St Andrews United's Greg Shields retains four and adds St Johnstone keeper

Former Rangers, Dunfermline Athletic, Charlton Athletic, Kilmarnock and Carolina RailHawks defender Shields, 48, who replaced Garry Wright as Saints boss in November having stepped down as Dunfermline Athletic Youth Academy leader last January, is combining his Saints managerial role with also working as a computer software manager.

Shields, who has also signed 18-year-old St Johnstone goalkeeper Kyle Thomson on loan until the end of the season, said: "It’s really good at this club. I’m enjoying it so far and I think the boys have been excellent.

"I think I’ve re-signed eight or nine of them, so they’ve shown a lot of promise and that’s all you want. I’m big on developing, players understanding their roles and what I expect of them.

"I see myself as a good man manager with people. So from that point it’s been great, it’s been a little bit of an education as well in terms of their habits and the difference between full-time and part-time football.

"But I’ve absolutely loved it, I really have. It certainly gets your mind out of your day work to focus on football, although my wife would probably not agree with me!

"She knows the high amount of time and effort that goes into this and I treat it like a full-time job.

"Don’t get me wrong, there are ups and downs too when you lose a game at the weekend, but the important thing is staying in the league this year, that’s the priority.”

United, who were defeated 2-0 at Whitehill Welfare in the East of Scotland Qualifying Cup fourth round last weekend (match report on page 31) are back in East of Scotland Football League Premier Division action at home to Hutchison Vale this Saturday.

Shields’ team go into the match third bottom and in the relegation zone with 14 points from 14 matches, but they are only five points behind this weekend’s 12th-placed opponents having played four fewer league fixtures.

"It’s a game of importance that’s for sure,” Shields said.

"It’s very, very tight in this league. We have a lot of hard games coming up. I would assume that every team’s like for like from what I’ve seen in the league so far.

"But Hutchy Vale will be looking at the game in exactly the same way. They will want to win. I hate the phrase ‘must win game’ because we take each week as it comes.

"We take care of Hutchy Vale this weekend, what will be will be.

"And then we’re onto the following week against Edinburgh Uni. That’s the way it is, I don’t have a focus in sight, saying: ‘We must do this’. I’m not doing that with the players, I’m too long in the tooth for that.”

On last weekend’s cup loss at Whitehill Welfare, Shields added: “We had so much of the ball and so many chances but we didn’t take them.

"It was one sided. I think they had three shots at goal the full game and two of them were breakaways and they scored from them.

"But that’s football, we see it every week. It’s up to the players to learn from that, close the door at the back end and take some of the many chances we created each week.

"My players played the way I want them to play. I don’t think we can continue a drought of not scoring goals if we are creating so many chances.

"Overall, the progression that I’ve seen in the seven or eight weeks that I’ve been in has been excellent in terms of how they want to play, what they’ve tried to do.

"There’s a shape to us, a discipline and I’ve been proud of them so far.

"Our one hiccup was last weekend, taking away the Cumnock game.

"Anything can happen in the cup. There’s no given right we should beat Whitehill.

"We knew it was going to be a hard game and it went against us which was disappointing because a cup run would have been good and the boys were told that.

"It’s not one you dwell on. We will move on pretty quickly and try to get back to what we were good at against Glenrothes as well.”