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The National (Scotland)
The National (Scotland)
Sport
David Irvine

Q&A: Every word of Steven MacLean's astonishing St Johnstone rant

Everything Steven MacLean had to say on BBC Sportsound after St Johnstone crumbled to a 4-0 defeat to St Mirren.

It was clearly a sore one for you, wasn't it? 

"Yeah, poor. Four-nil away from home, not good enough. It's my responsibility, my team, we were not good enough all over the pitch and we need to be better in all areas. It's a tough one to take but we need to dust ourselves down and go again on Wednesday night."

Was any of it down to being rusty after two weeks off?

"Nothing to do with that. Individuals not taking responsibility. Listen, ultimately it is me who needs to take responsibility for this team but I do, I take responsibility but it's poor and some of them should be ashamed of their performance. Individual errors, battling qualities, second balls...just fight. It's not good enough, it's not acceptable."

This is as angry as I have seen you after a game actually?

"Listen, you can't dress it up it is as simple as that - a four-nil defeat. For how many final entries we have into their box and they have into ours, we don't seem to get any first contact in their box. The goals that we concede are criminal."

How do you heal this wound? 

"It's up to me and we'll do it. We will be in tomorrow and we'll work on it and we'll watch it back. Some players might be lucky to play again for me."

Really? As serious as that? 

"As simple as that."

What kind of numbers are we talking about? 

"I'm not going to tell people just now but it's not acceptable and I'm not having it."

That's pretty frank talking in post-mortem from you? 

"There is no dressing it up, it's as simple as that. Poor and I'm not accepting it."

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