St Mirren manager Gus MacPherson lapped up Graham Carey's goal

St Mirren manager Gus MacPherson hailed Graham Carey's impact after the on-loan Celtic midfielder's wonder-goal helped his side draw against Hearts.

However, he was frustrated the Paisley team could not hold onto their advantage to secure a precious win.

"Graham Carey's doing a fantastic job," he said.

"But we stressed the importance of starting the second half properly. We didn't do that, made mistakes in the build-up to the goal and it cost us."

Carey was at his best from set-pieces, but at times looked to be struggling when asked to defend.

However, MacPherson is happy with the job the youngster is doing.

"There's no doubt that defending isn't the strongest part of his game, but we can't criticise that side of it," he said. "We've got to help to develop that.

"At Celtic he was an attacking midfielder on the left-hand side and gave the balance in there, but in our current squad situation we're forced into playing 3-5-2 and he's doing a sterling job for us.

"We've already seen it at Ibrox from Graham where he had a wonderful free-kick. It's the quality he has. He has worked on it at Lennoxtown and come into our training base and he's out there for sometimes 45 minutes working on his technique."

St Mirren remain three points off the foot of the table and head to bottom side Falkirk next week, but MacPherson is not overly concerned about a relegation battle.

"It can quickly change at the bottom. Everyone talks about gaps that are there but it can change from week to week," he said.

"We can only focus on our own games. We play Falkirk next week and we know it will be a tough match, but we look forward to the challenge."

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