But we did it
the right fits for the football club.
“Disappointingly, I probably realised that fairly early on and beyond that I probably didn’t appreciate how low the club was.
“I don’t just mean between the players and out on the pitch, I mean the club as a whole.
“The mood around the whole club was low and I didn’t really realise it would be like that until I came into the job.
“It is impossible to know any of that until you start the job.
“Everything was very downbeat, partly because of what was going on out on the park and partly what had been going on in recent seasons.”
It doesn’t take Jack Ross to say what he inherited was a mess, but to the every day supporter on the street, that was how it was viewed.
With a squad of players that, for one reason or another, just never seemed to click in their short time together, Ross remains adamant that the side he adopted from Alex Rae in October was made up of players good enough to compete at Championship level.
But, for a man who strives for perfection both on and off of the park, he insists changes had to be made if he was ever going to have a side he could be proud of.
Ross added: “The terms of the squad didn’t surprise me.
“I am always conscious to say there were still players that were good, but the mix just wasn’t right for me as a manager.
“Some managers might have found it to be the right mix, but, for me and what I wanted to do, how I train and how I play, you need certain players that can work to the intensity that we work at. That was key.
“But I was surprised about the mood of the club in general, how flat it was.”
For a season besieged with setbacks, the recovery to beat the drop has been well documented far beyond the banks of the Cart.
At times, it was a struggle to keep the players upbeat— he admits that. But, having pulled off what some described as an impossible mission, the St Mirren manager now has his eyes on success next season.
Ross said: “In football, there are lots of uncontrollables. As a manager, you can do everything you want, but there are still things you have no control over.
“We went through a lot of them. When people are in a lower mood of confidence, then these things are liklier to happen, it is just human nature.
“So, when you bring that positivity around your team, then these things happen less and less.
“They’ll still make mistakes at times, but they become less and less.
“For me, confidence was a massive thing in the second half of the season.
“We were keen to keep the players upbeat, even when the results went against us. You have to remember we got very little favours in that time.
“But I was always confident that we would get ourselves out of that situation — I lost count of the amount of times I stressed that.
“They got their rewards in the end, but we want to achieve so much more.”