Jack Ross knows his side will face a difficult task against Ayr United in the quarter-final of the IRN-BRU Cup on Sunday. The Honest Men travel to Paisley on Sunday for the 12:30pm kick-off to take on the Saints with a semi-final place at stake.
The manager spoke with stmirren.com this morning to discuss the match and while he knows the Saints are up against a difficult opponent, he wants the players to show belief that they can win the game.
Coming up as a part-time team in this league is a challenge, but so far they've had a very positive season. They've achieved some terrific results already - not just at home, but away from home as well so it's much like a league game for us. They're all difficult challenges and although this is a different competition, it's just as difficult a match.
"Rightly or wrongly I always go into a game thinking we can win it," he continued. "It's the feeling I try to get across to the players and they have to start believing it as well. As long as you do it in a way that is balanced and you realise what you have to do in the game to win it. You can't just think because you can win it that you will do. I think it's important that they retain that belief that they go into every single match thinking that they're going to win the game."
The manager said that preparation has gone well this week and he's pleased with the standards being shown on the training field.
There's just been a wee change to the structure of our week with the game being on Sunday. Other than that we structure our week in the same way and today we'll do a lot of stuff working towards how we feel we can get at Ayr United and how we can deal with them in a defensive situation.
"I think every week I feel better and more comfortable and I think standards have risen in training all the time, so in that sense it has been a good week's preparation."
Something previously discussed by the manager as he looks to put his own stamp on the team has been about trying to find a settled eleven. Throughout the season both Jamie Langfield and Scott Gallacher have been changed around and the manager has said he's now going to give Gallacher the opportunity to claim the number one jersey after starting with Langfield in his first four games in charge.
When you inherit a squad and a club mid-season you have to assess everything within it and one of the things that was obviously evident was that there hadn't been a settled number one throughout the season. I think allied to that, Jamie doing his dual-role while still wanting to be competing for the number one spot isn't the perfect scenario either.
"It's not a knee-jerk reaction on the back of Saturday," he added. "It's something that I discussed with Jamie when I first came into the job about how we re-structure things or look at things to try and get the most out of the goalkeepers we've got here at the moment.
"We're going to bring someone in to do one or two days to help on the coaching side. But equally, having spoken to Jamie and Scott, Scott will have an opportunity to establish himself as first choice and it will allow Jamie to focus more on the coaching side and be supportive of him. That's not to say that's set in stone because Scott has an opportunity, he needs to go and perform.
I don't think the situation was ideal and we've looked at what we can do to try and tweak things to get the most out the goalkeepers that we've got here."
The manager will still be without the services of Andy Webster and Rocco Quinn who remain injured and he admitted that there is no timescale for their returns. Along with those two Ross will also be without the services of Ben Gordon and Ryan Hardie who are ineligible after playing for Alloa and Rangers U20s in this competition respectively.
