Livewire Samuel to fight fatigue

[Tallman]

Livewire Samuel to fight fatigue
The Courier

ST JOHNSTONE striker Collin Samuel has vowed to add stamina to skill in order to fire Saints up the SPL table, writes Ian Roache.

While all the pre-match talk had been about Rangers’ possible move to an Atlantic League, Samuel helped show that a trip to the banks of the Tay is more than enough to test the Ibrox men at the moment.

Saints may have lost this game 2-1 but for long spells the only clear blue water was between the Perth men and their visitors as they passed the ball crisply and created good chances.

Samuel blasted the home side into a 17th minute lead at McDiarmid Park with an explosive strike then, as lone attacker, continued to torment central defenders Davie Weir and Lee McCulloch until he was replaced by Kenny Deuchar with eight minutes to go.

He was only off the park for a minute before Sasa Papac, given yards of space in which to tee himself up, fired in the winner for the Light Blues, who levelled just before the break via Kris Boyd.

Having also given the Celtic backline a torrid time earlier this season Samuel, with his pace and strength, can be a massive asset for St Johnstone in the weeks and months ahead.

However, he realises he needs to fight fatigue if he is to turn promise into reality.

“Being the only striker is a hard role but I enjoy playing it,” he said.

“My job was to occupy the two Rangers central defenders and make life as difficult as possible for them. I did the same job against Celtic and think I did OK then, too, by playing to my strengths.

“Now it is all down to keeping as fit as possible and making sure I am ready for every game so I can get through 90 minutes. I know I need to keep my fitness level up and I am pushing myself as hard as I can in training.

“Every day I am working hard. I know I can be that (an explosive player) but I also need to have stamina for the whole game.”

Samuel admitted that Saints only had themselves to blame for not taking anything out of Saturday’s game, failing to capitalise when on top.

“Overall, we are not playing badly and we had the upper hand for a long time because we took the game to Rangers,” he said.

“We dominated for long spells but we just didn’t have the cutting edge. I think we are creating a lot of chances but we are missing them.”

As well as the ones that got away—Martin Hardie’s header against a post and Murray Davidson’s nod wide when inches from goal were the pick of the bunch—there was the matter of the non-existent marking at the winning goal.

When Kevin Thomson’s shot hit Steven Anderson and landed at the feet of Kris Boyd for Rangers’ equaliser, that could be put down as bad luck.

However, the concession of the second counter was shocking, with Papac given an age to control a Steven Naismith knockdown, switch the ball on to his preferred left foot and pick his spot from the edge of the box.

What a shame so much hard work from the hosts was ruined by such a lapse so close to full-time.

With manager Derek McInnes taking advantage of the early finish to rush off and take in another SPL match, it was left to his assistant Tony Docherty to sum things up.

“The 90 minutes wasn’t frustrating—what was frustrating and disappointing was not getting anything,” he said.

“The performance level was very good but the boys are just gutted to have put so much into the game and to come away with nothing. We merited at least a point.

“Credit to Rangers, who keep going for the winner, but our camp is disappointed. It is a little unjust just now that we haven’t been picking up the points for our performances but we will look ahead to the next game (away to Kilmarnock) now.”

Meanwhile, the last thing Rangers manager Walter Smith wanted to be dealing with after a win that put them top of the league was questions regarding the antics of AWOL defender Madjid Bougherra.

The player failed to return from international duty with Algeria until late Friday night and was left out of the squad for McDiarmid.

He is, however, expected to be back in contention for tomorrow’s home Champions League match against Romanian side Unirea Urziceni.

“I haven’t spoken to him,” said Smith. “I would be quite pleased if I could update myself, actually.

“I will have to find out what his problem is. He may be ill, I don’t know.

“It’s a strange one for us because normally you are able to phone people up.”

Pedro Mendes was also absent from the 18-man squad but the explanation for the Portugal international’s omission was more straightforward as he was suffering from a thigh strain.”

<a href="http://rd3.videos.sapo.pt/play?file=http://rd3.videos.sapo.pt/7ZCF0DlVDHpMzIhQtuSl/mov/1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://rd3.videos.sapo.pt/play?file=http://rd3.videos.sapo.pt/7ZCF0DlVDHpMzIhQtuSl/mov/1</a>

[Small Magician aka Wazza]

BM Here...Sammy 6 pounds short of making some decent money

just like Ravi Rampaul

[dreamer]

Nice Sammy, nice

[Small Magician aka Wazza]

45 minutes in the hex..... 1 goal and some top wing play


Colin Samuel on the LW would have been ideal this campaign

[jai john]

45 minutes in the hex..... 1 goal and some top wing play


Colin Samuel on the LW would have been ideal this campaign

you seriously believe that his presence would have made our defenders less naive ?, our players learn to keep possession of the ball and not give it away so much ? carlos edwards and co. to deliver better crosses ? ,,and our players to be able to collect and pass better our team to play football rather than  backs and forwards ?

