Motherwell 1-2 St Johnstone: Fourth almost Saints', says Wright

St Johnstone won their third match in a row

Tommy Wright says a fourth-placed Premiership finish is still not certain, despite St Johnstone recording victory away to Motherwell.

Goals from Steven MacLean and Danny Swanson cancelled out Scott McDonald's early opener to move Saints five points clear of Well with two games to play.

Saints face Celtic and Hearts while Well play Ross County and Celtic.

"Pretty much, but not yet 100% with two games left," said boss Wright when asked if Saints' had secured fourth.

"It means Motherwell would have to win their last two and we would have to pick up no points. We are still hopeful we can pick up the one point that would get us top four, and that would be another great achievement by the players."

A mistake from goalkeeper Zander Clark allowed McDonald the chance to score early in the game.

"We should deal with it, and we don't," said Wright. "The back pass is a wee bit short and Zander Clark has tried to hit it with the outside of his foot and get it away from the player and unfortunately it went straight to McDonald.

"But we bounce back well. It was pretty even, we get the goal back but I think from 1-1 we were the better side."

Mark McGhee (left) felt Motherwell should have won

The one negative for St Johnstone was the sight of midfielder Murray Davidson limping off in the first half.

"He trained on Friday and everything was fine but his hamstring tightened up again so that will rule him out for the rest of the season," Wright explained.

Motherwell manager Mark McGhee felt his side should have won.

"The game was there for us to win in the first half," he said. "We had some glaring chances that we missed at 1-0 and I think if we had taken one of those at 1-0 we would have gone on and won the game.

"As it was we didn't. We lost two soft goals and the second half was really a very end-of-season performance.

"People looked tired, we no longer had any sort of joined-up play and no quality about us. It was a bit of a slog the second half."

As far as McGhee is concerned, the race for fourth spot is now over.

"I think we now have to get fifth spot, that is all we can do," he added.

"We are disappointed but the lads have had a magnificent effort to get ourselves to this position where we had a chance of fourth."