ST MIRREN boss Ian Murray believes his job is not on the line going into tonight’s derby match with Morton. Saints have won just two league games all season and trail their Greenock rivals by 12 points less than halfway into the Championship campaign. That has led to some angry supporters taking to social media to call for Murray’s sacking should the Paisley side lose to their biggest rivals at St Mirren Park.

The former Dumbarton manager, though, insists he is not feeling any extra pressure going into the match and has been given no indication that his position could be in danger should Morton win, a result that would effectively all but end Saints’ chances of making the promotion play-offs this season.

Murray acknowledged that derby games are always a bit special but that nothing had changed with regards to his own personal situation.

He told Times Sport: “I don’t feel like there is any extra pressure on me going into this one. The spotlight is always on the players and they are always judged on how they do in these games. There has been no indication to me that I have to win the game to keep my job. But there is no question it would be a huge lift for us to beat our local rivals and the team occupying fourth place.

“You have to acknowledge that it’s a derby and a bit different from other games. We go into it as underdogs. That’s perhaps not what we had imagined for this stage of the season but that’s what it is. Morton have been on a good run of form and ground out results against the teams around about them in the table. Fair play to them, it’s hard to go four undefeated in this league never mind winning them all. But we will be doing our hardest to beat them.

“Supporters want to beat their rivals and finish above them in the table so they have the bragging rights – I get that. If it went to 15 points that would be a big gap so we don’t want that to happen. We want to cut it down to nine points with us having a game in hand.

“A win for us could help lift the whole place. We firmly believe we can win it with the quality we’ve got. We’ve got the aggressive side you need for a derby and we showed that in the game at Cappielow. We battled toe-to-toe with Morton and showed a few bits of quality, too. So I firmly believe we can win the game.”

Morton haven’t beaten St Mirren in a proper competitive match since 1999 and Murray doesn’t want that record to end this evening. He added: “If you’re a Morton manager, player or fan you’re saying that record has to go at some point. But from the St Mirren camp you don’t want it to happen on Friday night. So we’ve got that pressure on ourselves. That run will come to an end at some point but we just have to make sure it’s not tonight.”

Murray has not given up Saints reaching the promotion play-offs come the end of the season. He added: “After next Tuesday night we will have played the top five teams in our last five games. So we look at the positives. If we can win our next two games and get the gap down to six points then things start to look rosier for us. Coming up we have eague matches against Livingston, Alloa and Dumbarton so if we can take points from those then making the play-offs remains a realistic long-term goal.”