St Johnstone need to 'stand up and be counted' to fight off relegation threat, says midfielder Graham Carey

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Midfielder Graham Carey has admitted St Johnstone made life too easy for Celtic during their 3-1 defeat in Glasgow.And the 34-year-old Irishman said the Perth players will need to “stand up and be counted” if they are to avoid dropping into the relegation zone.Saints now only have a one-point advantage over Ross County, who sit in the relegation play-off spot, after their shock 2-1 victory over Hearts.Meanwhile, Aberdeen moved above Saints into ninth place after a 1-0 win at Motherwell.While games against the Old Firm rarely define their season, Carey still feels Saints didn’t ask enough questions of the champions.“At the end of the day they are not the team we are fighting against but we are disappointed we didn’t put up a bigger fight,” he said.“We know how good they are with the ball.

I thought when we had it we didn’t really handle their press well enough. We didn’t show enough composure.“We knew if we could make a couple of passes we could break the press and get ourselves up the pitch and keep possession.“But we didn’t really do that.“It was a difficult afternoon and they had a lot of shots cleared off the line.“It could have been more.“We spoke at half-time — the first half was not good enough with the ball.“Then in the second half they scored straight away and we were just chasing the game after that.“We didn’t make it difficult enough for them.”Saints face a second weekend without a game this month before Dundee arrive at McDiarmid Park on Saturday, March 30 in a decisive day in the Premiership season.As the Tayside teams take to the Perth pitch, fellow relegation scrappers Aberdeen and Ross County will face off at Pittodrie.Carey echoed the sentiments of his manager last week — the team need to focus solely on