Stevie May is relieved to be back in action after fearing his recent injury would keep him sidelined through St Johnstone’s busy festive schedule.

The striker suffered a knee injury in training in November and the initial prognosis was that he would be out until Christmas at least.

However, after missing just four games, May was back in the squad on Wednesday and came on as a half-time substitute in the 2-0 defeat away to Rangers.

He said: “Getting the injury wasn’t ideal but when it first happened, I thought it was far worse than it was. I’ve recovered four weeks ahead of schedule so it could have been worse.

“I was expecting to miss the whole Christmas period but thankfully I’m back now.

“I was out for four weeks or so, so my basic fitness is still there. It’s just a case of getting back into the swing of it again. There are a lot of games coming up, so I need to be ready.”

Saints are currently joint-bottom of the cinch Premiership with Ross County after four consecutive league defeats. With five games remaining before the winter break, starting with Saturday’s match at Motherwell, May is well aware of the need to start getting points on the board.

He said: “We don’t want to become detached at the bottom but at the moment it’s such a tight league that you could win two games and be pushing into the top six and all of a sudden everything looks so different. It’s about getting that result to kick-start us and our plan is to do that against Motherwell.”

May takes heart from the fact St Johnstone have made a habit in recent years of coming on strong in the second half of the season after making a slow start.

He said: “It’s a position we’ve been in, not just last season but also previous seasons.

“Notoriously as a club we always seem to start slow, which isn’t ideal but we’ve got players who have been in this situation before, who have come back from being in a rough spot around the bottom of the league near Christmas.

“There’s no reason we can’t go on a run but we need to start on that run and we’ll be looking to do that this week.

“We need to get that one result that will hopefully kick-start us because there are so many games coming up that there are a lot of points to be had.”