St Mirren will host Hibernian in the Scottish Premiership on Wednesday. Due to Hibs’ commitments to the League Cup, the game that was originally slated for the weekend was postponed.
Preview (St Mirren vs. Hibernian)
After taking the weekend off, St Mirren will be raring to go back to the field in an attempt to maintain their excellent record, which sees them presently standing far and away above the rest of Scotland. St Mirren is up in third place with 18 points from their first 10 games. This is despite having played the joint-fewest games in the league. Despite having played two fewer games than Kilmarnock, Stephen Robinson’s team is ahead of them by two points. This season, only Rangers and Celtic have defeated the Saints in the league. It was a really painful loss on the road against the champions. They had the lead and were defeated by a goal seven minutes from the end.
A club that hasn’t played continental football in nearly forty years will now aim for Europe. Only three times has St. Mirren made it to Europe via the league, and they were during the club’s UEFA Cup competitions in the 1980s. They played in the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup in 1987 after winning the Scottish Cup. St Mirren haven’t played on the continent since. They will now need to defeat Hibs in order to maintain that hope.
St Mirren began their league campaign at Easter Road, defeating Hibs 3-2 on the first day of play. However, they also lost 4-2 in their quarterfinal League Cup match there. Hibernian defeated St Mirren in that final eight-match. They ultimately lost their semi-final match to Aberdeen under very unfortunate circumstances. But Aberdeen’s Bojan Miovski scored three minutes later. Nick Montgomery’s team mysteriously trailed, and they went on to win 1-0.
Team News
Jonah Ayunga, a Kenyan who is still recovering from an ACL injury, is the lone player injured for St Mirren. Mikael Mandron, was benched for the trip to Celtic after scoring twice in their victory over St Johnstone. He may be able to return to the starting lineup up front. In this month’s internationals, Conor McMenamin will try to make another impression in the hopes of making it into the starting lineup for Northern Ireland. The wide player opened the scoring for St Mirren at Celtic Park and scored his first goal for his country last month against San Marino.
For this trip to Paisley, the visitors will be without former St Mirren players Chris Cadden (Achilles) and Jake Doyle-Hayes (ankle). Harry McKirdy has been having health problems lately, but manager Montgomery recently provided a positive update on him; nonetheless, it is still too soon for him to return. David Marshall, the veteran goalie, was back in the lineup for the semi-final this past weekend, following Jojo Wollacott’s appearance in their previous league game.
St Mirren 2 – 1 Hibernian
For more football previews, click here
