St Mirren are far from ready to press the panic button – it’s far too early in the season for that – but Stephen Robinson will make his players aware that the visit of Ross County this weekend is a fixture that must not end in defeat.
There were rare flashes of competence in their defeat at Aberdeen, where two strikes from Bojan Miovski, the first an early penalty kick, and further goals from Leighton Clarkson and Luis Lopes, damaged them irrevocably.
Declan Gallagher’s first-half ordering off didn’t help matters as the Dons ramped up the tempo to an extent that even a penalty conversion by Buddies’ front man Jonah Ayunga early in the second half, did not relieve them of fire-fighting duties.
Robinson and his squad sought positives and few would disagree that the visitors looked good until Gallagher’s second yellow card.
Ryan Flynn, a replacement for Curtis Main in the second half, is long enough in the tooth not to start worrying that, two games into the campaign, there are no points for St Mirren. He may even point that their upcoming opponents on Saturday are in the same boat.
“The main positive for me,” said the midfielder, “was that the start of the game wasn’t too bad. It’s blatantly obvious the sending off and the penalty changes the whole complexion of the game.
“Up until that point I thought we’d done OK. We were well in the game. I think that’s a big positive. If we’d kept it 11-vs-11 it would have been a different game. These things happen. Throughout the whole season you’ll go through spells like this.
“Last week [at Motherwell] we played great and still lost. There’s no need to panic though.
“Our next game will be a big one against Ross County. We need to take care of business at home, but first and foremost, we need to stop the rot.
“We were better in the second half at Aberdeen. If we go down to ten men, we need to make sure we stay in the game for longer.”
The difference in quality at Pittodrie was palpable. Jim Goodwin, the Dons manager, has the kind of resources not available to him when he was in charge of St Mirren.
He’s spent around £1.5m during the summer and insists one more recruit will be arriving, though he was disappointed that one of his incomers, full-back Hayden Coulson, on loan from Middlesbrough, could be sidelined for some time following a Gallagher challenge that brought the Buddies’ defender his first yellow card.
It worked out well for the Reds, though, as Clarkson, on loan from Liverpool where he graduated through their academy system and a replacement for Coulson, produced a star performance to complement his 25-yard wonder goal.
Centre-back and captain, Anthony Stewart, one of eleven fresh Pittodrie recruits, was impressed by his young colleague.
He said: “It was funny because I didn’t know he had signed until 11.30am on Saturday. I haven’t trained with him but fair play to him for putting on a performance like that.
“I just heard he had played in the Champions League for Liverpool. So, he is definitely a prospect for the future. It would be tough to come into a new bunch and express yourself, but he is coming from Liverpool where standards are high.
“I don’t doubt his quality. I just hope he can express it more often than not.
“He was quite quiet in the dressing room, I didn’t hear too much from him but he was singing along to a few songs.
“Then he came on, put on that display and scored such a good goal. I’m looking forward to seeing what else he can do in the coming weeks."
