JIM GOODWIN knows St Mirren are among the favourites to go down this season – and is fired up to prove the pundits wrong.
Saints’ poor Betfred Cup campaign and struggle so far to sign players has seen them listed as likely candidates to be relegated.
Goodwin, though, has set his sights on finishing higher up the table and is confident Saints won’t be in trouble if he can land the players he’s after.
He said: “I’m reading a lot of people saying we’ll go down and hearing what the pundits are saying about our chances but I’ve been written off all of my career as a player here and then as Alloa manager when nobody thought we had a chance of staying in the Championship.
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“So I’ll use those comments as motivation and the players should do the same. We will use that outside negativity to drive us on and prove all the doubters wrong.”
Saints finished 11th last season and then sealed their survival with a penalty shoot-out win over Dundee United in the play-offs but Goodwin won’t settle for a repeat this year.
He added: “I’m a very optimistic and ambitious person so I don’t want us to just survive and no more. I want to make us competitive with the likes of St Johnstone and Kilmarnock – clubs that are a similar size to ourselves. We should be capable of going toe to toe with them.
“Maybe some people would accept just staying up but I won’t. If I can get the players in that I’ve identified then we will be a lot better than just surviving.
“We want to finish as high up the table as possible. I don’t want a negative campaign where we’re all nervous wrecks come the end trying to avoid relegation. That’s not what I’m looking for. At the moment we are short of numbers in the squad and aren’t the finished article. We’re not panicking but we need more players in. That’s a fact.”
The 37 year-old takes his team to face Hibernian at Easter Road on Saturday for his first match as a Premiership manager and is looking forward to the challenge.
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He added: “As a young manager you want to test yourself at the highest level. It’s a great honour for me to be managing this club in the Premiership.
“The Hibs fans are an expectant crowd and they’ll want their team to be up there challenging this year but we want to go there and surprise one or two people.
“In an ideal world we would have another week or so before our first game to get new players in but we don’t so we just need to get on
with it.”
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