-old former youth coach was thrust into the St Mirren hotseat, there are worrying signs his side will be the ones finishing in the play-off place.<\/p>\n
While they have a better goal difference than Kilmarnock should they finish level on points, a lack of goals is costing St Mirren.<\/p>\n
They have failed to score in 17 of their 35 league games, more often than any other team this season, and have now not found the net in their latest three.<\/p>\n
St Mirren also show few signs of being able to battle back from adversity and have lost all 11 games where they have trailed at half-time – and have won just once in 17 after conceding the opening goal.<\/p>\n
They will need to muster all their fighting qualities when Kilmarnock visit next Saturday in what appears like a must-win game for the Paisley side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both sides had come into the game on the back of bruising defeats – St Mirren at home…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-643527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}