St Johnstone boss Simo Valakari reveals Championship title-winning theory

The Courier

02-06-2025

St Johnstone boss, Simo Valakari, has crunched the numbers of title-winning Championship teams.
The Finn's homework on success in the second tier of Scottish football will feed into the strategy he adopts in his attempt to bring the Perth club back to the top-flight at the first time of asking.
And the fact that he has already signed three players from that division who are familiar with the demands of the job in front of the McDiarmid Park side is evidence Valakari is already putting theory into practice.
'I've been looking at the statistics for the last five years,' said the head coach.
'The champions have only averaged 1.3 goals per game, but they have conceded just 0.6 goals.
'That's the key – defending well and being hard to beat.
'It means that when you take your chances, you win games.
'You don't abandon your principles.
'I've mentioned 'big club football' before.
'That doesn't mean we will go into this league thinking we are a big team.
'No, we were relegated because we deserved to be relegated, and everybody has the same chance at the start of the season.
'We will adapt to the league and its demands – it will be physical, with not much room to play sometimes.
'And the conditions won't be great in the winter.
'So, what I mean is that we want to dominate games.
'For that to happen, we have to improve our quality.
'I look at our last game against Dundee – we arrived in the final third a lot, but we weren't even close to being good enough after that.'
There will be a large dose of pragmatism in Valakari's approach to Saints' football next season.
He said: 'What kind of team are we trying to build? A winning team.
'Winning football matches will always be the most important thing, not the tactics or anything else.
'That's the starting point.
'We saw glimpses of how I would like us to play.
'We want to control the ball, move forward rather than backwards and sideways, get as many balls into the penalty box as we can.
'I know what the Championship will be like.
'Since I came back to Scotland I've watched it a lot.
'We needed to be solid and hard to beat in the Premiership and that will be even more important next season.'
Valakari has signed defenders Jack Baird and Morgan Boyes from Morton as he seeks to make Saints are more imposing opponent.
In football, size does matter.
'We definitely need to be physically stronger than we were last season,' he said.
'But you can be a good player and be physical.
'There are players like that in the league already.
'We were lacking in physicality last season – it was legs to get about the pitch as much as just pure body strength.
'That's something we need to address.
'Especially at the end of the season, when I looked at all our opponents, we were such a small team in comparison – Kilmarnock, Ross County, Dundee, all of them were much bigger than us.
'So that is something we are looking to address this summer.'