Miranda says St Mirren will stay in SPL

Nov 17 2008

St Mirren

FRANCO Miranda brought St Mirren’s goal drought to an end when he netted against Rangers then vowed there’s no way his Buddies will be embroiled in a relegation battle this term.

The Argentinian ace struck with nine minutes remaining against last season’s UEFA Cup finalists but it wasn’t enough to earn the Paisley side anything after Saints conceded early goals to Kris Boyd and Steven Davis.

However, Gus MacPherson’s men certainly gave Walter Smith’s title pretenders food for thought in the last half hour of the encounter at Ibrox when Miranda fired home with nine minutes left on the clock.

And with the Love Street men fighting fire at the wrong end of the table Miranda fully believes their performance in the latter part of their encounter on Glasgow’s South Side marks them out from the rest of the best in the SPL.

He told Express Sports: “We could have got a draw out of the game with the way we played in the last 20 minutes.

“But we started poorly and didn’t pass the ball well at all and you can’t do that against a team of Rangers’ quality.

“When you’re playing like that you can’t do anything against a good side but we recovered well.

“But we have to believe in ourselves and everyone saw from that last 30 or 20 minutes that we are a good team.

“There’s no way we won’t stay in the SPL. We’ve just played one of the biggest teams in the country and with everything they’ve got we matched them for the last 20 minutes and probably didn’t deserve to lose.

“We’ve shown what we can do and we will take a lot from the way we finished the game into our next match.”

Buddies boss MacPherson admitted slackness in the opening period was what ultimately cost his men.

Those early goals from Boyd and Davis looked like the beginning of an onslaught from Gers, however the Buddies battled bravely to keep the scoreline minimal and almost nicked a point from the Ibrox cauldron.

MacPherson said: “You could see Rangers were at it from their first attack and after they’ve scored it’s always going to be difficult after that.

“Rangers had a couple of chances early in the second half and we did ride our luck.

“But in the last 20 or 30 minutes you have to give us credit as we passed the ball and we showed a lot of character.

“We’ve said before that we’ve played well in every game recently although we’ve lost three and drawn one of our previous four but each of those games could have gone either way.

“But at the end of the day what counts is the result at the end of 90 minutes.”