Thriving On Pressure

St Mirren are thriving on the pressure to stay at the top of Ladbrokes Championship according to Craig Samson. While many eyes were on the Scottish cup semi-final on Saturday, the Buddies tightened their grip of the top spot with a 0-0 draw with Falkirk and are still two points clear of second place Dunfermline. Samson says the point picked up was a good one as he reckons many other sides will go to Falkirk this season and struggle. The goalkeeper also praised the efforts of his teammates in securing another decent result on their travels. 

He said: "I don't think it'll be just a tough place for St Mirren to come, I think there will be a lot of teams who come here (Falkirk Stadium) and lose.  They've had a hard start to the season, but they've changed their manager and put a lot of pressure on us in the second half.  The boys stood up to the test very well, defended very well and I think over the piece we created the better chances in the match. You can look at different games where it may be a bad point because you feel as if you should have run away with it, but today wasn't that. It was a good performance from the boys and on another day we might have won the match. But we'll take the clean sheet and get down the road staying top of the league. All we want to do is keep ticking off the games and stay where we are. We don't want to come off that position in the league. There's a pressure for us to win games now. For some teams there is a pressure not to lose but for us we have to win and keep going. It's a good pressure to have and something we are thriving on."

Samson went on: "It's the best type of pressure. The last couple of clubs I have been at we have probably struggled at times and it's been that pressure not to lose a game. But here we are in it to go and win matches. That's they way you want it to be. We want to be the one that teams are chasing and if we win games they can't catch us."

St Mirren are now looking forward to Saturday's derby game against Morton as the Greenock side make the journey to Paisley. While Samson admits there is an element of wanting to rectify the disappointing derby loss suffered at Cappielow in August, he believes the team's focus is on picking up a good result to remain on top. He went on: "It's a massive game for the fans and as a group it's another game we want to come away with a positive result and stay top of the league. We have to look at things in the long run rather than just looking at the derby matches. Of course the last one was very disappointing for us and we want to put it right, but it's all about ticking games off, winning football matches and staying where we are in the league."