Jason Holt and Fabio Cardoso have been giving their thoughts following victory over St Johnstone.
With Pedro Caixinha describing the three nil win – goals from a Carlos Pena brace and Graham Dorrans – as the best performance of the season so far, Holt was speaking to the Official Site as he met with the media following the game and he wasn’t just delighted to have been back involved on Friday evening, he also praised the squad for how they dealt with the threat of the hosts before we took charge.
‘It was great. I`ve had to bide my time, keep my head down, keep working hard and try to impress the gaffer in training to be ready when called upon. I was called upon and I am delighted with how the game went. It was a good performance and one where we wanted to get the clean sheet. If you do that in any game you have a great chance of winning.’
Holt went on to say.
‘Obviously, recently we haven`t kept so many clean sheets – but we have been good going forward and we just needed to tighten up at the back. We have done a lot of work on that in the last couple of weeks and I think it showed tonight. We had a spell when they put us under a lot of pressure with a few corners, but I thought we did extremely well to defend our goal. It was definitely and area we wanted to improve on and I think we did that tonight.’
With the Betfred Cup semi-final next up on the horizon against Motherwell, he ended by saying.
‘It is a great occasion for us as players, the staff and the fans. We will go into it confident and we know it is going to be a difficult game. We will go in to it and hopefully we do well.’
As for Cardoso, he credited a complete team performance for the victory as we kept the clean sheet.
‘It is a very good win, a very important one, it is more three points away and it is a clean sheet. We are improving and we still need to improve more, we are going to do that in all games and as a team starting with today. I am very happy with Pena but it could be anyone when a team play like us all together.’
He went on to say.
‘We deserved to win and of course I am happy for Pena but I am happy for Dorrans, I am happy for Wes and I am happy for me – I am happy for us all. Pena is a smart player, even without the ball he is always searching for the empty space to receive the ball and turn to the goal. He is a very good player and to score goals in the box with his head when he is not very tall he has to be smart.’
With Motherwell being his first trip to the national stadium, he knew the results sent us into the Cup game in good confidence and he was looking forward to it.
‘Playing with Bruno is an honour for me but last week I played with Ross and he is an amazing player, he is very young and has a lot of potential. I think he is going to be the future of Scotland because he is very good with the ball and without, I like him a lot. It is good for me being with Bruno too because we are always talking, he has a lot of experience and he commands me and demands a lot of me. Next weekend is going to be an important game because it is the next and because it is a semi-final and we want to be in the final and to win. Now we are going rest, keep training and improving all day together and do our best to win the game.’
