Beating Rangers is St Mirren's main focus, says Stephen Robinson

Stephen Robinson insists St Mirren are ready to empty the tanks against Rangers at SMiSA Stadium as they chase a top-six place in the cinch Premiership.

The league splits into two after this weekend’s games and although the Buddies remain in contention to finish in the top half, they must prevail on Sunday and hope other results go their way.

Their prospects will become clearer after Saturday’s fixtures, but Robinson insists whatever happens they must target victory against Rangers.

“We’ll know what we need to do, but as ever we’ll be trying to win the game and get into the top six or we’ll be trying to win to make sure we secure seventh place,” Robinson said.

“If it doesn’t go our way, then yes we’ll be disappointed but then our highest finish in 22 years is seventh and we have to try and equal that. That becomes our aim and then we build for next season.

“First and foremost we’ll watch closely on Saturday, see where the results are and hopefully we’ll still have that incentive for the Rangers game. If not we’ll be looking to try and claim seventh place.”

St Mirren are aiming to bounce back from their 4-2 defeat at Motherwell last Saturday, but Robinson insists it was far from a wasted afternoon.

“We were disappointed with the result. There were a lot of good points in the game but they are always overshadowed by the emotions,” he said.

“I think the players were quite surprised at how positive the meetings were during the week because when you go away and look at it, there was a lot of good stuff. But that got clouded by our defending.

“We know collectively as a group that we need to defend better on Sunday against a very good Rangers side.

“We’ve taken the positives and worked on the things that we think we can make better. We go into the game positive.”

St Mirren are still missing injured trio Greg Kiltie, Scott Tanser and Ryan Flynn, while goalkeeper Jak Alnwick completes a two-match ban.