We’re aiming for top flight
Promotion is the target for Saints, says gaffer
Jack Ross insists promotion has to be the target for his side this season.
The St Mirren gaffer has been buoyed by the Buddies winning start to the campaign.
And ahead of this weekend’s Inverness Caley Thistle clash, Ross was unrelenting in his view that returning to the top flight has to be the club’s priority.
The Buddies were yesterday drawn to face Raith Rovers in the next round of the Irn-Bru Cup but with the league the target, Saints appear to be focused on their bread and butter.
It would be easy to buckle under the pressure from the supporters over the coming weeks and months.
But Ross stressed that he has already seen enough from his side to believe that they are capable of handling whatever comes their way.
He said: “Naturally when you do well expectations always change.
“We are at a club where the supporters believe they should be challenging elsewhere and rightly so.
“I said after the Hibs game at the end of last season that the target this year was to be promoted. I think it has got to be.
“Does it put more pressure on me and the players?
“Probably, but it is my job to deal with that pressure.
“But I think players should always feel pressure, I genuinely do.
“I feel pressure every week to do my job the best I can, and I think they should feel pressure to win every week.
“I think the best teams do that and they handle that pressure.
“A lot of that group did that last year.
“It was very different pressure with must-win games through the course of the last three or four months and that’s the mentality I want to keep here.”
And having inherited a side battling relegation just over a year ago, Ross admits the transformation at the club is evident.
He added: “If you are in and around our training ground on a daily basis you would realise that there is such a different feel about it.
“Even the stadium, the two games that we have had this season have had have been so different.
“It is as good as I’ve felt it in that ground, and I played there as well and sometimes it wasn’t an easy place to play at but it is just a different vibe around it.
“Our job is to keep maintining that.
“Yo u n e e d to deliver performances to maintain that but I am happy with that expectation.
“I would rather have the weight of expectation than just bob along.”