Stephen Robinson admits it was hugely frustrating to see his side ship two goals from set pieces at Celtic Park.
But he insists the chances his Buddies created proved they travelled to Glasgow full of belief they could have picked up a result, despite eventually being on the receiving end of a heavy defeat.
St Mirren’s disappointing away form continued as the league leaders fired four unanswered goals past Trevor Carson, with the opener and last strikes surprisingly coming from set pieces.
Robinson is adamant his side were positive going into the game, pointing to three clear opportunities when they were inches away from getting on the scoresheet.
He told Renfrewshire Live Sport: “It’s disappointing collectively because we set up positively with two centre forwards again and I thought our shape was good.
“Trever Carson hasn’t been peppered with shots to save but we concede from two set plays which for us is tough to take. That’s the first ones we’ve conceded all season. We can’t do that against a team of that quality.
“You’re in control of set situations for the first and fourth goals. It’s a good strike [from David Turnbull] but we didn’t set up the way we should have, so that’s the disappointing aspect of it.
“If you have seven or eight players not at the very top of their game you’re going to struggle. The same as we did in our first game against Celtic, you need that to get a result and we didn’t have it throughout.
“We feel as a management group and a group of players that we’re better than what we showed. Celtic were very good on the night but we didn’t turn up and expect to get beaten, we didn’t. We expected to put in a better fight.
“There was a lot of desire and energy but we just lacked that little bit of belief and quality when we landed on the ball. That killed us against a very good side.
“We scored a goal that was disallowed for offside, we hit the bar, we brought a brilliant save out of Joe Hart from [Alex] Gogic.
“We did have opportunities and put a lot of balls into the box but didn’t get the ricochets on the night.
“What summed us up was Jonah [Ayunga] getting one on one with [Yuki] Kobayashi and he wasn’t as positive as we know he can be. That probably rounded up our performance in that we weren’t as positive with the ball as we can be.”
St Mirren will have home comforts back on their side on Saturday afternoon when they take on Dundee in the fourth round of the Scottish Cup.
Robinson believes he doesn’t need to tweak too much against the Championship side, although he has been given a selection headache after the impressive substitute performances of Alex Greive and Greg Kiltie at Celtic Park.
Robinson said: “I don’t need to turn too much around because we’re not playing Celtic again!
“It’s a different game, one we want to win and progress into the next round of course.
“We’ve got a a brilliant group of boys and a lot of talented boys. I didn’t think we showed that enough at Celtic.
“We need a better collective performance, for sure. I’ve got big team selection calls to make because the boys that came on, Greg Kiltie and Alex Greive, were excellent. Now there’s a real fight for places which makes us competitive.”
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