St Mirren boss Stephen Robinson hoping to catch Dundee cold in Paisley clash

Stephen Robinson hopes St Mirren can take advantage if Dundee are still adapting to life in the cinch Premiership when they visit Paisley on Saturday.

Tony Docherty took the reins at the Tayside club after they won the Championship to gain promotion to the top flight.

After narrowly failing to come out of their Viaplay Cup group, the Dark Blues began their league campaign with a 1-1 home draw against Motherwell while Saints returned from Easter Road with an impressive 3-2 win over Hibernian.

Looking towards the challenge of a new opponent, Buddies boss Robinson said: “I have seen a couple of Dundee’s matches, they have signed a lot of new players.

“They have some talented boys and retained some players from their promotion season last season as well so we are expecting a tough test.

“Every game is a different challenge and there are no easy games at all.

“They have recruited heavily and we have to try make sure that they are still a team that’s maybe trying to find out exactly what they are and we have to try to expose that and take the game to them.”

Robinson revealed that striker Mikael Mandron, who missed the Hibs game after pulling out with a back injury in the warm-up, with replacement Toyosi Olusanya scoring the Buddies’ second goal, has returned to training.

The Northern Irishman said: “Good news on big Mika, he trained again on Tuesday.

“It was something to do with his back, a nerve problem but that settled down which is good.

“It gives us another option.

“We knew it was nothing serious at the time because of the actual timing of it – about three minutes before the boys came in – Gerry (Docherty, physio) didn’t have enough time to assess it and give a confident view that it wasn’t too bad so we didn’t want to take that chance.

“We feel we have a decent amount of options in certain areas of the pitch and Toyosi proved that on Sunday so we have a decision to make.”