St Mirren boss Stephen Robinson thinks the pressure is on SK Brann to win in Paisley on Thursday night but has confidence his team can deliver another European victory.
After seeing off Icelandic side Valur with a 4-1 victory at the SMiSA Stadium last week, Robinson’s side now take on Norwegian opposition in the first leg of the third qualifying round.
Brann are favourites to win the match in Scotland, and the tie overall, but after defeating Hibs 3-0 in their Premiership opener on Sunday, the St Mirren boss feels his team go into the match full of confidence they can upset the odds.
“We believe we can continue in the competition,” Robinson said. “The pressure is not on us, it will be on Brann and they’ll be expected to come here and win comfortably, I would imagine.
“But don’t approach games like that. No game is a free hit.
“We want to win the game and we’ll certainly set out to win the game.
“We’ll do what we do but we want to do it better. Every time we go away to Rangers or Celtic we don’t want to change systems and play about with things, we want to be the best version of what we do.
“And that’s what we need to be tomorrow: the best version of St Mirren. The best version of the team that we put out and the players we bring on.
“I believe we can get a result.”
Robinson pointed to Brann’s extensive European experience and their “intimidating” stadium as reasons why he expects his players to face a difficult challenge, and believes St Mirren will have to “step up” a level from their first three matches.
With the Conference League play-off draw already having taken place, the teams know that the winner will be facing Romanians CS or Kazakh side Astana for a place in the group stage. While not wanting to look beyond Brann, Robinson said the winning mentality fostered in his squad meant the team fears nobody and players have an opportunity to “make a name” for themselves.
“It’s a tough test against Brann,” he said. “We’ve watched a lot of them and they are flying in their league at this moment in time as well.
“But if we’re at the top of our game there’s no question in my mind that we can get a result. We don’t go in thinking it’s the end of our European adventure, we do have a chance to progress.
“You see where you can take it. We’re a well-organised side so we take what we can out of the first leg and then move on to the second.
“We saw the draw for the next one and it’s two very difficult sides but in my opinion, and you have to get over the first hurdle first before you worry about that, but there’s opportunities there for people to make their name.
“It’s the mentality we have that we expect to win. We go to Celtic Park expecting to win, though we very rarely do, but the boys have created that mentality.
“At the best of our ability, when the squad is utilised with everybody coming off the bench and providing us with the strength of the players coming off, then we don’t fear anyone.
“That includes Europe. We believe that we can beat anybody on our day with the players we have in this building.”
Mark O’Hara ruled out of first leg
SNS GroupWhile Caolan Boyd-Munce and Mikael Mandron have been cleared to play after recent injury concerns, St Mirren will be without captain Mark O’Hara when they face the Norwegians on Thursday.
O’Hara starred in the win over Valur, netting a stunning volley as he led his team to victory, but he missed Sunday’s match win over Hibs.
“Mark won’t be available,” Robinson said. “We scanned him yesterday and unfortunately Mark is going to be a few weeks with a thigh injury, a similar thing that he had last season.
“We are not sure of the timing, we don’t think it is very serious but he will certainly miss the next game if not the two games and then we will have to revisit that.
“If you look at his performance against Valur, he was excellent, you could see he was back to his best.
“I believe the system we played suits him better than the system we played last year, it allows him to get forward and score goals and it was a real captain’s performance.
“When your captain is out of the team and the squad is as small as ours in numbers, you miss everybody when they are injured.
“But we have other players to come in. Maybe last season it would have been a huge act to follow, but we have five or six midfielders in the building so there is a real scramble for places. I am confident that the people we put in will be equally as good.”
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