Secret behind St Mirren's three penalty saves revealed as Trevor Carson heroics stonewall Dundee

St Mirren manager Stephen Robinson revealed the secret weapon behind his team’s progress to the last 16 of the Scottish Cup: Jamie Langfield.

St Mirren's Trevor Carson saves a penalty from Dundee's Kwame Thomas during the Scottish Cup shoot-out win. (Photo by Alan Harvey / SNS Group)

A poor tie of few chances went all the way to a penalty shoot-out where Trevor Carson saved all three of Dundee’s kicks.

That outcome was rough on the Championship side on a day when they created – but spurned – the better of the chances.

And Robinson said his team’s progress was all down to the homework done by his goalkeeping coach Langfield that Carson put to full use.

He said: “Ultimately what we got out of that is we’re through to the next round. We weren’t at our best obviously – that goes without saying.

“As a team we made poor decisions on the ball and we hold our hands up to that. But in the cup you just need to get through and we’ve got through.

“Trevor made three excellent penalty saves and deserves a lot of credit. And so does Jamie Langfield, our goalkeeping coach, because he called Trevor over just before the shoot-out and gave him info about every single Dundee player and what way they were going to go with their penalties.

“And he got every one of them right. So big credit to Trevor and to Jamie.”

Dundee boss Gary Bowyer couldn’t fault his players for all they contributed to the contest, while revealing that midfielder Tyler French had been taken to hospital with a suspected broken leg.

He said: “I thought we were brilliant, we were really good. We took a Premiership team on and had a right good go at them.

“It shouldn’t really have got to extra-time with the chances we missed. But I’m proud. It was a magnificent effort from us, we took the game to them and I thought we did really well.

“If there’s one bit we have to be better at, it’s that top end of the pitch because the number of chances we’ve created this season we should have won more games than we have done. And we should have won that one.”