Scottish Premiership REVIEW 19 Sep 2026: Dundee United dismantle St Mirren in Paisley as our two surest calls of the day both miss

Our model went into this Premiership Saturday surest about two fixtures, and both of them came apart. The firmest call on the whole card was Hearts to win away at Kilmarnock, a shade under 54 per cent; the firmest home call was St Mirren against Dundee United. St Mirren lost 0-3, and it was over long before the interval. Jesse Randall put Dundee United in front on six minutes, Lyall Cameron made it two on twelve, and Kevin Ciubotaru finished the job on forty-five, poking in after a quickly taken free kick. The six minutes before that third goal decided the tone of the afternoon: a St Mirren penalty for a foul on Killian Phillips was wiped out when the video review found an offside earlier in the move, and moments later a red card shown to Daniel Bennie was downgraded to a yellow by the same process. Jim Goodwin took charge from the away dugout for the first time since a health scare that had kept him out of recent matches, and he did it at the club he once played for and later managed. "Certainly the best medicine that I could have hoped for was that type of result," he said afterwards.

The other call we felt strongest about ended in a share. Kilmarnock went ahead at Rugby Park inside the opening quarter of an hour, Jamie McCart turning the ball into his own net on sixteen minutes. Calum Ferrie, making his league debut in the Kilmarnock goal, kept the lead intact through a second half in which Hearts pressed harder and harder, and it survived until the 86th minute, when Stephen Kingsley seized on a loose ball in the box. Wouter Vrancken’s side had sold out their allocation at Rugby Park and brought something close to three and a half thousand with them; they went home with a point rather than the win our numbers expected.

At Easter Road the week's biggest story stood in the home technical area. Hibernian 1-1 Aberdeen was John Potter's first match in interim charge after David Gray was dismissed, with assistants Liam Craig and Craig Samson going too, and it ended a run of six straight home league defeats. Aberdeen led through Kevin Nisbet on seventeen minutes, a swivel and a low finish into the corner after Gavin Molloy had worked the ball to him; Nisbet was Aberdeen's leading scorer last season and Stephen Robinson called this one a captain's performance. Hibernian levelled from the penalty spot on sixty-two through Martin Boyle, awarded when Jack Milne caught Jason Kerr. This was the one fixture our model had pegged as a genuine coin-toss, barely favouring Aberdeen, and a draw is about the most honest answer that reading could have got. Potter said afterwards that the decision on who takes the squad through the international break, and on the permanent appointment, rests with the club rather than with him.

Perth produced the day's most dramatic finish, in a stadium missing a stand. St Johnstone had to close the East Stand because of an electrical fault and move those supporters into the Geoff Brown and North stands, and then had to play most of the second half a man short: Cheick Diabate, booked in first-half stoppage time for a foul on Ethan Ross, brought the same player down again and went off on fifty-three. Ross scored the goal, on sixty, cutting in on the shot after Owen Eames had pulled the ball back. St Johnstone 1-1 Falkirk was settled in the sixth minute of added time, when Enes Alic bent a free kick from twenty-five yards into the top corner for his first goal for the club. Simo Valakari made a point of the argument his players had over who should take it, and of the fact that Ruari Paton and Danny Schmidt both stood aside for the left foot. John McGlynn saw it as two points thrown away, and blamed the free kicks his side kept conceding once they were a goal and a man to the good.

Only one fixture went the way we called it, and it was the narrowest of our home picks. Dundee 2-1 Motherwell was led by a man in a protective mask: Joe Westley, who fractured a cheekbone earlier in the month and chose to play on rather than have it operated on, scored from the penalty spot on twenty-three after a video review for handball, and Bradley Fink doubled it on forty. Alex Lowry pulled one back for Motherwell right at the end of the half and the game changed shape completely after that, Dundee dropping deep and Motherwell holding the ball without doing much with it. Steven Pressley praised Westley's nerve, and said scoring mattered to a forward who lives off goals. Alfred Johansson thought the penalty soft and thought his side should have had one of their own in the last minute of added time, when Owen Goodman came together with substitute Eythor Bjorgolfsson and no review followed. That is the card done before the international break: one call landed and four missed, and the two we were most confident about were the two that got away.