PAUL STURROCK pointed to an entire team of injuries following Saturday's 2-1 loss to Charlton.

The Saints boss was honest in his assessment of his side's poor first-half display but stressed the terrible injury situation was again worsened on Saturday when Anders Svensson limped off with a hamstring problem after just 13 minutes.

"The changes were forced upon me and things like Anders getting a hamstring strain are not the sort of thing you want to happen," he said.

"What I will say is that if I had a team of Niemi, Dodd, Lundekvam, Svensson, Higginbotham, Delap, Oakley, Le Saux, McCann, Phillips and Pahars, I think we might have won that game."

Sturrock admitted he told his players exactly what he thought of their display in the opening 45 minutes at half-time and he was pleased with how they responded.

"We have come here and tried to play a game in 45 minutes.

"We didn't win any headers in the first half at either end of the pitch, so I was disappointed with the way we started," he said.

"You can't try and win a game against a quality team like Charlton in 45 minutes.

"You have to play at that tempo for 90 minutes, but I'm pleased we didn't go out with a whimper.

"We had words at half-time. We had 3-4,000 fans here, so we had words and the lads came out the traps in the second half and had a go.

"They responded properly and did the things we've done in the last two games. If we had gone from the start of the game, we would be having a different discussion, so maybe it's a learning curve for us.

"There were a lot of inexperienced players in the team, so we have to take plusses out of the game."

Sturrock felt the thrilling midweek 3-3 draw with Newcastle may very well have left his players jaded at The Valley on Saturday.

"I think we had a wee bit of backlash from Wednesday," he said. "They were fresher than us and it took a while for us to get the pace of the game.

"I think a lot of our players were playing on adrenaline on Wednesday night - it was a very exciting game."

He added: "But the way we start games is something we will have to look at.

"We were more positive in our approach in the second half and we won our headers at both ends, which we didn't do in the first half."