John Sutton was grateful for the compliments paid to St Mirren by Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers after Sunday’s Scottish Cup clash, but he says no number of warm platitudes will make up for being relegated to League One.
Celtic boss Rodgers praised Jack Ross’s side in the aftermath of their eventual 4-1 defeat, claiming that the Buddies were the best side he has faced up to domestically this season.
But Saints striker Sutton wasn’t taking any consolation from his comments in the wake of their exit from the competition.
The only pick-me-up that Sutton will settle for is picking up three massive points from tomorrow night’s crunch relegation battle against Raith Rovers.
“It was nice of him to say that but at the end up, we’re not going to keep our Championship status off the back of a Brendan Rodgers compliment,” Sutton said. “We need points on the board.
“It’s a nice compliment. It’s funny how he felt for Celtic that we were tough opposition. Sometimes teams might not be doing that well overall but prove to be bogey teams for whatever reason.
“We’re not particularly positive after the Celtic game because at the end of the day we lost in a cup competition and we’re out.
“We knew Celtic were a good team, but we lost and as much as we received a bit of praise for our performance from different people, we now have to move on to Wednesday which is a totally different type of game.
“The expectations are completely different and it’s a huge game for us.
“When you play Celtic and even when you play Hibs to an extent, they are the bigger club and the pressure is on them, but Wednesday is different.
“They are six points ahead of us and a win to take them nine clear would be a big thing for them, but we know that if we can get a win and go within three points and just one game of them then that would be huge for us.
“We’re under no illusions about how important it is, and like the manager said, it is important that we go out and put on a good performance.
“It was a big game we lost at the weekend because if we had won we would have been in the semi-final.
“It’s a big game on Wednesday too though because we can get right back in the mix, and every game between now and the end of the season is going to have an implication for us I would have thought.
“We’ve got to treat every game like a cup final.”
The run pieced together by St Mirren before Sunday’s defeat to the champions has given their supporters hope that they can dig their way out of the trouble they are in at the bottom of the Championship.
Sutton says that the players have faith they can get the results they require, even if that means compromising their footballing style at times.
“I think the belief in our ability has always been there, it’s just about putting the performances together,” he said.
“The pleasing thing before the weekend was that we had managed to get four wins. There were times in that run where we didn’t play as well as we’d like, but we managed to get the result at the end up.
“That was a good bit of form, and that’s something we’ll have to do now until the end of the season, because if we don’t pick up points then we all know the implications.”
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