I’LL GIVE IT MAXIMUM POWER

Star focused on dogfight

Saints battler Alan Power is adamant he won’t speak about his own future plans until the end of the season.

That’s because he feels everyone associated with St Mirren must be fully focused on picking up precious points in their last five games of the season.

The Buddies midfielder is out of contract at the end of the current campaign, having joined the club on a one-year deal for an undisclosed fee from Kilmarnock last summer.

With the Paisley club seriously struggling for form heading into their post-split fixtures, Power believes everyone involved with the club’s energy must go into ensuring they remain a Premiership club come the end of the season.

Speaking exclusively to Express Sport, Power said: “I’ll speak about my own future at the end of the season.

“At the moment I’m fully focused on these next five games and doing all I can for St Mirren.

“I’m not going to speak about my situation now, because I don’t think it’s right when we’re in a situation where we have to win games.

“We’ve got a break now and we’ll be raring to go the week after.

“We all have to dust ourselves down and stick together, the whole club. The fans, the staff, we all have to come together.

“We’ve got two weeks to get ourselves right. We’ve got five games where we need to pick up as many points as we possibly can.

“Everyone’s in the same position in this bottom six now.

“They’re hugely competitive games, but they’re ones we should be looking forward to.

“All the teams are so close, and it’s probably going to be as competitive as it’s ever been with the likes of Aberdeen and Hibs in there.

“We have to remain positive. We’re a confident bunch and we’re still sticking together well.

“We need everyone together now for these last five games.”

St Mirren’s last match before the split was a brutal 4-0 defeat at the hand of title-chasing Rangers.

While Power concedes that it was always going to be tough to topple the Govan side, he insists they must defend better if they have any hope of turning their current run of form around.

Power said: “We knew it was going to be tough against Rangers. But as a team, we didn’t defend well enough.

“We conceded goals we think we could have defended better, and at the worst times as well which killed us.

“The first one was just so early, it gives them such a boost.

Then the second one was just before halftime, which was very disappointing.

“It’s easy to point fingers, but we have to look at it collectively. We all need to do better.

“We knew the top six was gone before and so that wasn’t an excuse. Our aim now is to try and finish seventh and we knew that before kick-off.

“The Rangers game was a bit of a shot at nothing, but we wanted to put in a better performance and see if we could get something out of the game.

“Now we need to brush ourselves down and go again.

“The manager is trying to put his stamp on things and we’re trying to implement it as best we can.

“We haven’t picked up as many results as we’d have liked to, but hopefully that will all change in these last five games.”