JACK Ross has dismissed suggestions that his on-form St. Mirren side can catch Aberdeen cold in their first game back after the winter shutdown.

The two clubs are set to meet at Pittodrie tomorrow afternoon in the pick of the William Hill Scottish Cup fourth round ties.

Many Scottish football pundits and supporters fancy the Paisley club – eight points clear at the top of the Ladbrokes Championship and undefeated in their last seven matches – to overcome their Premiership rivals.

Ross’s side have drawn with Morton and beaten Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Dumbarton in the league this month while Derek McInnes’s team have been away in Dubai on a warm weather training break.

However, the St. Mirren manager can still remember how the Clyde side he was a member of during his playing career was tipped to give Hibernian a fright in a Scottish Cup tie immediately after the break in 2001 - and ended up on the receiving end of a six goal mauling.

“It is really difficult to say how the break will affect them,” he said. “People can say they will be fresh, they will be rusty, the change in temperature could be a problem for them. But it is hard to predict how it will go.

“When I was at Clyde we played Hibs in the Scottish Cup in their first game back after the winter break at Easter Road in 2001. Allan Maitland, our manager, was very much like ‘we’ll catch them cold!’

“It was 6-0 after 55 minutes. We got beat 6-1. They had (Russell) Latapy and (Franck) Sauzee playing and they were fresh and buzzing. It is difficult to say with certainty how Aberdeen will be, how the break will affect them. I am sure they will approach the game in a positive way.”

St. Mirren were thrashed 5-0 when they played Premiership opponents Partick Thistle in the group stages of the Betfred Cup back in July – but Ross insists he has learned invaluable lessons since that defeat and is confident he will avoid a similar reverse in the meeting with Aberdeen.

“I got a lot of things wrong that day,” he said. “We didn’t play well that day and Partick played very well, but I got some things wrong in terms of how I approached the game. But it was good for me because I learned from that.

“It is a balance for us. Our strength is that we are a good side going forward. We have got good pace and good dynamic players from middle to front. We don’t want to stifle their ability to do that so that will remain.

“But obviously we have to come up with a way to prevent Aberdeen from picking holes in our team. They have got players who can do that as well. The way we play and the nature of our players means that hopefully we will still carry a threat in forward areas. It is not going to be easy, but hopefully we will still have the opportunity to do that.”

Lewis Morgan, the Scotland Under-21 winger who has been loaned back to St. Mirren for the second half of the season after signing for Celtic in a £300,000 move earlier this month, is sure to be the focus of a great deal of attention in the cup game against Aberdeen.

Ross, though, has no doubt Morgan can handle the pressure which will be on him to perform in the meeting with the second best team in the country.

Asked if the 21-year-old could cope with the scrutiny which he will be under against the team which has finished runners-up in the Premiership in the last three years, Ross said: “If he plays, aye.”

Ross added: “Seriously, though, the one area Lewis has grown in over the last year is his ability to deal with pressure and expectation and also in his enjoyment of the big stage.

“If you look at our game against Dundee United recently, it was on television, it was on a Friday night. There was a lot of focus on that game because it was on during the Premiership break. He responded to that. He scored again on the television the following week. He kind of thrives on that.

“He is learning to deal with it. He is learning to deal with an increased spotlight on him naturally because he is now a Celtic player. He is learning to deal with the expectation of that. If he can produce performances like he has been doing with that expectation then that prepares him well for going there and having to do it on a weekly basis.”