LEWIS MORGAN believes St Mirren’s upturn in form can be traced back to a recent team meeting. Having made wholesale changes to his squad in the January transfer window, manager Jack Ross called his players together to lay out his vision for the remainder of the campaign. The chat clearly had the desired effect. The Championship bottom side have gone through February undefeated, and notched up a crucial league victory away to relegation rivals Ayr United on Saturday that takes them to within five points of the play-off spot with a game in hand.
Morgan, who scored Saints’ second goal at Somerset Park after John Sutton had given his side the lead, admits there is still a lot of work to do but revealed team spirit around the Paisley club has never been higher as they look to pull off the great escape.
The in-form winger said: “A few weeks ago we all sat down as a team. We got our goals for the season, we looked at each game and we knew what totals we were wanting from each one. Those targets will stay among us but we now know what we want. We are all together. There’s a really good spirit at the moment and training has been brilliant. I can’t put my finger on why it has taken so long but we’ve definitely got some momentum behind us now.
“That meeting definitely helped. We got 10 or 11 new signings in January so it was good to get everyone together for a sit down. And now we’re all gelling. Everyone knows each other’s strengths and we’re definitely utilising that on the pitch.
“We feel that we’re starting to build some momentum. We’ve only lost three times in our last 13 games and there have been draws in there. But the gaffer has been on to us that we have to keep the momentum going. We’ve definitely got a good team spirit us about us now and we’re excited for the remainder of the season.”
Defeat to Ayr would have seen St Mirren fall 11 points behind their rivals so the significance of Saturday’s victory was not lost on their players. Morgan added: “We knew that this game was massive. We knew we had to win it. We’ve got our game in hand but we had marked this one down as a must-win. We all knew the importance of it so we’re all happy we got the job done.
“We’re definitely positive about staying up. We know we’ve got a squad who can do that and we’re building momentum now. We’ve got some big games coming up this week with Celtic in the Scottish Cup as well that we can enjoy, hopefully after another positive result in midweek against Hibs. We’re positive about our chances. We know we can stay up.”
Morgan now has three goals from his last three matches and also turned the Irn-Bru semi-final against The New Saints when he came on at half-time. He added: “I’m delighted to make an impact in the last few games and get myself back in the starting line-up. I just want to keep adding goals to my game. I think that’s eight for the season and I want to get as close to 15 as I can. That will be a big help to the team.
“I’m enjoying my football again and the fans have been a massive part of that as well. We had a huge crowd at Ayr, East Fife and Dumbarton away, and also at home. So it’s really good to give something back to them.”
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