Robinson calm over Saints' lowly league position

Stephen Robinson is leaning on past experience as he refuses to panic about St Mirren's Premiership struggles.

The Buddies head into Saturday's game at Dundee in ninth spot, two points off the bottom, after taking just a point from the past six matches.

"We had a similar period this time last year and we managed to finish in the top six," said manager Robinson, referencing the fact his team were third bottom with two wins from the opening 10 matches of last term.

"Nobody's getting too worried about it. If you look at Hibs last year, bottom of the table [in December], they ended up finishing third.

"Certainly, we try and stay focused and calm and not get too far ahead of ourselves or start looking behind you and start worrying.

"You can only affect what's in front of you and not what's happened previously."

St Mirren have earned praise for their recent performances against top two Hearts and Celtic but only took one point from those matches.

"We've shown we're very competitive," said Robinson, whose side's only win in the past two months was a 4-1 Premier Sports Cup semi-final triumph over Motherwell.

"Motherwell are doing very well at the moment and we won very comfortably - well, the scoreline suggests comfortably, although it wasn't that comfortable.

"We believe on our day we can beat anybody, we just have to turn performances into results.

"We're in a false league position in terms of our performances, we're not in a false position in terms of results. Our results have given us that amount of points.

"But I do believe that we can climb the table and I believe we will climb the table."