Callum Davidson ‘up for the fight’ to keep job after cup upset at Kelty Hearts
Posted Sunday, January 23, 2022 by PA
St Johnstone manager Callum Davidson is adamant he will battle to save his job after his side’s Scottish Cup exit at the hands of Kelty Hearts.
The Premiership strugglers succumbed to an embarrassing 1-defeat in extra-time when the League Two side clinched a fifth-round encounter with St Mirren.
For Saints, it was a 10th straight loss and Davidson accepts there are question marks over his ability to cope with the growing pressure.
He said: “I’m fighting, I am up for the fight. I want to fight, be here, change things and get results. We need the players to do that too.
“St Johnstone is a club close to me, so I won’t stop – I will be fighting until I get to the day I’m told not to. It’s not in my character to do anything else.
“In the first half I was really disappointed that we didn’t do what we worked on. The second half was a bit better.
“And then to lose the goal in extra-time the way we did was really poor. There were loads of mistakes in there. It was our corner and we’ve lost a goal from it.
“After that confidence fell right out of the team.
“That’s probably the lowest I’ve been as a manager here.”
For Kelty, it was a famous victory for a club in their first season in the SPFL following promotion from the Lowland League last summer.
The Fife outfit are seven points clear in League Two and manager Kevin Thomson, the former Rangers and Scotland midfielder, admits they always had belief they could pull off a shock.
Kallum Higginbotham’s extra-time strike was enough to separate the teams on a day that belonged to the part-timers.
Thomson said: “We were playing against a team three leagues above us, a Premiership team, and we knew we would have to be disciplined and patient.
“And when we did get the ball back we had to be good on it.
“I think you could see with the subs we made, we wanted to try to win and, to a man, I have to say the boys were unbelievable.
“I said to them at the start of the game, ‘if you trust our shape and show a bit of quality, you will get chances’.
“When those chances come, you hope they fall to the right player and, thankfully for us, it did with Kallum.
“What we achieved was through sheer quality and desire and drive.
“I said to them before the game that we ain’t here to make the numbers up. This isn’t a free hit for us.
“That’s not the way I want us to think. I wanted us to think we were capable of winning this game.”
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