DAVID CORNELL insists St Mirren will be ready for their SPFL Premiership opener at Inverness on Saturday – despite his side's poor showing in last night's 2-0 friendly defeat to Newcastle.

A full-strength Saints side went down 2-0 to the English giants in a performance that saw them fail to register one shot on target.

But new Paisley No.1 Cornell is not too worried.

He said: "The Newcastle game was a great run out for us and the ideal way to bring us up to speed for Inverness on Saturday.

"I have no doubt we will be ready.

"The quality Newcastle had in their side, with the likes of Papiss Cisse, is something we are not going to be coming up against week in week out in the SPFL.

"I think we showed enough about us to indicate we can have a good season in the league.

"After half-time we were a lot tighter and gave them some problems. We can go to Inverness with confidence and that is the way you want to start the season."

Saints boss Danny Lennon opted to go with a strong starting XI that included former Hearts defender Danny Grainger, who made an impressive home debut at left-back.

Cornell's status as top man between the sticks was underlined by his start and the Welshman produced a promising performance.

Perhaps the most interesting deployment was of ex- Dundee playmaker Gary Harkins, who started up top in a front two with Steven Thompson early on, before dropping deeper after the break.

But it was Newcastle, with talent such as Cisse, Fabricio Coloccini and Hatem Ben Arfa in their ranks, who went ahead in 19 minutes as Cisse curved in a superb right-foot strike from 20 yards to beat Cornell all ends up.

Then seven minutes later the Toon were back for more. A sliderule pass by Dan Gosling put Mathieu Debuchy through and he stroked passed Cornell from just outside the box.

However, Lennon's men became more compact after the break, and with some promising cameos from youngsters Thomas Reilly and Sean Kelly, there were grounds for optimism ahead of their SPFL opener.