Don Cowie tells Ross County to stay calm as they look to put things right

Ross County manager Don Cowie has reminded his side of how competitive they have been this season after recognising their below-par display against St Johnstone.

County had Eli Campbell and Charlie Telfer sent off in a 3-0 defeat in Perth and Cowie is looking to put that behind them when they host Kilmarnock on Saturday.

County’s only defeats in their previous five William Hill Premiership games came courtesy of late goals against early pace-setters Aberdeen and Celtic.

Cowie said: “We were really disappointed in terms of the performance that we put in.

“We didn’t help ourselves, everything that probably could have gone wrong did in terms of conceding an early goal and then going down to ten men it gives you a real challenge, an uphill battle. And then conceding a second goal right on half-time was for me the biggest disappointment in the game because then it really becomes difficult going into the second half.

“But for me we’ve shown when we are together as a team and we play collectively, we can be really competitive in this league and we’ve done that for the previous five league games.

“So it’s about recognising how poor we were but at the same time we know what we’re capable of and I’ve got to remind the group of that.

“Football is full of ups and downs. It’s about staying calm. We recognised on Saturday straight after the game the disappointment and the hurt that we had for the the big travelling support that we had and we didn’t put in a performance that merited that.

“But in football you always have the opportunity to try and rectify that and turn it around, and that comes this Saturday for us.”