Stewart out to impress old buddies

Ross Stewart will have no shortage of incentives when Ross County host St Mirren on Premiership duty today.

Forward Stewart comes up against his former club for the first time since leaving Saints to join the Staggies last summer, having helped the Dingwall men clinch promotion last term.

During his spell with the Buddies Stewart spent time on loan with Alloa Athletic, who were managed by Goodwin prior to him taking over at Paisley earlier this summer.

Stewart is one of three ex-Saints players up against his former club this afternoon, along with Sean Kelly and Keith Watson, and the 23-year-old is keen to make an impression.

Stewart said: “I’ve played under Jim. I know what type of manager he is. His teams are always well organised and hard to beat, but at the same time he gives his teams freedom to go and be creative in the final third.

“He has done a great job since he came in, when you compare the start of their season to their last couple of performances.

“I still know a lot of the boys down there. I don’t keep in contact with as many of them, but there will be a lot of familiar faces,” he said.

“With it being my old club there’s the added incentive for myself and other ex-St Mirren boys to go and get the win.”

Stewart is County’s leading scorer with six goals in all competitions so far this term, and he feels the Staggies are best suited to attacking football.

He added: “As a team we scored a lot of goals last season. We felt it was going to take a couple of goals to beat us, because there was always goals in our team.

“Even going up a league we’ve got the quality in the squad to get two or three goals in each game.

“It’s up to us to create options on the park that will lead to goals. Especially as an attacking player myself, we want to get our team up the park and have periods of possession in the opposition half, rather than spending large periods defending.

“It’s about getting the balance of being solid defensively, but at the same time making sure we are committing bodies forward and doing our best to get goals in this league.”

Following back-to-back league defeats against Livingston and Aberdeen, Stewart hopes to help the Staggies return to the standard they set early in the season, when they took four points from their opening two matches against Hamilton Accies and Hearts.

Stewart added: “Earlier on in the season we set the bar really high. In the last couple of games we never reached them, so as players we need to get back to how we played those first two games.

“The first game was obviously flag day, with a big crowd.

“Those are the games that are easy to get up for in a sense, but we’ve got to find a way to get to that level in every game.”