Stephen Robinson addresses Hibs manager link as St Mirren boss installed as new favourite

St Mirren manager Stephen Robinson believes speculation linking him with the Hibs managerial vacancy is easy to ignore and is credit to his players for their performances.

Robinson has been strongly mentioned as a potential candidate to succeed Lee Johnson at Easter Road and is the current odds-on favourite with bookmakers after taking Saints to within moments of a seven-game winning streak last weekend. The Buddies will go top of the cinch Premiership if they win at Livingston on Saturday and that is as far east as Robinson’s attention is going.

“I’m the St Mirren manager, I have had no contact from anybody,” he said. “I have been linked with every job in Scotland throughout the years and I’ve not spoken to a single club. I conduct myself properly.

“I can’t take my eye off what we are doing here. I’m totally focused on (Saturday), we have such a hard game against Livingston, against a very good team who have recruited very well. There is no eye on anything else.”

St Mirren manager Stephen Robinson is the current favourite for the Hibs managerial vacancy. (Photo by Paul Devlin / SNS Group)

The former Motherwell, Oldham and Morecambe manager feels such reports show everyone at St Mirren is doing their jobs properly.

“I think it’s credit to the players,” the 48-year-old said. “I am the person at the top who gets the credit and ultimately takes the blame for it but there’s a lot more people than myself who should be getting the credit for it.

“We have a really tight-knit group of staff who work tremendously hard to push this club forward so it’s credit to them. They are doing something right if I am being linked with things. Long may that continue if we keep fighting above the odds and proving people wrong.”

When asked how he has learned to deal with the speculation, the former Northern Ireland international said: “It’s easy because it’s all hypothetical, it’s all press talk and there’s no reality to it at times, which we know in football, it’s a little bit of a pantomime.

“It’s quite easy to stay focused, I have learnt over time not to pay much attention to anything unless you hear it from the horse’s mouth. You just get used to that.

“For me ultimately the players deserve the credit because they are the ones that are getting any kind of attention on St Mirren Football Club or myself, and we need to keep doing that and performing as we have.

“If the players aren’t doing well, they don’t get linked with moves. I think we have created a lot of assets at the club with our recruitment. Where we were 18 months ago when I walked into the club is night and day in terms the progress we have made.

“We keep chipping away and changing small things and if we keep over-performing and players keep playing to the top of their ability then they will get linked with things and inevitably you get linked with things as manager because the team is doing very well.”