Stephen Robinson hails St Mirren’s battling qualities in win over Dundee United

Stephen Robinson praised his St Mirren players for grinding out a result after defeating Dundee United 2-0 in Paisley.

Goals from Conor McMenamin and Keanu Baccus sealed Saints’ first league victory since late September to set them up nicely for next weekend’s Premier Sports Cup final against Celtic.

Robinson felt his team had performed better in some of their recent defeats than they did, but took heart from the commitment shown to build on their midweek draw away to Aberdeen.

“Football is a strange game because it’s probably the least control we had in a game in our run when we haven’t had wins,” he said.

“We said we wanted to go on a run now after the Aberdeen game. It was important to follow that up with a win. Of course there’s apprehension around the stadium, there’s apprehension from everybody. So it was just about getting over the line.

“They showed great character. I thought Alex Gogic and Miguel Freckleton were outstanding. The two of them defensively gave us real battling qualities.

“We need to manage games better when we go 1-0 up, we’ve spoken about that. We’re a really quiet squad so I end up having to do the management from the side, which you don’t want to do – but you have to.

“But it was a proper performance in terms of grinding it out and scoring at good times. And then we could have had more goals on the counter attack.

“But overall, I’m just delighted to get back to winning ways. We had a bit of luck as well, which we’ve had zero of lately.”

Robinson deployed central defender Gogic in midfield for the first time in a while and admitted he would have a few selection dilemmas ahead of the final.

He added: “Certainly some people have put themselves in contention. I thought Gogic was excellent today in midfield. I thought Richard (King) did really well as well. So they’re good problems.”

In contrast, Jim Goodwin cut a frustrated figure as United’s recent poor run of results stretched to just one win in their last 10 matches.

The Irishman said: “We’re on a difficult run, there’s no getting away from that. We’re not being clinical enough at the moment in front of goal and we’re certainly not helping ourselves with the amount of goals that we concede.

“It’s really, really poor defensively at the moment, but that’s the bit that we need to sort out. We deserve all the criticism that’s going to come our way.

“As manager, I expect it. It’s my job to try and get more out of the players and to try and make sure that we stop conceding these goals that we are losing at the moment.”