[Tallman]

Collin Samuel makes his mark but Sasa Papac has final word
By Graham Spiers (Times Online)

Some would say this game was about the disappearance of Madjid Bougherra in the night, and the robbery of St Johnstone by Rangers in broad daylight at McDiarmid Park on Saturday. Both points of view can be debated but, on this evidence, Derek McInnes’s Saints are welcome to hang around the Clydesdale Bank Premier League for just as long as they like.

Bougherra, Rangers’ gifted but erratic (in every sense) Algeria defender, had gone Awol after being away with his country on international duty. Walter Smith, as much in the dark about it as anyone else, later related a complicated yarn about a Bougherra suitcase and passport going missing on his travels, hence the player’s no-show back in Glasgow until Friday night. It all sounded a tall tale from the player, as even Smith’s wry smile seemed to suggest. So Bougherra was dropped.

It left Rangers weakened yet again, with Lee McCulloch dropping back into central defence beside Davie Weir, only for the pair to be given the runaround for 70 minutes by Collin Samuel, St Johnstone’s much-travelled, supremely-gifted, but also erratic Trinidadian striker. Let us just say this: if St Johnstone can somehow harness this player’s ability as shown in this game, what a potent weapon he will be.

The way Samuel seized upon Martin Hardie’s through ball and sprinted beyond the static Rangers defence to put his side ahead after 17 minutes was something to behold. Weir, in particular, exhibits a regular excellence for Rangers which is too often taken for granted, but at 39, he is not endowed with the type of pace to keep a player like Samuel at bay.

The striker still had much to do when that opportunity arose but he was composed and lethal in sprinting 30 yards towards Allan McGregor before despatching his shot past the Rangers goalkeeper.

This game was a peculiarity for the home side, not least for the way in which St Johnstone squandered chances at one end and then retreated like a panicking army to allow Sasa Papac to score Rangers’ winner at the other. As McInnes admitted in some frustration later, his side might easily have claimed all three points.

Samuel was a revelation to those of us who have only seen him in fleeting snatches over the years at Falkirk, Dundee United and now St Johnstone. Yet even the great Leo Beenhakker, in charge of Trinidad and Tobago at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, and with Samuel in his squad, admitted to the infuriating task of trying to get the best out of the 28-year-old. Now the task falls to McInnes.

“When he is in this sort of form, and he is in the role of a lone striker, I don’t think there are many better,” Tony Docherty, the St Johnstone assistant manager, said. “Collin’s got that shift of pace, and the goal he scored was fantastic. He was doing this today against some top defenders, so he is a real asset.”

And the secret to revealing and preserving the real Collin Samuel? “Good question,” Docherty said. “We are trying to work on his endurance. We are trying to maintain his fitness. You can see his ability, but we feel he needs to have a level of fitness to show the skills that he’s got, so that’s what we’re trying to do. We are working on everything — his training, his diet — to try to help Collin.”

Kris Boyd, leaden-footed and lumbering in most of his outfield play, summed up this eternal Boyd debate by grabbing Rangers’ equaliser five minutes before half-time, arriving upon Kevin Thomson’s deflected

shot to stab the ball past Alan Main from six yards. By this point, though, there were steady growls emanating from the visiting Rangers support about the laboured efforts of their team.

Poor Thomson is still nowhere near back to his best following his nine months out after knee surgery. The midfield player lacked sprightliness and guile in Perth and looked fairly off the pace, which Walter Smith later apportioned to two things: first, the player’s long lay-off, and second, St Johnstone’s five-man midfield.

“Kevin needs more playing time to come back properly,” Smith said. “The disappointment when he went out injured \ was that he was doing extremely well for us. When a player is out for a cruciate ligament injury, he’s out for ten months, and they don’t just come back and play in the manner they were before. It takes time.

“Also, a lot of teams are doing what St Johnstone did in playing five men in midfield. It’s hard to play four-against-five in that area and achieve the right balance defensively. We do it in European games and it’s a difficult system to play against.

“People say Rangers or Celtic should always play with two forwards, but if you do that you leave yourselves short in midfield, allowing other teams more possession. And when you’ve got a decent player like Jody Morris in there, then the other team can take advantage.”

St Johnstone missed two further golden opportunities, by Murray Davidson and Chris Millar, before Papac grabbed Rangers’ winner. The Bosnia-Herzegovina defender struck his shot sweetly between Main and his right post eight minutes from time, but the way St Johnstone’s defence retreated as Papac advanced seemed strange indeed.

“It was disappointing not to get anything from the game, but our overall performance was very good,” Docherty said. “I think anyone who saw this game would say we merited a draw, at least. Things seem a little bit unjust for us right now — we are not picking up the points that we feel our play merits.”

On this evidence, Samuel and St Johnstone are worth going to watch.