Early bird catches the worm

Greg Tansey scored inside three minutes to give the visitors an early lead, but despite creating plenty, it took until the hour mark before they eventually nabbed a second goal through Ryan Christie. The Buddies looked down and out at this point but the home side were thrown a lifeline when Jim Goodwin scored with a header after a corner. With the bulk of the possession, Inverness did enough to claim all three points as they held on for a 1-2 victory.

RIG was at the game and he has posted his report on CTO

In the first half I thought we were excellent. Our passing was quick, crisp and positive. We carved Saint Mirren apart on numerous occasions and, as many have said, could have been out of site by half time. Watkins passed up a couple of good chances. One, similar to those against Partick the other week, where he burst in behind the defence but sent his effort wide. The other he tried to lob Ridgers who blocked his initial effort and then from the follow up Watkins skewed the ball wide.

Meekings had a header come off the bar. Some folk said that it might have gone in but even from the normally non conclusive highlights it doesn't look like it's anywhere near going over. Draper also had a good chance as well but his effort was blocked by the backside of a Saint Mirren defender.

Luckily we did find a way through and it was from great build up down the left and, more incredibly, from a throw in which we are normally dreadful at. Shinnie played a neat interchange with Christie (I think), receiving the ball back and headed goal wards before cutting the ball back to Tansey who was arriving at the edge of the box and he coolly passed the ball into the net. Great goal from an ICT perspective. As above we dominated the first half but seemed to lose our way in the second half somewhat. Similar to games against Ross County and Partick Thistle in recent weeks it looked like we might pay for not holding a bigger lead. Our passing seemed to become less adventurous and more focused on keeping the ball but minus the attacking intent we had seen in the first half. Saint Mirren looked a lot livelier and more resilient in the second half and we struggled for a time to break them down. Fortunately we did grab a second goal when Raven managed to break down the right and play in Christie who, after what looked like an amazing piece of skilful miscontrol, sent Ridgers the wrong way and doubled our lead.

Saints struck back when a corner was met by Goodwin as he out muscled Warren and steered a header past Esson. After that we had our backs to the wall for most of the rest of the game and MccAusland passed up two great opportunities to draw Saint Mirren level. The first, again from a corner, found him free towards the back post but he couldn't quite bring the Buddies back on level terms. The second chance, perhaps the better of the two, came fro ma free kick which evaded everyone and found its way to MccAusland who seemed somewhat taken aback that it had gotten as far as him, and he couldn't adjust his body to get a header on target.

A fine result which should have been more emphatic than the scoreline depicts but thankfully we got away with passing up some of those great chances. It will be interesting to see how we rectify the apparent easing off in games after a good start. Hughes seems to be aware of this (based on his post match interview) but we haven't seen any changes yet to stop this from happening. We dropped a vital two points against County because of it so hopefully it won't happen again.

Date: 14.02.2015 Venue: St Mirren Park, Paisley Attendance: 3154
Referee: Bobby Madden
 
St Mirren: 1
Lineup: Ridgers, Naismith, McAusland, Goodwin, Kelly, Dayton (Wylde 71), McGinn (Sonupe 61), Osbourne, Mallan, Arquin (Mclear 46), Thompson
Subs (not used):  Kello, Reilly, Tesselaar, Baird
Scorers: Goodwin (68)
Booked: none
Sent Off: none

Inverness CT: 2
Lineup: Esson, Raven, Shinnie, Warren, Meekings, Draper, Ross, Watkins, Tansey, Williams (Polworth 90), Christie
Subs (not used):  MacKay, Devine, Horner, Tremarco, Sutherland, Ferguson
Scorers: Tansey (3), Christie (60)
Booked: Draper (82), Watkins (85)
Sent Off: none