St Mirren manager Jack Ross will not be shielding his players from the importance of their next two league fixtures if they are to have any hope of surviving in the Championship.
The Saints travel to Dumbarton on Saturday before taking on Ayr United either side of Scottish Cup and Irn-Bru Cup fixtures.
It is the forthcoming league outings that take priority for the Buddies, and Ross has left his men in no doubt how vital winning them is for the club, and challenged them to thrive off of the pressure.
“They’re huge and we’ve said that to the players,” Ross said. “If any of them can’t handle the importance of them then come and tell me.
“There is no shying away from it, I’m not going to take the pressure off them because they should feel it and want to thrive on it, take it on their shoulders and say: ‘I’m strong enough to deal with it’.
“It’s huge for the club, not just for the players, for people that come here week-in, week-out, for the staff that work here - but for everybody and they need to take that upon their shoulders and be brave enough to try and deal with it.
“Even if you’re brave enough to deal with it you don’t always get your rewards from it but they have to take that responsibility to be good enough.”
Meanwhile, St Mirren chairman Gordon Scott has revealed that the club were prepared to let midfielder Stevie Mallan move on in the transfer window, despite the bid they received being below their valuation of the player.
In an update on the club website, Scott also said he is confident the players they have recruited in January can help them to safety.
“Stevie has been a great servant of this club and if we want to encourage young kids to sign up to our academy part of that commitment has to be for the club to consider the player’s future as well as the clubs,” Scott said.
“Reluctantly we eventually accepted an offer and gave the club permission to speak to Stevie. The deal however did not materialise for whatever reason and we heard nothing more from the other club.
“Whilst this was a blow to the player, I feel that if Stevie continues his development and plays the part he is capable of in our survival I am sure he will have even more clubs chasing his signature in the summer.
“We hope that Stephen, along with the ten new players that arrived at the club in January, can really kick on and help us towards the ultimate short term aim of staying in the Championship.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here