91Èȱ¬

Chris Millar scored a rare goal as St Johnstone came from behind to defeat Dundee United 2-1 in the Tayside derby.

The result denied Dundee United the opportunity to close the gap on Scottish Premiership leaders Celtic to two points.

St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright told 91Èȱ¬ Scotland: "I thought it was comprehensive.

"They were always dangerous on the counter attack, but I think we controlled large parts of that game and fully deserved the victory.

"What you saw today was a team playing with confidence and that's on the back of some great results. But first and foremost it's based on working hard for each other and that's our badge of honour almost, that nobody will outwork us.

"He [Millar] has a goal scoring bonus in his contract and the chairman always ribs him that it'll never be paid out, but he'll be glad to pay that out today.

"It was a tremendous goal. He's spent a lot of time on the ball, dropped his shoulder, and put in a very good finish against a very good goalkeeper."

Another positive for the Saints was the return of Steven MacLean who managed the full 90 minutes for the first time since an operation on his knee in September.

"Ideally we wouldn't have liked to have played him today but we knew Brian [Graham] was going to be missing, we thought Faddy [James McFadden] would make it but he didn't," said Wright.

"It shows his character to be back a week early."

Dundee United assistant manager Simon Donnelly was surprised at how his side let a winning position slip after Calum Butcher's first-half goal was cancelled out by Michael O'Halloran's header before Millar's late winner.

"We managed to get our noses in front in the first half with a well-worked goal and we certainly didn't see that coming in the second half," he said.

"It was maybe a bit of naivety on our part trying to push for the second goal. They were bad goals to lose from our point of view.

"We certainly had chances. We maybe left ourselves a bit too open to the break trying to get the second goal but when you look back over the piece we had three or four really good chances there to make it 2-0 and effectively kill the game."

Donnelly revealed a few players were suffering from illness as his side look to get back to winning ways in Thursday's Dundee derby.

He said: "We'll give the boys a few days to recover. There is a bit of illness throughout the camp, and then it's a good one to respond with.

"We bounced back well last week on the back of a bad result and the frustrating thing for us is we haven't got that consistency in terms of results to build on and keep ourselves moving in the table."