Ross County players fighting to stay up and keep Don Cowie as manager

Ross County players are fighting to keep themselves in the Premiership and to help Don Cowie stay as manager for next season.

The Highland club haven’t lost a home match since February and have won three of their last five at Dingwall including a historic victory over Rangers nine days ago.

They are now 12 points ahead of bottom side Livingston and only one behind tenth placed St Johnstone with five games remaining as they battle to save their top-flight status.

The team who finish bottom will go down to the Championship while the team in eleventh at the end of the season will enter a relegation play-off system with second, third and fourth from the second tier.

And with games against Livingston, St Johnstone, Motherwell, Aberdeen and Hibs coming up they know it is now very much in their own hands if they can put a string of results together.

Cowie was appointed on an interim basis following the departure of Derek Adams who himself replaced Malky Mackay halfway through the season.

Performances and results soon picked up under the former Scotland international, who also had two spells at County as a player at the start and end of his career.

And goalkeeper Ross Laidlaw was full of praise for the 41-year-old and is hoping they can get the results that will see him offered the manager’s job permanently in the summer.

Speaking on Tuesday he said: “Since he (Cowie) came in he’s been brilliant, obviously it’s his first managerial job, but he’s known all the players here, he’s known things that go on behind the scenes, so it’s been quite an easy transition him coming in.

“The relationship he has with the players is good, he speaks to all the boys and I think everyone is enjoying his training. He is calm on the side-lines as well.

“So it’s been really good and I think you can see the amount of points we have picked up since he has been the gaffer, we are all fighting for him and hopefully we can get the results that will keep him in the job permanently.”

County beat treble chasing Rangers 3-2 in their last league game before the split in what was the club’s first ever victory over the Ibrox side.

And Laidlaw said it came as a confidence boost just at the right time.

He said: “It gave us a bit of confidence, obviously we know Rangers have been playing well and fighting to go top of the table, so it was a big result for us.

“We played really well and I think we deserved the win, sometimes you can play against the Old Firm and you can kind of scrape a result but I think we thoroughly deserved the win and hopefully we can take that into the games coming up.”

It’s Livingston away up next for Cowie’s men and, as good as their recent home form as been, County have only won one away game all season and that was way back in September.

So that is something they will be looking to fix on Saturday when they come up against David Martindale’s strugglers.