The Scottish Premiership playoffs final is level after the first leg involving St. Johnstone and Inverness Caledonian Thistle as the two meet at McDiarmid Park with the winner of this tie set to be in the SPFL setup for next season.
It's been a tremendously underwhelming campaign for St. Johnstone heading into this playoff final. Following a relatively decent season last time out where they finished with 45 points from all 38 games, the club ended up inside the top six spots in the Championship phase, avoiding the Relegation side of things by just a few points.
Now, however, after back-to-back sixth-placed finishes, the club ended up second from the bottom in the table and have struggled for consistency all season long. St. Johnstone did manage to avoid automatic relegation against Dundee United by six points in the table, however, but they finished an almighty 13 points off the leaders in the Relegation table, Livingston. What's more for the club, they scored a torrid 24 goals from the 38 games this season, which puts them as one of the lowest-scoring teams in SPFL history. Combine this with their defensive record of 51 goals conceded, they are also the second-worst defensive side in the Scottish top flight.
At the same time, the club have won just one game since they put together back-to-back wins in March, as they lost 7-0 to Celtic, drew with Dundee, lost to St. Mirren and drew with Livingston, just before they registered their only win in the past two months by beating Aberdeen 1-0. Hibernian would thrash St. Johnstone on the final day of the SPFL season too, but with Dundee already bottom by this stage, they got away with another dismal display.
Worse yet for them, in the first leg of this playoffs battle, they even let a two-goal lead slip. Shaun Rooney gave the club a 1-0 lead after 20 minutes, before Melker Hallberg made it 2-0 as it looked like St. Johnstone would make easy work of this two-legged affair. However, in stunning style, Reece McAlear scored twice within seven minutes towards the end of the game to bring the tie level heading back to McDiarmid Park.
As for Inverness, they two are on a winless run right now, and despite getting past Arbroath in the semi-finals of the playoffs just two weeks ago, both of the legs were goalless draws and they merely squeezed past them on penalties. Inverness did manage to beat Partick Thistle over two legs in the quarter-finals, however, meaning they now have just two wins in their past five games within the playoffs
