Ross County striker Alex Samuel confident that Staggies can get results they need against Dundee and Motherwell to secure Premiership football next season
Alex Samuel insists Ross County can still avoid a bottom two finish in the Scottish Premiership – saying the club have escaped from worse positions in the past.
The Staggies have lost seven matches in-a-row – a run of form that has seen them go from being top six hopefuls to occupying the relegation play-off spot with two games left in the season.
Defeat tomorrow night against Dundee could even see County slip to the foot of the table going into the final matchday on Sunday.
However, former Welsh youth international Samuel is refusing to panic.
He has been in these predicaments with County before, and memorably put in a mammoth shift in the second leg of the play-off against Partick Thistle two years ago to help the Staggies overturn a three-goal deficit in under 20 minutes to preserve their top flight status.
With significantly more time to secure their own destiny this time around, Samuel knows first-hand that anything is possible this week.
“It’s one of those – momentum is different this time around,” he reasoned.
“We know that it can change in one game. I don’t think you can be in a worse position than 3-0 down with 20 minutes to go, so looking at it like that it’s okay right now.
“It’s still in our own hands, and we’ll need as much experience as we have in the team. The players who have seen and done this before know that it is possible, and we need to stick together the best that we can.
“It’s all on Wednesday, there are no more opportunities after this, so we will prepare the best we can to give ourselves the best chance of getting that victory and a result.
“We do not want to be in the play-off again, and we will do everything we can to avoid that situation.
“This is it now. Wednesday is the day when we have to take accountability – all the boys on that pitch – to get a result.”
That means that victory over Dundee would remove any possibility of automatic relegation from the equation.
A draw tomorrow night would see County sitting 11th going into Sunday, and relying on a favour in Perth for them to have any chance of escaping the bottom two.
Defeat would mean the best case scenario for the Highlanders this weekend would be a play-off, and they could also need St Johnstone to drop points to make that possible.
This week as a whole is the kind of high-pressure situation that makes or breaks football careers, and while Samuel admits that these predicaments have an impact on players on and off the pitch he is defiant in his belief that County can prevail.
“With the run that we’re on, if you keep looking at it too much it can become a negative, because it can build even more pressure on us,” he reasoned.
“We have to understand where we are and embrace it, and we’re going to have to step up.
“These situations are tough for everyone. Number one, it affects your time off if you have another week added to the season.
“You also want to be enjoying your football, and it’s tough to do that, so it is hard to switch off when you’re in that situation.
“I’m obviously one of the more experienced players now, especially with the situations we have been though in the last couple of seasons as a club, so I will do what I can personally to help the team get over the line.
“There are some boys experiencing this for the first time, and it is a different pressure to adapt to.
“We just have to keep telling ourselves that Wednesday is the night to do it, and we have to stick together to do the best we can to get over the line. We know that we can do it.”
