Goodwin is setting his sights high with Saints
THE eternal optimist that he is, Tony Fitzpatrick has long been banging the drum for St Mirren to be considered a top-six club. Now it seems he’s not the only one with that ambition. Saints haven’t finished higher than eighth in the table since 1989 but manager Jim Goodwin believes this could be the season when they finally shed their tag as a ‘survival club’ battling against relegation every year.
The Paisley side manoeuvred themselves into ninth place with a crucial win over Hearts before the curtain came down early on last season.
Finishing that high again would probably appease most supporters but not Goodwin, who believes that wouldn’t represent the progress he is looking for.
Instead, the Irishman wants his players to set out with their sights on breaking into the top half of the table come the split.
‘I look at the infrastructure in
terms of training facilities, the stadium, the fan base, the squad we’re putting together... we shouldn’t be satisfied to just be finishing second bottom and stay in the league,’ he said. ‘We have to make progress.
‘If we finish ninth again next year then that’s not good enough as far as I’m concerned. There will be some people out there who would snap your hand off for that right now as that means Premiership football for next season.
‘But I don’t want us to rest on our laurels and feel happy about finishing down at the bottom end of the table. I don’t want St Mirren to be a survival club.
‘I want us to be genuine contenders for forcing our way into that top half. If we finish seventh or eighth, then that’s progress. The club has never finished higher than eighth (for more than 30 years), so let’s try to be around that mid-table mark — seventh, sixth or even fifth.
‘Let’s see if, come the split, we can be in the mix for challenging for a spot in the top half of the table. It’s where I want to be and so do the players, the staff, the fans and the directors.’
The former Alloa Athletic manager views the recent achievements of Motherwell, Kilmarnock and St Johnstone and sees no reason why his squad shouldn’t also be looking to finish up the table.
He added: ‘Of course it can be done. Those clubs are the perfect examples. They’re the ones I look at.
‘As a club, we have to put that message out there that we are ambitious and are determined to do everything we can to try to emulate the likes of Kilmarnock, Motherwell and St Johnstone in recent seasons. Why not? If we don’t aim for that, then what’s the point?
‘When I took the job on 12 months ago I wanted to make sure the board of directors had similar ambitions to my own.
‘You’d always like more in the budget to bring in more quality but I’m realistic about the situation. The higher up the table we finish, everything else comes with it.
‘It becomes easier to get sponsors, the prize money goes up and you might go on longer cup runs.
‘The majority of that money then goes back into the playing budget which allows me to put a better product out on the park. And that leads to better season-ticket sales and getting more fans in. It all has a knock-on effect.’
If we finish ninth again next season, that’s just not good enough for me