Stephen Robinson is challenging his fringe Saints to step up and help the club navigate through their untimely injury crisis.
The club’s abject defeat to Motherwell on Wednesday night also cost them a number of key players, with Keanu Baccus, Alex Gogic, Scott Tanser and Curtis Main all picking up knocks.
Those injuries will likely rule them all out of tomorrow’s crucial visit of Ross County, with the Buddies looking to get back to winning ways after suffering three straight defeats to keep their top-six hopes afloat.
Robinson is hoping his experienced players that have been waiting patiently for a chance to shine grasp the opportunity, with the likes of Ryan Flynn, Greg Kiltie and Joe Shaughnessy likely to be involved for St Mirren from the start on Saturday.
Robinson said: “We can’t get a scan on Tanser until Tuesday but it doesn’t look promising at the moment.
“Gogic is very, very doubtful for the game. Baccus is very, very doubtful for the game and Main is very, very doubtful for the game so you can see where I am going with this. The squad is going to be tested to the absolute limit.
“We knew that when - under the financial circumstances - we had to move people on during the window, we were going to be pushed if we got injuries and unfortunately, they have all come at the same time.
“I have a lot of belief in the younger players. Are they ready to go in and be a top-six side? No, of course they are not. We haven’t given them that game time yet.
“But there’s players in the building waiting on chances. Players with real experience waiting for chances and I have belief in them as well.
“Do we have the depth that we want to kick on or make changes during games? Any team that potentially has six or seven starters potentially out - even the top teams - are going to find that a difficult situation.
“But I am not in the habit of making excuses. We deal with it, we get on with it, we make the very best of it and we will put out a very competitive team.”
The only positive news on the injury front coming out of Paisley this week was that the injury Alex Greive picked up at Celtic Park last weekend wasn’t as serious as first feared.
Robinson said: “It is probably the only positive news we have had on the injury front to be honest.
“We are hoping it will not be quite so serious, but it will still be three weeks. We were fearing it could maybe be an end-of-season job.
“But we are looking at three to four weeks with Alex. So that is a huge boost for us considering we don’t have loads and loads of options.”
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