Stephen Robinson insists St Mirren have “massively over-achieved” this season despite a difficult end to their cinch Premiership campaign.
The Buddies made it into the top six for the first time under the current league set-up but the post-split fixtures have proved problematic.
The Paisley side have lost four and drawn two of their last six games with hopes of European football slipping away with a 3-0 defeat by Aberdeen at Pittodrie on Wednesday night.
However, speaking ahead of the final game of the season at home to Rangers on Saturday lunchtime, Robinson stressed that his squad deserve to be judged over the whole campaign and appreciated for their achievement.
The Northern Irishman said: “This group of players have massively over-achieved from where people thought we would be.
“That needs recognised. It has to be recognised and we want Saturday to be about celebrating that.
“These boys have created history for St Mirren. We don’t want that to be forgotten, we want a full house at the end of the game to say thank you to the fans for their support but also for the fans to show their appreciation for what this group of boys and staff have done for the club this year.
“It has been a terrific season. We must not forget that.
“I think the season has caught up with us in the last five games in terms of depth of squad.
“We have had horrendous injuries up front with Curtis Main being our only fit striker although he is not actually fully fit.
“We have completed phase one of what we started out to do, in reality, probably a year before we envisaged it we got into the top six.
“The challenge is to strengthen, can we get the four or five players that will make us stronger and try to challenge for the top six again.
“That’s the hard bit, to go and do it again.”
