Stephen Robinson believes the disappointment he sensed in the away dressing room at Ibrox after full-time shows St Mirren are moving in the right direction.
The Buddies were smarting from a 4-0 defeat after Rangers punished the Paisley side at both ends of the pitch.
Govan hasn’t been a happy hunting ground for the Saints in recent years – with their last victory at Ibrox coming more than three decades ago.
Robinson feels his players were more gutted than usual leaving Glasgow because they felt they had a serious chance of picking up points on Saturday afternoon.
Robinson told Renfrewshire Live Sport: “Away at Ibrox isn’t a game that’s going to define what we do this season.
“But we came and thought we could get something and there are a lot of disappointed boys in the dressing room, which is good.
“We’ve raised the belief here.
“We’ve got a fantastic group of players but we were up against a top level, Champions League team – and we got punished for errors.
“You have to remember in the last 30 years St Mirren have played in the Championship more than the Premiership. It’s a big ask for us.
“We need to keep everyone fit. Against Rangers we only had two fit strikers, which didn’t give us any real options to change it when we were trying to chase the game.
“Credit to the boys that were on the pitch. I think we’ve got a fantastic bunch of boys.”
A turning point on Saturday came in the form of referee Nick Walsh’s penalty decision, which gave Rangers the perfect opportunity to double their lead in the first half which James Tavernier duly tucked away.
Robinson revealed his centre-back Declan Gallagher was certain he got to the ball before Antonio Colak, who went tumbling to earn the spot-kick.
The Saints boss also admitted his side have to defend better going forward to have any chance of picking up a result against the Old Firm on their own patch.
Robinson said: “We felt decisions didn’t go our way at 1-0.
“I haven’t seen the penalty decision back, but Declan Gallagher is adamant he got the ball. He’s adamant he got a touch and was there before him (Colak) but the referee said Colak got first contact on it.
“That didn’t seem to really correlate to where the ball went. But the decision went against us and against Rangers or Celtic you need these things to go your way.
“We also didn’t defend as well as we should have.
“We got punished for the first goal for letting people turn. The third and fourth we got punished for not getting people to move one way and allowing them to turn inside.
“There’s things we can improve on, but it’s difficult to be too critical of the players because you’re up against players that punish you for every mistake.
“We have to make better decisions in our defensive third.”
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