St Mirren

Stephen Robinson praises St Mirren’s players for breaking into top six

During Saturday’s exciting 3-2 triumph at St Johnstone, the Paisley Saints experienced three further injury scares. Captain Mark O’Hara is expected to miss a significant amount of time due to a thigh issue, and Richard Taylor and Scott Tanser were also injured.

With three players departing the team and defender Charles Dunne sidelined for another month, Robinson is already shorthanded.

The Buddies let go of full-backs Shaun Rooney and Jaden Brown, as well as loan attacker Kevin van Veen.

However, Robinson has managed to keep the club on course, scoring 21 points after 17 games to take sixth place.

“With the amount of injuries and suspensions we’ve had at the football club – all defenders except Kevin – it’s been a real testing time for us,” the Northern Irishman stated.

“I give the players credit for being in the top six despite all of their off-field issues.”

Robinson was cautiously positive about centre-back Taylor after he was taken off on a stretcher after 63 minutes.

“We think Richard is the one who might be OK,” reported Robinson, whose team play Ross County away on Saturday. “He just landed funny, he couldn’t feel his leg, it went completely numb.

“So you can’t take chances in that situation. Tanser was already struggling with his back and hamstring so, unfortunately, we had to make two subs there.

“Conor McMenamin was struggling with his back as well. We managed to navigate through that, which is the most pleasing aspect.

But we think it’s a bad one with Mark, which is a real blow for us.”

O’Hara suffered a recurrence of his thigh problem deep into stoppage time when taking a penalty saved by Josh Rae.

The St Johnstone goalkeeper was penalised for edging off his line early and Roland Idowu won the game with a VAR-advised retake.

St Johnstone lost for the 11th time in the league and cannot seem to gather consistent results despite a change of playing style under Simo Valakari.

They conceded in the 10th minute to Killian Phillips but led 2-1 with nine minutes to play thanks to Makenzie Kirk and Benji Kimpioka strikes.

But 17-year-old substitute Evan Mooney equalised after 88 minutes before the visitors eventually benefited from all the spot-kick drama.

St Johnstone face a potentially pivotal clash at the bottom of the table at Hearts next Sunday.

“You can’t feel sorry for yourself,” said Valakari. “We’ve got a big fight on our hands. There is no time to feel down.

“We basically didn’t do enough to win the match. It’s our choice how we react.

“Yes, it hurts a lot but we’ll be back next week to try and make it better.

 

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