His side led 1-0 and looked comfortable prior to Kyle Magennis’ sending-off in the 70th minute. That incident saw a huge momentum swing that saw the Perth-side come from behind to win 2-1.
When speaking after the game, Lee Johnson gave his thoughts.
“I’m disappointed. We wanted to put a show on for the 19,500 Hibs fans, which to be honest, I thought we did for 60 minutes because of our energy, our spirit, playing on the front foot and pressing high.
“The game naturally got stressed but we had the key moments within it. If there’s a criticism within that, we didn’t execute the final ball anywhere near enough.
“We had good chances to slide people through one-on-one with the ‘keeper and either under hit them or failed with the detail in the pass. We had chances to spin crosses behind their back line and put them out of play or behind the goal. At 1-0 we had total control.
“We had a spell for 10-15 minutes where we gave the ball away too many times both facing our own goal or facing their goal, and there was a momentum swing at that point that led to us being stretched, which led to the key match incident which was the sending off.
“After that moment we have to defend the crosses better than what we did; that wasn’t down to the numerical advantage, it was down to us not concentrating enough.”
St Johnstone drew level just two minutes after Magennis saw red, with both of the away side’s goals coming from crosses into the box.
“Porto has been excellent and felt the first goal was a foul,” said our Manager. “He said there was a two handed contact in his back, but when you look back at it, even with bias, it didn’t look like it was strong enough, which is why VAR didn’t change their mindset on it.
“We have to defend both crosses better. We have three big, dominant big lads in there, but in the end the opposition wanted it more when it came to getting on the end of those.
“Obviously the Kyle Magennis sending off will lead people to say that I didn’t take him off earlier. It was something that we considered.
“We had live GPS that showed he was performing extremely well technically and physically.
“Naturally, I will take the criticism for that, but at the same time he did extremely way to maintain his fitness.
“He’s disappointed, we’re disappointed, and that was a key match incident.”
Prior to the ‘key match incident’ the Hibees had a number of chances to extend their lead, but didn’t manage to beat the ‘keeper, something that extremely frustrated Johnson.
“We can’t seem to kill teams off and that’s happened too many times this year; that’ll end up being the difference in where we finish this season.
“I also think someone will be on the end of a pasting at some point when everything falls for us.
“We’re 12 points in and experienced the league, but there’s four losses in there where we should’ve picked up points – including today.
“As the manager of the Football Club, I’m here to burden that, but as the same time, we continue to work.
“There’s a lot of points on offer, we’re in an ok position in the league, but we’d like to have more points on the board. It’ll be tight for the rest of the season, and we have to maintain our confidence. We know what we need to improve.”
