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Conor McMenamin has backed his Buddies to rise to the challenge in St Mirren’s biggest week of the season. The Paisley men face Premiership leaders Hearts on Wednesday night before taking on Motherwell at Hampden in the semi-finals of the Premier Sports Cup. A late 3-1 defeat to Dundee United at Tannadice on Saturday means Stephen Robinson’s troops have lost three in a row. But McMenamin is confident the team will turn things around when it matters most – starting with the visit of Derek McInnes’ high-flying Jambos. He said: “Throughout the season, you go through these sticky patches and we are going through one now. “It’s quite easy to feel sorry for ourselves and think everything is going against us but if we keep putting in performances and creating chances like that, your luck will turn eventually. “It’s a massive week for the club and we have a huge game on Wednesday night before Saturday. “The manager will make sure we know Wednesday is the most important game so far and we need to win that. It’s a great test going up against Hearts. “We will be working hard to put things right and there’s probably no better time than Wednesday night looking ahead to Saturday.” Saints should never have lost at the weekend after spurning several opportunities before Alex Gogic’s red card led to Amar Fatah’s penalty strike for United who sealed the points through Craig Sibbald. Dan Nlundulu had opened the scoring for Saints but Zach Sapsford equalised and Northern Irish winger McMenamin insists Saints must be more ruthless to back up their dominant play. “I think we were comfortable in the game and the better team,” he said. “But if you don’t hit the target, you’re not going to score goals, and I thought we were quite wasteful. “That’s something we can control. We can’t control decisions the referee is going to make in the game. I felt we played really well but in that final third we need to be more clinical. The game would probably have been out of sight if we were. “I believe in the boys and the ability we have. It’s on the whole team and not just the strikers. We need to take the burden off their backs. Hitting the target was something we had worked on this week. The gaffer nailed it down.” McMenamin said Gogic was “gutted” with the red-card incident, a challenge on Nikolaj Moller, then added: “Alex says he couldn’t go anywhere else and that was only trying to block the ball.” The 30-year-old is back to full fitness after recovering from a calf injury – and was deployed at right wing-back against United. He said: “I felt good out there and comfortable in the game. I really enjoyed it up until about the 85th minute.” Don't miss the latest Renfrewshire headlines – you can sign up to our free daily newsletter here
