Lyon: St Kilda should welcome the pressure

The pressure surrounding St Kilda on the back of a below par season should be accepted, rather than refuted by the club, according to Garry Lyon.

Saints coach Ross Lyon admitted earlier this week that missing the top 10 is below the standard they are striving for, and as a club, both coaches and players need to improve.

Leading footy analyst Lyon agrees with his namesake's assessment of the 11th-placed side.

“They would have thought they’d be inside the top 10,” Lyon said on SEN Breakfast.

“I called it natural pressure, it's welcome pressure, and it's accepted pressure that the Saints are under, that the Bulldogs will be under, that the Kangaroos probably will be under over the summer months. It's great.

“And Richmond get into this a bit because they get so many injuries that there hasn't been that great pressure because everyone just goes, oh well.”

Lyon’s co-host, Tim Watson, says the Saints have not reached the expectations put on them after their big list decisions last off-season.

“They haven't met their own expectations,” Watson said.

“In the lead-up to this season, I think there was a general level of excitement about where they might be and how they were going to perform this year, and they haven't been able to meet.”

The Saints own a 9-12 record and currently sit eight points out of the Wildcard slots.

If Carlton wins one of their next two games, the Saints cannot make the Wildcard Finals Round. However, if the Blues lose both games (against the Bulldogs and Fremantle) and St Kilda wins both games (against Richmond and Gold Coast), they remain a mathematical chance to make it.

The Saints are firm favourites to beat Richmond in a potential banana-peel game in which premiership Tigers Nathan Broad and Dion Prestia will bow out after announcing their respective retirements.