St Kilda president Andrew Bassat has backed senior coach Ross Lyon’s press conferences after his latest back-and-forth with a journalist.

Lyon pointed to the Saints’ fixture in defending his side’s start to the season following a loss to Adelaide but his answers were described as “condescending” by AFL player agent Liam Pickering.

“I would think if you take out win-loss we’ve improved. Is that rational and logical? You’re allowed a judgement, what do you think?” Lyon asked the journalist.

Pickering and SEN colleague Josh Jenkins both said journalists should refuse to show up to Lyon press conferences.

“It just doesn’t cut it for mine, and he does it regularly especially when they lose. If I was a journo I wouldn’t bother turning up,” Pickering said.

“And he’s getting away with it, that’s the reality — ‘oh, that’s just Ross, he’s feisty’. It’s just not good enough in my opinion.”

Jenkins added: “What I don’t like about it is it’s a level playing field. He’s not on a pedestal and they’re down beneath him as people or in their respective professions. There’s just not a level of respect there.”

“He doesn’t do it every week, and often he can be very entertaining and very informative,” Jenkins went on.

“He was almost testing reporters — ‘who have we played? And then who did we play? Say it louder, I couldn’t hear you’.

“It’s just all nonsense and it’s all noise and it’s all deflection away. They are playing a brand of footy that can give them an opportunity to win games but at the end of the day you are what your record says you are.

“You’re two wins and four losses, so you’ve got to find a way to get better versus sitting in there and making other people look inferior.”

But Bassat has no plans to rein in the Saints’ most recent grand final coach.

“It’s a pretty tough situation we put coaches in,” the president told ABC radio.

“You have a one-point loss, you don’t have much luck in the running, you’ve got to front an interview.

“I think Ross is much better with good questions than he is with bad questions. I cop it myself from time to time.

“Ask stupid questions, win stupid prizes, is his view.

“I think if he gets an intelligent and fair question, he’ll respond to it fairly. If he doesn’t, he’s perhaps more honest than most coaches about the fact that he doesn’t feel that way.”