Jim Goodwin extends St Mirren deal until 2024

St Mirren reached the Betfred Cup semi-finals only to lose to Livingston last month and sit in seventh place in the Scottish Premiership, one point behind Dundee United with two games in hand.

Goodwin said: "Obviously we made some bold statements in the summer about wanting to become a top-six club consistently.

"We are in the mix at the moment, we are not quite there yet, we need to win three games before the split and we believe we are capable of doing it.

"It's about making progress every year. Last year we had a decent enough finish in the league (ninth), we got to the quarter-final of a cup.

"This year we managed to get to a semi-final of the cup. We are fighting for the top six.

"We have more points in the table at this point than any other season which is great credit to the staff and the players for all their hard work up until now.

"But I always felt the club underachieved, even when I was here as a player. I always felt that we didn't quite have the success that we should have had.

"Everybody talks about the League Cup final win in 2013, which is our most recent bit of silverware but we should be aiming to try to get to a cup final every year.

"I know it's a helluva tough task because of the competition there but that has got to be our motivation and aim.

"My focus is improving this place, making it a bigger and better club and changing the whole mind-set of everybody connected to the football club, supporters included.

"I want them to genuinely believe that we are capable of doing what we are talking about."

Ahead of the home game against Hamilton on Wednesday, Goodwin revealed an injury list which is leaving his squad "thinner and thinner by the game".

The Irishman said: "We had another bitter blow at the weekend with Jake Doyle-Hayes going off at half-time against Aberdeen after landing awkwardly and really hurting his Achilles/ankle area so it looks like Jake is going to be out for a number of weeks.

"Obviously, we already have Kristian Dennis (Achilles) and Eamonn Brophy (foot) who both had operations on Thursday afternoon.

"Thankfully the operations were successful but it looks like season over for both those guys.

"Jamie McGrath is due to see the specialist today regarding his shoulder dislocation.

"We are hoping he won't need surgery immediately and we might be able to patch him up after a couple of weeks of rest and recovery and maybe try to get half a dozen games out of him before we need to consider surgery."