Levein confident Saints can climb the table

Craig Levein says he is “encouraged” by what he's seen so far at St Johnstone, and the new Saints boss believes there’s enough talent in the squad to climb the Scottish Premiership table.

The McDiarmid Park outfit currently sit bottom of the league, but have taken four points from their last two games and are just two points behind Livingston in 11th ahead of their game against Ross County on Saturday.

“The training has been great and I'm encouraged," Levein said.

“It's going to take a little bit of time but I've been really pleased with the performance that the boys put under Alex [Cleland] and the effort that they put in for my first game.

“The league is so condensed and unusual, the opportunity and the capability to climb the table is possible and that's what I’ll try to do.

“There’s enough talent in the dressing room for me to feel confident about it.

“We are at home and we need to take the game to [Ross County], we need to be attack-minded and we need to be secure at the back.

“We want our supporters to be looking forward to coming along and seeing the team play well and to win matches, that's the goal of every person inside this building.

“Having the games so quickly has been quite difficult to implement things that I see as longer term and things that we feel will serve us in good stead, we'll get some time in this international break and that'll help for sure.”