Archive December 14, 2025

On the morning of what would prove to be one of the finest days in St Mirren’s history, Stephen Robinson had his team in tears.

The manager, who will now surely go down as one of the best to ever guide the Paisley side, gathered the thoughts, feelings and messages from the families of his squad to motivate them for their Premier Sports Cup final meeting with Celtic.

‘This is who you’re doing it for’ was the message.

“We had a little moment before the game, where the manager showed us a video of all our families and we were all emotional,” said defender Miguel Freckleton.

“None of us knew about it, so he stuck on a family photo and then he started going around and everyone was ready for their family.

Conor McMenamin, who Robinson brought over from Northern Ireland two years ago, joked: “I didn’t think it motivated us, we were all sad getting on the bus!”

Injured captain Mark O’Hara admitted: “There were a few tears.”

It perhaps sums up Robinson and his management best that he was still able to surprise the squad he knows so well on the day they needed it most.

Few would think getting the waterworks going would work wonders, but it did that and then some as St Mirren carried the weight of responsibility on their shoulders with little fuss.

Before a ball was kicked, the team saluted their supporters in a way that, even then, 22 minutes before Marcus Fraser headed them in front, suggested they knew this was their day.

“We just felt it, we had that belief all week,” said the second-minute goalscorer.

“We knew what we had,” Freckleton stressed. “We’ve got unity, do you know what I mean?

“They’ve obviously come in with a new manager, and that togetherness might not be there, because the manager’s not built that yet, but we knew we had that.”

“We met the fans at the calendar signing this week and this was all they spoke about,” two-goal hero Jonah Ayunga told BBC Scotland.

Not a bad day’s work at all.

And in truth, it wasn’t even the most gruelling day at the office for the most outstanding of rewards.

When they were here last month for the semi-final against Motherwell, the St Mirren players were met with a ‘faith over fear’ tifo from the fans.

On a gloomy day at Hampden, St Mirren had all the faith in themselves to achieve their second success in this competition.

“I said to the players if you play with fear, that means you’re not organised, that means you don’t have belief in you ability,” Robinson explained.

That message rung true in the second half as they dismantled the cup holders.

Having ended the first-half on the back foot after Reo Hatate hammered home a leveller, St Mirren might have been expected to retreat into their shell.

But Robinson ripped up the script.

“I wasn’t happy with the last 20 minutes of the first half,” he added.

“We changed it, put Keanu Baccus to man-mark [Callum] McGregor, and our two centre-forwards man-marked their outside centre-halves.

“We left the middle one on the ball, and that’s where we pressed from.

Said in jest, it’s far from the first time Robinson has masterminded a fine St Mirren win. But this was his most important victory.

Danny Lennon, who led the Saints to their first League Cup triumph in 2013, said Robinson had “laid the foundations for an incredible era” at the club.

Three consecutive top-six finishes and a return to European football for the first time in 37 years brought accolades – but he wanted silverware to show for it.

Robinson had twice taken Motherwell to Hampden finals, falling short against Celtic each time.

He came up trumps in his third final – with no luck involved.

“This is once in a lifetime,” said Ayunga. “I’ve been playing since I was 17, I’m nearly 30, this was the first time I had a chance to win anything.

“The manager deserves it. You see what he’s done year upon year. This is the icing on the cake.”

McMenamin, 30, added: “We came here and believed in ourselves, believed we could beat Celtic.

“We deserved to put our hands on that trophy. It’s the only thing this team hasn’t got in the last few years – top-six finishes, Europe. To get silverware now, we’ll go down in history.”

Go down in history they will. This will be a team who are talked about in the highest regard around Paisley. Robinson won’t ever need to buy a pint again.

On the morning of what would prove to be one of the finest days in St Mirren’s history, Stephen Robinson had his team in tears.

The manager, who will now surely go down as one of the best to ever guide the Paisley side, gathered the thoughts, feelings and messages from the families of his squad to motivate them for their Premier Sports Cup final meeting with Celtic.

‘This is who you’re doing it for’ was the message.

“We had a little moment before the game, where the manager showed us a video of all our families and we were all emotional,” said defender Miguel Freckleton.

“None of us knew about it, so he stuck on a family photo and then he started going around and everyone was ready for their family.

