Don Cowie hopes Costa del Sol break boosts Ross County towards survival

Don Cowie is hoping a “really valuable” spring trip to Spain has set Ross County on a course to secure their Premiership survival.

With no game last weekend, the Staggies squad headed to Marbella last week for some warm-weather training and team bonding.

County are currently in 11th place and a win away to Livingston this Saturday will ensure they cannot finish bottom while also enhancing their chances of overtaking St Johnstone and climbing out of the play-off spot.

Manager Cowie believes the time they spent on the Costa del Sol can help them finish the season with a flourish after a rousing 3-2 win over title-chasing Rangers in their last fixture before the split.

“It was a trip that was planned a few weeks ago and it was good timing on the back of a really good three points against Rangers,” he said.

“It was about us getting together as a group and getting ready for five very important games. It allowed people to recharge, get some training and some downtime so it was really valuable for us.”

Ross County can officially relegate Livingston this Saturday if they win but Cowie expects the Lions to be full of fight as they try to prolong their seemingly doomed bid to remain in the top flight.

“I’ll be expecting a team that will be doing everything they can to get three points to stay in this division,” said Cowie.

“I don’t expect anything less. We’ve got to be prepared for that mentally but we’re just as desperate for the three points. We go there looking to be positive.

“I said before the Rangers game, we had six games left and each game was equally important. This game is exactly the same.

“We’ve got five games left and now it’s about really attacking the five games and doing everything we can to try and finish in 10th place.”

County finished second bottom last season before securing their survival with a penalty shootout victory over Partick Thistle following a dramatic two-legged play-off.

Cowie is hoping his team can avoid such a fraught finale to the campaign this time round.

“It’s not something you want to do on a regular basis but we’ve got a group of players who are used to it from last year,” he said.

“We started the post-split fixtures really well last year, winning back-to-back games, but we found ourselves in that play-off spot so we’ll just take each game as it comes. We don’t look beyond this weekend.”