Celtic v ST MIRREN RERUN FOR YOUR LIVES
Robbo:You’ve already beaten Celtic .. be brave and you can do it again and take place in history
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Stephen Robinson insists his determined Saints aren’t travelling to Celtic Park as tourists this evening.
That’s because he and his squad believe they can shock the Hoops and earn a Scottish Cup quarter-final slot.
Ange Postecoglou’s side are unbeaten domestically on home soil all season.
While the odds are stacked against them, Robinson is confident his core group of experienced players can help them soar to a memorable Scottish Cup upset at Parkhead.
Robinson told Express Sport: “We’ll try to be brave. There’ll be no feeling of already being beaten in the tunnel for us, no turning up and taking photographs and behaving like a tourist.
“We’ve got a good mixture of experienced top-flight players. You need a core of men that want to battle and take responsibility. We’ve got that here in abundance.
“We’ve also got a lot of good, up and coming young players so the balance is right and we don’t go there in fear.
“If we can get a result at Celtic they’ll put themselves in the history books. They’ll raise the profile of themselves and also the football club.
“We’ve also got nothing to lose – outside our dressing room no-one in the world would expect us to win.
“We’re not changing shape or personnel too much because we believe if we can raise our levels another five or ten percent then we’ve got an opportunity to cause an upset, as we did in our first game against them.”
While Saints were dumped 4-0 on their last outing to Celtic Park last month, Robinson insists the chances his side created that evening are proof they can cause the Hoops problems.
And he’ll remind his stars of the 2-0 home victory over Celts at the start of the season. Robinson said: “We know we’ve beaten Celtic before and we can take courage from that.
“We’ve got technically very good footballers that maybe don’t get the recognition they deserve.
“You’ve got to be brave on the ball because if you’re just defending solidly for 90 minutes eventually someone will make a mistake and get punished.
“You have to use triggers to press them at the right times.We can be a bit too cavalier breaking forward. That’s the mentality this group has. We can cause problems and we did last time. Joe Hart made two terrific saves, we hit the bar and had a goal disallowed.
“Does that give us hope we can cause them problems?
Certainly it does.”