Stephen Robinson: Players would need to leave St Mirren to fund January signings

St Mirren boss Stephen Robinson says he would need to move players out of the squad to be able to make new signings next month.

The transfer window opens on January 1 and with St Mirren currently sitting third in the Premiership, the manager is keen to ensure he has a strong squad for the second half of the season as they look to build on last year’s sixth-place finish.

That means juggling finances and Robinson, who was able to sign free agent Elvis Bwomono on a short-term deal this week, said that any new arrivals would be dependent on other deals being concluded first.

“We’ll have to do a bit of business out to do that,” the manager said. “The board knew that in the past few months we were trying to bring a replacement in for Ryan Strain.

“Obviously Thierry [Small] can play there as well but we need to bolster the squad. It would be too small to go into the run of games that we have.

“So we’ll have to do a bit of trading to bring somebody else in. But Keanu’s away for maybe five to six games with Australia (for the Asian Cup) so that’s an area of the pitch we may have to look at just now.”

While assessing the ability and fitness of potential signings, Robinson believes it’s important to get the right character when he recruits players, having credited some of his side’s successes to the mentality in the squad.

“It’s massive,” he explained. “You only need one bad egg and it brings the dressing room down.

“When things are going well for you, that’s fine. When you lose a few games, and I think we saw that in the last month, we had a bad two to three weeks and nothing changed. None of the attitude changed, nobody was feeling sorry for themselves, there was no groups within the squad.

“When the British rowing team won all the Olympic golds they had a phrase: ‘If anything stops the boat going forward, they go’ and have run by similar standards and phrases here.

“If anyone’s trying to stop us going forward or we bring a person in that’s not going in the same direction as everybody else then you have to go.

“That’s what the boys believe and what they’ve bought into and we have no egos at the football club. That’s the only way you can survive as a club like St Mirren.”

The Saints boss also spoke of his delight in being able to sign Elvis Bwomono, with the versatile right-back having agreed a deal until the end of the season. Richard Taylor and Caolan Boyd-Munce had previously joined the club on short-term contracts and earned longer deals before becoming first team regulars.

Robinson believes Bwomono can follow in their footsteps.

He said: “I think when you give people that opportunity and you can see that you will get a chance and get your contract extended and go on to the money that first team players are on, credit to the boys who took on lesser money to have that opportunity.

“Two of them have been rewarded and I’m very, very confident that the same will happen with Elvis.

“We’ve had the luxury of having him in, seeing his character, seeing his level of fitness and had a good look at him medically.

“We think he’s a really good athlete who can be a big asset to the football club.”