Stephen Robinson believes ‘home truths’ will spark reaction from St Mirren squad

St Mirren manager Stephen Robinson is confident his players will handle his “home truths” and produce a reaction in their double-header with Livingston.

Robinson accused players of making him “look stupid” after losing to 10-man Hearts on Wednesday.

The Buddies are dealing with a major injury situation which will deprive them of the likes of Keanu Baccus, Mark O’Hara and Jona Ayunga for several months and they have lost four consecutive matches.

Robinson’s side now face two trips to West Lothian, the first in the Scottish Gas Scottish Cup fourth round on Saturday.

“There’s different ways to approach football,” he said. “I’ve been very gentle because of the injury situation. There’s reasons for our form at times. Some are our own fault, other things were out of our control.

“Sometimes you can cajole a performance out of people, sometimes put an arm around people. Wednesday night, we’d made really, really poor decisions for the goals. I think that was time to actually give them a shake another way.

“You only do that so often. We’ve done that. I want a reaction to it. I believe I’ll get a reaction from it.

“The players, to be fair, have done that themselves. They had a reaction in the dressing room.

“There’s still a long way to go in the season and that can turn around. We chose to do that by a few home truths.”

Robinson has led Saints to three consecutive top-six finishes in the William Hill Premiership and the Premier Sports Cup trophy just last month, but he accepts they are now in a relegation battle.

“We’ve changed the norm, we’ve grown the expectations,” he said. “These players and the staff, all of us have to accept that we’re in a period that we’re not happy with and we have to come out of it.

“The only way you do that is to face facts, face reality.

“We’ve had 10 goals disallowed in 16 games, which is incredible. Some are right, some are wrong, but they’re all fine margins. They have gone against us. We’ve got key players out of the team at the minute.

“But we have got very good players still here. We have got players that should be higher up in the league, in my opinion, and we need to do basics right.”

The cup tie is no less important to Robinson despite the consequences surrounding Tuesday’s league clash.

“You take away the pressure of the league points, of course, but we want to win,” he said.

“We’ve seen what a cup win does for the football club, for everybody, for finances, for publicity for players. So that’s another chance right at the start of it again to do it. It’s certainly a driving force.

“We want to win every single game. You can’t go, well, experiment in this game because it’s not as important. Every game is important.”

Conor McMenamin is St Mirren’s latest injury doubt after picking up a calf injury at Tynecastle, while Liam Donnelly is set to remain on the sidelines.