Conor McMenamin, who Robinson brought over from Northern Ireland two years ago, joked: “I didn’t think it motivated us, we were all sad getting on the bus!”

Injured captain Mark O’Hara admitted: “There were a few tears.”

It perhaps sums up Robinson and his management best that he was still able to surprise the squad he knows so well on the day they needed it most.

Few would think getting the waterworks going would work wonders, but it did that and then some as St Mirren carried the weight of responsibility on their shoulders with little fuss.

Before a ball was kicked, the team saluted their supporters in a way that, even then, 22 minutes before Marcus Fraser headed them in front, suggested they knew this was their day.

“We just felt it, we had that belief all week,” said the second-minute goalscorer.

“We knew what we had,” Freckleton stressed. “We’ve got unity, do you know what I mean?

“They’ve obviously come in with a new manager, and that togetherness might not be there, because the manager’s not built that yet, but we knew we had that.”

“We met the fans at the calendar signing this week and this was all they spoke about,” two-goal hero Jonah Ayunga told BBC Scotland.

Not a bad day’s work at all.

And in truth, it wasn’t even the most gruelling day at the office for the most outstanding of rewards.

When they were here last month for the semi-final against Motherwell, the St Mirren players were met with a ‘faith over fear’ tifo from the fans.

On a gloomy day at Hampden, St Mirren had all the faith in themselves to achieve their second success in this competition.

“I said to the players if you play with fear, that means you’re not organised, that means you don’t have belief in you ability,” Robinson explained.

That message rung true in the second half as they dismantled the cup holders.

Having ended the first-half on the back foot after Reo Hatate hammered home a leveller, St Mirren might have been expected to retreat into their shell.

But Robinson ripped up the script.

“I wasn’t happy with the last 20 minutes of the first half,” he added.

“We changed it, put Keanu Baccus to man-mark [Callum] McGregor, and our two centre-forwards man-marked their outside centre-halves.

“We left the middle one on the ball, and that’s where we pressed from.

Said in jest, it’s far from the first time Robinson has masterminded a fine St Mirren win. But this was his most important victory.

Danny Lennon, who led the Saints to their first League Cup triumph in 2013, said Robinson had “laid the foundations for an incredible era” at the club.

Three consecutive top-six finishes and a return to European football for the first time in 37 years brought accolades – but he wanted silverware to show for it.

Robinson had twice taken Motherwell to Hampden finals, falling short against Celtic each time.

He came up trumps in his third final – with no luck involved.

“This is once in a lifetime,” said Ayunga. “I’ve been playing since I was 17, I’m nearly 30, this was the first time I had a chance to win anything.

“The manager deserves it. You see what he’s done year upon year. This is the icing on the cake.”

McMenamin, 30, added: “We came here and believed in ourselves, believed we could beat Celtic.

“We deserved to put our hands on that trophy. It’s the only thing this team hasn’t got in the last few years – top-six finishes, Europe. To get silverware now, we’ll go down in history.”

Go down in history they will. This will be a team who are talked about in the highest regard around Paisley. Robinson won’t ever need to buy a pint again.

On a weekend when Phil Foden and Cole Palmer helped Manchester City and Chelsea to vital Premier League victories, Aston Villa‘s Morgan Rogers showed just why he retains a firm grip on the number 10 position in Thomas Tuchel’s England set-up.

Villa’s eight-match winning run in all competitions appeared under serious threat at the midway point of Sunday’s game at third-bottom West Ham, who led 2-1 at the break against a side who appeared jaded and short of inspiration after Thursday’s Europa League victory at Basel.

In the second half, however, Rogers decided to take matters into his own hands.

The 23-year-old scored his first of the afternoon five minutes into the second half, making it 2-2 from close range after West Ham had failed to clear Youri Tielemans’ low cross into the box.

Then, with the final 10 minutes approaching, Rogers collected a loose ball 30 yards from goal and was given time and space to slam a powerful, swerving strike into the top right corner of Alphonse Areola’s goal and clinch a ninth straight victory for Unai Emery’s third-placed team.

That magnificent effort capped a fine all-round performance from Rogers and reaffirmed his status as England’s first-choice number 10 at next summer’s World Cup – despite world-class competition from Foden, Palmer and Real Madrid’s Jude Bellingham.

