St Johnstone

The club

St Johnstone were founded in 1884 in Perth and take their name from St John's Toun, the town's older name; the nickname that follows is the Saints. They have played at McDiarmid Park since leaving Muirton Park in 1989. The ground holds 10,696. The home strip is blue and white, the change strip predominantly white. Jason Holt is club captain.

Recent seasons

St Johnstone were sixth in the Premiership in 2019/20 with 45 points, then fifth in 2020/21, again with 45, the season they won both domestic cups. The fall began immediately: eleventh in 2021/22 with 35 points, which meant the Premiership play-off final against Inverness Caledonian Thistle. They drew the first leg 2-2 at the Caledonian Stadium on 20 May 2022 and won the return 4-0 at McDiarmid Park on 23 May, 6-2 on aggregate. Ninth in 2022/23 with 43 points and tenth in 2023/24 with 35 bought time, but 2024/25 ended it: bottom, twelfth with 32 points from 38 games, nine wins and 24 defeats, relegated automatically with no play-off. Craig Levein managed until 17 September 2024, Andy Kirk took interim charge, and Simo Valakari was appointed on 1 October 2024.

Valakari stayed for the drop and took the club straight back. St Johnstone won the 2025/26 Championship with 77 points from 36 games, 22 wins, 11 draws, three defeats, 67 scored and 25 conceded, eleven clear of Partick Thistle. Josh McPake was the division's top scorer with 16 league goals and 19 in all competitions. They opened that season 5-1 at home to Partick and beat Greenock Morton 5-0 in December. The cups were less kind: out to Motherwell in the League Cup second round, to Ayr United on penalties in the Challenge Cup quarter-finals, and to Cove Rangers in the Scottish Cup third round.

Honours and landmarks

The obvious one is 2020/21, when St Johnstone won the Scottish Cup and the League Cup in the same season, both finals settled 1-0 and Shaun Rooney scoring the winner in each. The Scottish Cup final was at Hampden on 22 May 2021, St Johnstone 1-0 Hibernian, Rooney heading in a David Wotherspoon cross on 32 minutes. It made them the only club outside Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen to take both cups in one season. Their other Scottish Cup win came in 2013/14. They were League Cup runners-up in 1969 (1-0 to Celtic) and 1998 (2-1 to Rangers), and won the Challenge Cup in 2007/08.

Eight second-tier league titles: 1923/24, 1959/60, 1962/63, 1982/83, 1989/90, 1996/97, 2008/09 and 2025/26. Record attendance at Muirton Park was 29,972 against Dundee in the Scottish Cup on 10 February 1951; at McDiarmid Park it is 10,545, also against Dundee, in the Premier Division on 23 May 1999. Liam Craig holds the appearance record with 442 and John Brogan the goals record with 140. Jimmy Benson scored 44 in 1931/32, the most in a season, and Willie McIntosh six in one game against Albion Rovers on 9 March 1946. Record fee paid is £400,000 for Billy Dodds from Dundee in 1994; record fee received is £1,750,000 for Callum Davidson to Blackburn Rovers in 1998. Their last European campaign was 2021/22: out to Galatasaray in Europa League qualifying, then to LASK in the Conference League play-off, both after away draws and home defeats.

Notable scorelines

Record win: 13-0 against Tulloch in the Perthshire Cup on 17 September 1887. Record defeat: 1-11 against Montrose in the Northern League on 1 April 1893. Both are from the club's earliest years and no modern-era equivalents are published. More usable is the 1-0 home win over Celtic on 6 April 2025, Daniels Balodis scoring in the fourth minute, in a season St Johnstone finished bottom; a fortnight later the same opponents beat them 5-0 in the Scottish Cup semi-final at Hampden on 20 April 2025.

Head-to-head notes

All-time head-to-head records for St Johnstone are not established: 11v11.co.uk blocks automated access and the club's own site does not publish running totals. What can be stated is the last league meeting with most of this season's opponents, all from 2024/25. They beat Celtic 1-0 at home on 6 April 2025, Motherwell 2-1 at home on 25 January and St Mirren 1-0 away on 1 February, and drew 0-0 with Aberdeen on 15 March. The rest were defeats: at home to Rangers 3-1, Hibernian 3-0, Dundee United 1-0 and Kilmarnock 2-0, and away at Hearts 2-1 and Dundee 2-0. Falkirk is the gap: the two have missed each other for years, Falkirk having come up from the Championship in 2024/25 while St Johnstone were still in the Premiership, and no recent meeting could be established.

Right now (2026/27)

Simo Valakari remains manager, appointed 1 October 2024, and is into his third season having taken the club down and back up. The summer was built on frees and loans: Daniel Finlayson from Livingston on 20 May 2026, Matthew Todd from Dunfermline Athletic on 11 June, Unax Alvarez from CD Guadalajara on 17 June and Logan Chalmers from Partick Thistle on 21 June, all free. Zach Mitchell came on loan from Charlton Athletic on 6 July and goalkeeper Toby Steward on loan from Portsmouth on 7 July. Macaulay Tait signed from Heart of Midlothian on 17 July for an undisclosed fee, the only fee paid. The loss that matters is Josh McPake, the Championship's top scorer, who left for Hearts on a free on 27 May 2026; Fran Franczak, Jonathan Svedberg, Reghan Tumilty and Stevie Mallan were released the same day, and left-back Scott Bright joined Stenhousemuir on 10 July. (The club's own news archive redirects to a staging host whose older pages return 404, so these dates are from Wikipedia, not club announcements.)

In Premier Sports Cup Group F they won 2-0 at Linlithgow Rose on 14 July and beat Greenock Morton 3-0 at home on 18 July, then lost 1-0 at Inverness Caledonian Thistle on 21 July and drew 1-1 at home with East Fife on 25 July, losing the shootout 5-4. Seven points left them third behind Inverness on 11 and East Fife on nine, short of the last 16. The Premiership campaign opens at home to Kilmarnock on Sunday 2 August 2026 at 2pm, with a trip to St Mirren on 8 August.

Sources

Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.