Jack Ross: St Mirren 'not going up to Premiership to tread water'

Jack Ross celebrates promotion with the St Mirren players

Jack Ross and assistant James Fowler (left) celebrate promotion with the St Mirren players

St Mirren boss Jack Ross insists the Paisley club will be bold in their ambition and are not going back to the Scottish Premiership to "tread water".

A year ago the Buddies fought to avoid relegation to League One but won this season's Championship title in style.

Ross believes "people would find it difficult to argue St Mirren is not a Premiership club", and they have the potential to compete in the top half.

"I am not interested in going up to tread water," he told BBC Sportsound.

"It just doesn't excite me. It might be the case because you don't know until you get there.

"But it's certainly not what we are looking for. I think you have got to be bolder and braver than that."

Ross, 41, played for St Mirren for two years in the top flight from 2008-2010, but they were relegated in 2015, two years after winning the Scottish League Cup.

"Could St Mirren finish in the top four in the Premiership at some point? Yeh, they could," he reasoned. "Are they one of the top four Premiership clubs in terms of resources? That is a difficult one, when you compare it now to three years ago when Rangers, Hearts and Hibs were all out of it.

"The challenge is to become a good Premiership club, akin to what the likes of St Johnstone and Motherwell have done and Kilmarnock are doing at the moment.

"That potential is there. I don't think it is a pipe dream to say that can't be achieved. That is the next challenge for me, to adapt what we have to make sure we are robust enough to meet that challenge."

To that end, Ross intends to recruit "between seven and nine players" for their return to the top flight.

"It is a big turnover but I think we need that," he said. "The Premiership does have more physicality and we have probably had the smallest team in the Championship. We have had real problems at set-pieces at times."

He also wants to recruit a new first-team coach to supplement the work of himself and assistant boss James Fowler.

"We split a lot in training into units for different things and James has got certain responsibilities," Ross explained.

Given the startling turnaround in fortunes he has engineered since arriving from Alloa Athletic in October 2016, Ross has regularly been linked with other jobs.

'If I move, it would have to be for something better'

In February he was targeted by English Championship side Barnsley, but decided he was better off staying put.

"Whether I would have been offered the job, I don't know," he explained. "I went to speak to the club, I considered it and I felt I didn't want to take it any further.

"I might not have been offered the job anyway, so I can't say I rejected it. But at that time I felt I was better where I was.

"I am in a really good job. I really enjoy it and with the timing, I felt it wasn't finished. We were pursuing the Championship at the time.

"What I have at St Mirren... the infrastructure of the club, the relationship I have with the board, the autonomy I have on the football side, the training facility.

"It is easy to jump ship but sometimes you have to step back and say 'I have a lot of good things at my disposal here'. If I do move, it would have to be for something that felt better."

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