“He scored two fantastic goals and, for me, he is not just going to be in the squad next summer,” said former England forward and Match of the Day pundit Theo Walcott. “He is a dead cert to be a starter for England at the World Cup – 100%.

As Walcott alluded to, Rogers was not merely a goal threat in Sunday’s 3-2 win, despite registering five of Villa’s seven attempts.

He enjoyed more touches inside the West Ham box than any of his colleagues at London Stadium, while he also completed more than 90% of his 22 passes in the final third – the joint-highest ratio among Villa players.

“He is such an intelligent player,” added Walcott. “He’s the kind of player that recognises a weakness in the structure of the team.”

Reflecting on Rogers’ delightful second goal, the former Arsenal player continued: “You think of [Cristiano] Ronaldo and how, if you give them time and space on the ball when they shoot from distance, they are able to manipulate the ball the way they want to. Well, Rogers is able to do that.

“Of course, he got that space he was looking for against West Ham. If you give time and space to any player like that, you are in trouble, especially him because of the way he hits the ball.”

Unsurprisingly, Rogers said after the game he was “pretty confident right now”.

He got eight league goals last season and has five already in this campaign.

Rogers told Match of the Day: “I’m scoring quite a few lately. If I score and we win, then I’m happy. I want to score as much as possible and help the team.

Foden has spoken about his off-field struggles last season, as well as carrying an injury, which meant he was unable to showcase his best form.

But the 25-year-old is approaching close to what he is capable of, netting his 10th goal of the season in City’s hard-fought win at Crystal Palace on Sunday.

Six of those strikes have come in his past five games, highlighting how he is hitting his stride as the season starts to ramp up and City chase down league leaders Arsenal.

Foden’s goal – a rasping a low effort into the bottom corner following fine work by team-mate Rayan Cherki – will have impressed the watching Tuchel at Selhurst Park.

Despite scoring, though, Foden lost possession 16 times against Palace, the most for his team alongside Matheus Nunes.

It was something boss Pep Guardiola noted after the game as he said Foden “lost a lot of balls and was in a rush”.

“He needs to stay calm and then change the gear in the right moment,” added the Spaniard. “Playing in the same gear, he is so accelerated.

“He is so young, he listens and saying that, he has been doing an incredibly terrific season.”

Foden agreed, telling BBC Match of the Day: “In the first half I gave a lot of balls away and I was trying to do too much with it. Against Palace, you need to relax and play extra passes.

“That is the standard I set myself and so does the manager. He knows there is more to come from me.”

Foden’s prowess from outside the area means he has scored eight league goals from such position since the beginning of the 2023-24 campaign, with only Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappe (14) scoring more across Europe’s big five leagues during that period.

He has also now scored in four consecutive Premier Leagues matches for the second time in his career.

“He is in outstanding form,” said ex-England goalkeeper and Match of the Day pundit Joe Hart. “You can tell he’s in unreal flow right now.

After 87 days without making the scoresheet, Palmer ended his barren run by scoring Chelsea’s first-half opener in Saturday’s 2-0 win over Everton – also in front of England manager Tuchel.

The 23-year-old is still managing a groin injury which has kept him out of for a large part of the campaign so far, while he also broke his toe in an accident at home before a 2-0 win over Burnley in late November.

After rusty displays against Leeds United and Bournemouth, Saturday’s calm finish from Malo Gusto’s pass suggested he has lost none of the instincts that helped him hit 15 goals in 37 league outings last term.

“What I find incredible is people saying Cole Palmer will be a problem when he comes back from injury,” Stephen Warnock told Final Score on Saturday. “He’s been unbelievable.

“I put him in the category as one of the best players in the world.”

Tuchel, of course, has another world-class ace up his sleeve too in Bellingham, who scored one and set up another against Madrid’s Clasico rivals Barcelona at the end of October.

But, like Xabi Alonso’s side as a whole, he has struggled for consistency of late.

The 22-year-old has scored four goals and set up another three this season, having registered 30 goal involvements in all competitions last term for Los Blancos.

