St Johnstone manager Callum Davidson admits he is “always looking over his shoulder” as he prepares for the visit of Ross County on Saturday.
With three cinch Premiership games remaining before the split, the Perth side are in ninth place, eight points behind sixth-placed Hibernian – with a top-half finish now a long shot.
The Saints boss is even more aware that with 24 points to play for in total, his side, without a win in four games, are eight points ahead of Malky Mackay’s team – who are second bottom of the table – and 10 points better off than basement club Dundee United.
“Always, always looking over my shoulder,” said Davidson.
“It is one thing you have to do, whether I give the message to the players, that will depend on where we are and what I think is needed, but myself, the coaching staff, we always look over our shoulder.
“We’ve no given right to be in this league. We have to work extremely hard every game to do it.
“That is basically the bottom line. If we do that I believe we will win, I do believe we will win games of football.
“I think we have got the quality there, we have got the players to win games, but if that application is not there then it will be a struggle towards the end of the season.
“We are just looking for wins. It is hard when you say points total, a couple of wins takes you up to 38 points, I don’t think any team has been in the bottom two with that so a couple of wins, but I would like more than that.
“So just try and win every game we try and play.”
St Johnstone have not won in their last eight matches at McDiarmid Park which leaves Davidson largely baffled.
He said: “We have talked about it a lot. The last team we beat at home was Rangers.
“We have had some difficult games but also we have had some games where we have not helped ourselves either.
“I think it is really important we play a certain way. This year, it sounds stupid, we are a little bit better a football team than we were last year.
“On our pitch, I think we have to be a little bit more back to basics in how we play.
“Force the other team into mistakes rather than making mistakes ourselves, I think that is ultimately what has cost us.
“Ever since I have been here I think we have probably been better away from home, I don’t really know the reason for it but if we did we would obviously solve it.
“But again we are just looking at little ways we can get better, whether it is changing formation at home, whether it is changing our style of play at home is something we need to do because we need to win games at home.
“It should be a lot easier to win games at home than it is away.”
