St Mirren's Ambition Under Craig McLeish: Aiming for Top Six

St Mirren manager Craig McLeish has drawn a hard line in the Paisley turf: if his side want to trade punches with the Premiership’s top six, they’ll do it on the back of grit, not glamour.

The man who dragged the Buddies through the play-offs last season after replacing Stephen Robinson – the architect of three successive top-half finishes and a League Cup win – is refusing to talk in the language of mere survival.

“If you just aim at surviving in this league and you fall short of that, you're in trouble,” McLeish said, setting the bar higher than the relegation scrap that consumed their last campaign. “We have to aim as high as we possibly can and top six and European qualification is what we're going to strive to achieve.”

That ambition comes with a clear blueprint. McLeish has watched his side rattle in 12 goals in the Premier Sports Cup group stage, but he isn’t about to let an attacking flourish blur what he believes made St Mirren awkward, awkward opponents in the first place.

The goals are welcome. The principles, non-negotiable.

“The way we're playing with an extra attacker, with some of the bodies we've brought in, hopefully that's the bit that we can solve this season as well because we also can't get away from what's made St Mirren successful over the years,” he said.

“We have to be hard to play against. We have to enjoy keeping clean sheets. We have to love defending and being aggressive in everything we do. It's keeping those core bits and then adding the attacking side to it as well.”

That is the balance he is chasing: a team that snarls without the ball and sparks with it. McLeish wants a side that can grind and entertain in the same 90 minutes.

“We want it to be exciting. We want it to be good to watch, fun for the players to play in. I want it to be enjoyable for the supporters. We will be hard working, we'll be high energy and we have to be tough to beat first and foremost.”

The squad, though, is still a work in progress.

St Mirren have moved to inject youth and power into midfield with the loan signing of 20-year-old Rangers player Paul Nsio, a deal McLeish believes gives him a profile he has struggled to find elsewhere.

“Paul brings us a kind of level of physicality and athleticism that we can't source,” he said. “He can cover a number of different positions.”

One target has slipped away. A proposed move for Ghanaian midfielder Abdul Hakim Sulemana has collapsed, leaving McLeish still searching for the final pieces that can turn his vision of a high-energy, hard-to-break unit into a weekly reality.

The message, though, is already pinned to the dressing-room wall: St Mirren will not tiptoe into this season trying to stay up. They are coming after the top six, and they plan to defend their way into the argument.