St Mirren boss Stephen Robinson insists he won’t be afraid to put his trust in youth next season.
The Buddies manager built a reputation for promoting promising prospects into the first team at Motherwell, with the likes of Chris Cadden, Allan Campbell and James Scott all developing into strong first team players before earning big moves.
Robinson is delighted with the standard of players the Saints academy, which achieved elite status at the start of this year, is producing.
And while he admits they will only make the step up if they earn it, he can’t wait to introduce some of the most talented youngsters into the St Mirren first team squad.
Robinson told stmirren.com: “My squad will be made up with five or six young, young kids next year. That’s a real credit to the academy.
“We have to embrace that and bring these kids into the first team environment and give them opportunities to show how good they are.
“There’s boys that would have played in my team already, but because of the loan rules we weren’t able to do that.
“We have to combine them and we won’t put them in if they’re not ready. They have to earn that right, we can’t just be a club that puts them in for the sake of it.
“They have to be good enough and we’ve got a lot of good, young players with the right attitude.
“We have to get them fitter and stronger. I can see over the last three months of working with them they have a very good attitude already.
“We’ve got a good core of boys here already too, we can’t forget that. We’ll integrate them with the younger boys.
“We’ve got some great role models in Richard Tait, Joe Shaughnessy, Ryan Flynn and Marcus Fraser.
“The young boys can really learn from them, and the coaches we’ve got here already too.”
Robinson believes that St Mirren bringing through their own talents isn’t just a choice, it’s also a necessity.
As they compete with other Scottish clubs with deeper pockets for some of their key targets, Robinson feels his in-depth knowledge of the English market will see the Paisley club unearth some “gems” to help their top six push next season.
Robinson said: “There’s no two ways about it, we don’t have the money to compete with some clubs.
“We have to try and bridge the gap somehow. You do that with your recruitment.
“I’ve got a really good knowledge of England, I was down there obviously recently as well.
“So it’s a case of can we get a few gems from England up for lesser money and sell them on for big money.
“All the while we benefit from that. And we have to integrate that with the youth team boys that are coming through.”
Robinson added: “I’m the kind of manager who wants to get everything done yesterday!
“We want more players in. If we can get as many in as possible for the start of pre-season on the 20th of June that would be ideal.
“We’ll work ever so hard to get in that top six next season and if we get the right blend of players, we can go and achieve that goal.”
