THE shot that Billy Mehmet slashed across Graeme Smith and into the net at Fir Park last Saturday brought the St Mirren forward his seventh goal of the season. Although artificially inflated by a Cooperative Insurance Cup hat-trick against Dumbarton, this tally is just one shy of his cumulative haul from last season. A new coherence in front of goal represents the most obvious of the many changes that Mehmet has caused, experienced and enjoyed over the past year.

There was a time, in the summer of 2007, when the Londoner’s Paisley career looked to be heading south. He had scored the goal that took St Mirren to the SPL in 2006, and the one that kept them there the following year, but there hadn’t been many in between. Four in 27 games, to be precise. Most of those appearances had been from the bench, minutes granted as an afterthought when Stewart Kean, John Sutton or Mark Corcoran failed to justify their status as first picks. It was a lonely life. “You didn’t really have much of a role,” says the 24-year-old. “It was hard to see where you fitted in.”

Mehmet’s transformation has been from angry man to talisman. He is not only in the team; he is its totem and, physically, its totem pole. Gus MacPherson, the St Mirren manager, will experiment with different means and method in attack, but Mehmet is the hulking constant, the fixed point in a moveable feast. He has started every game this season, flanked variously by Jim Hamilton, Dennis Wyness, Tom Brighton and Craig Dargo.

“I feel I’m really getting into games,” he says. “It’s been a big thing getting that faith from the manager, because it hasn’t always been there for me at clubs, and it has given me a lot of confidence. I’ve always been a target man, trying to link things, but I’ve been told to get on the end of things more and play further up. I know I’m an important part of the team now.”

The robustness of Mehmet’s frame, his touch and sharp awareness, mean that MacPherson can trust his man to blend with whoever is fielded beside him. Dargo thrives on his flick-ons, Wyness his ability to hold the ball up and play to feet, and Hamilton that comparative turn of pace. Brighton, employed on a wider beat, will benefit from his capacity to join the dots in the final third.

“Whoever I play with, I play with,” shrugs Mehmet, right. “The only thing I think about is making sure I’m one of the two. I do like playing with Jim, because you know he’s going to win a lot in the air, so you can gamble and look to win the second ball. We’ve got a good mix [of forwards], and any two will do a job.”

This belief does not have the backing of the stats, though. St Mirren scored fewer goals last year than any other side in Scotland, along with Kilmarnock, and would have faced a serious fight to avoid relegation had it not been for the get-out of Gretna. The pattern has endured in the new SPL campaign, with only a single Garry Brady goal to go with Mehmet’s four in their first seven games.

St Mirren go into today’s game bottom of the table. Because they score so few, it is tempting to reach the same conclusion as those visiting fans at Fir Park who branded him “negative” and held up a banner with the legend “unacceptable”. Tempting, but ill-advised. St Mirren may be blunt, but it is a leap from there to boring.

“I don’t know where that view can come from; we always look to get the ball down and pass,” says Mehmet. “The punters want the ball hit forward straight away, but sometimes it just can’t be like that. Sometimes you have to play it around the midfield, play it back and then maybe you’ll have the chance to hit the forwards. We’ve been trying to pass the ball round a lot more because it creates more problems and chances. We’ve got quality players. It says a lot for Gus that he’s stuck by his message despite the stick.”

This admiration is heartfelt, but it is also true that Mehmet perceives a bond of obligation towards his manager. It was MacPherson who rescued him from a first period of inactivity at Dunfermline, where the pair came across each other on the paddock but rarely on the park, so established was the Craig Brewster and Stevie Crawford partnership.

Mehmet had ended up at East End Park after 11 years at West Ham, where Anton Ferdinand, Glen Johnson and Freddy Eastwood were youth-teammates. “You’re training with players like Paolo di Canio, Freddie Kanoute and Jermain Defoe,” begins Mehmet, “so someone thinks you have something. When you’re let go and then can’t get in at Dunfermline and St Mirren, your confidence takes a dunt.

You start to think, ‘Am I good enough?’

But in football it’s about how you react, not where you start off.”

And, as he and St Mirren well know, how you finish as well.