St Mirren manager Craig McLeish has heaped praise on Republic of Ireland international Killian Phillips after a brace of goals that gave them a 2-0 win over Falkirk on the opening day of the Scottish season.<\/p>\n
McLeish is convinced his squad will improve on last season\u2019s struggles which saw him steer Saints to safety when interim head coach.<\/p>\n
He has set a high bar of the top six and a European qualification bid this term, and a double from Phillips helped that effort off to a fine start at Falkirk Stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought the performance was excellent and, if we can build on that, we can go and achieve something as a group,\u201d McLeish said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m delighted for the group. We got the result our performance deserved. I thought we were excellent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were so many aspects of our game that I was happy with. We had to defend and dig in at times, but also showed real quality on the ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe counter-attacked very well, which was part of our game plan. The boys who came off the bench gave us a lift and energy.\u201d St Mirren were the top flight\u2019s lowest scorers with 30 goals in 38 games in 2025\/26.<\/p>\n
Irish midfielder Phillips netted in each half and was denied a hat-trick by a superb Scott Bain save.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the Killian we know and love and we need that from him every week,\u201d said McLeish.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe brings so much to the group and it\u2019s just about keeping his levels really high. He holds himself to really high standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need goals from throughout the team. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s about finding a number nine who can get you 10-15 goals. We have to be chipping in all across the pitch and we did that in the League Cup group stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pleasing thing is we are creating chances.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rangers loan midfielder Paul Nsio made an eye-catching debut after only training for two days, while McLeish took his signing spree to eight on the morning of the match by recruiting Luke Thomas.<\/p>\n
The former Bristol Rovers winger was sent on for a second-half bow.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve done a lot of recruitment and it\u2019s probably not quite finished yet,\u201d McLeish said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did a lot of work on him (Nsio). He showed why we have brought him in; I thought he was outstanding.\u201d Falkirk boss John McGlynn is handling significant squad turnover from last season\u2019s sixth-placed group, but he admitted he wanted a better display on day one of the new campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were naive at the two goals we lost and we didn\u2019t have a killer instinct,\u201d McGlynn said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also weren\u2019t as incisive as we wanted to be, but we only had two players starting who started the final game of last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat tells you the turnaround we are dealing with. We are in quite a big transition and we need to stick together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St Mirren manager Craig McLeish has heaped praise on Republic of Ireland international Killian Phillips after a brace…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,1842],"class_list":["post-579257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}