St Johnstone midfielder Matt Smith says new era will be a ‘clean slate’ but old habits need kicked

The appointment of a new St Johnstone manager is a natural “clean slate”, Matt Smith admitted.

But the Perth midfielder believes that the task of kicking old habits lies firmly at the feet of the McDiarmid Park players.

Saints lost 6-0 to Celtic on Saturday.

The Glasgow giants were relentless, with manager, Brendan Rodgers, praising their “Champions League mentality” in a Premiership fixture that had the look of an inevitable victory before a ball was kicked.

Smith, though, insisted that Saints can’t hide behind Celtic’s excellence.

And “accountability” needs to be their mantra as a new era is expected to begin before they face the other Scottish football powerhouse, Rangers, on Sunday.

“As professionals, at home, to lose 6-0, it doesn’t matter who you’re playing,” said the Wales international. “It’s frustrating and it hurts.

“I’m not taking away from the fact that they’re a very good team but as a group we feel that some of the goals were definitely avoidable – we switched off and you can’t do that against teams like Celtic.

“They punish you. They were ruthless.

“This is going to be a learning curve for us as a group. We don’t know what’s going to happen next, who’s coming in or anything like that.

“For us, as players, we’ve got to take accountability and say we’ve got to improve and we’ve got to get better.

“It’s not just after this game. If you look at the last few, there have been avoidable goals.

“You speak about the same sort of things and it gets frustrating but no one is going to sort it out apart from us as players – especially when it’s the basics of defending, tracking runners or doing the dirty side of the game.

“We’re the only ones who can control that sort of thing.

“We’ve got to step up and use it as a clean slate to go again.

“We’ve got to take accountability. That’s the big word.

“It’s not good enough and has to improve. It’s as simple as that.”

Keeping spirits high

There can be no self-pity in the wake of the one-sided contest at the weekend, according to Smith.

“Rangers aren’t going to feel sorry for us and the situation we’re in,” he said.

“It’s going to be a tough game again.

“We’re aware of that and we can’t let this be a hangover.

“If you start feeling sorry for yourself or things like that, you’ll get punished again.

“We’ve got to keep the spirits as high as we can.

“We’ve gone to Old Firm teams before and got results so that’s got to be our mentality.”