Moreover, the former Borussia Dortmund midfielder’s unhappy reaction to being substituted in England’s World Cup qualifying win over Albania last month is unlikely to have boosted his chances of starting the Three Lions’ opening World Cup game against Croatia on Wednesday, 17 June.

“I just think you need someone who can do everything,” added Walcott. “Not just be good on the ball, but also be able to work defensively hard and set the press.

On a weekend when Phil Foden and Cole Palmer helped Manchester City and Chelsea to vital Premier League victories, Aston Villa‘s Morgan Rogers showed just why he retains a firm grip on the number 10 position in Thomas Tuchel’s England set-up.

Villa’s eight-match winning run in all competitions appeared under serious threat at the midway point of Sunday’s game at third-bottom West Ham, who led 2-1 at the break against a side who appeared jaded and short of inspiration after Thursday’s Europa League victory at Basel.

In the second half, however, Rogers decided to take matters into his own hands.

The 23-year-old scored his first of the afternoon five minutes into the second half, making it 2-2 from close range after West Ham had failed to clear Youri Tielemans’ low cross into the box.

Then, with the final 10 minutes approaching, Rogers collected a loose ball 30 yards from goal and was given time and space to slam a powerful, swerving strike into the top right corner of Alphonse Areola’s goal and clinch a ninth straight victory for Unai Emery’s third-placed team.

That magnificent effort capped a fine all-round performance from Rogers and reaffirmed his status as England’s first-choice number 10 at next summer’s World Cup – despite world-class competition from Foden, Palmer and Real Madrid’s Jude Bellingham.

“He scored two fantastic goals and, for me, he is not just going to be in the squad next summer,” said former England forward and Match of the Day pundit Theo Walcott. “He is a dead cert to be a starter for England at the World Cup – 100%.

As Walcott alluded to, Rogers was not merely a goal threat in Sunday’s 3-2 win, despite registering five of Villa’s seven attempts.

He enjoyed more touches inside the West Ham box than any of his colleagues at London Stadium, while he also completed more than 90% of his 22 passes in the final third – the joint-highest ratio among Villa players.

“He is such an intelligent player,” added Walcott. “He’s the kind of player that recognises a weakness in the structure of the team.”

Reflecting on Rogers’ delightful second goal, the former Arsenal player continued: “You think of [Cristiano] Ronaldo and how, if you give them time and space on the ball when they shoot from distance, they are able to manipulate the ball the way they want to. Well, Rogers is able to do that.

“Of course, he got that space he was looking for against West Ham. If you give time and space to any player like that, you are in trouble, especially him because of the way he hits the ball.”

Unsurprisingly, Rogers said after the game he was “pretty confident right now”.

He got eight league goals last season and has five already in this campaign.

Rogers told Match of the Day: “I’m scoring quite a few lately. If I score and we win, then I’m happy. I want to score as much as possible and help the team.

Foden has spoken about his off-field struggles last season, as well as carrying an injury, which meant he was unable to showcase his best form.

But the 25-year-old is approaching close to what he is capable of, netting his 10th goal of the season in City’s hard-fought win at Crystal Palace on Sunday.

Six of those strikes have come in his past five games, highlighting how he is hitting his stride as the season starts to ramp up and City chase down league leaders Arsenal.

Foden’s goal – a rasping a low effort into the bottom corner following fine work by team-mate Rayan Cherki – will have impressed the watching Tuchel at Selhurst Park.

Despite scoring, though, Foden lost possession 16 times against Palace, the most for his team alongside Matheus Nunes.

It was something boss Pep Guardiola noted after the game as he said Foden “lost a lot of balls and was in a rush”.

“He needs to stay calm and then change the gear in the right moment,” added the Spaniard. “Playing in the same gear, he is so accelerated.

“He is so young, he listens and saying that, he has been doing an incredibly terrific season.”

Foden agreed, telling BBC Match of the Day: “In the first half I gave a lot of balls away and I was trying to do too much with it. Against Palace, you need to relax and play extra passes.

“That is the standard I set myself and so does the manager. He knows there is more to come from me.”

Foden’s prowess from outside the area means he has scored eight league goals from such position since the beginning of the 2023-24 campaign, with only Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappe (14) scoring more across Europe’s big five leagues during that period.

He has also now scored in four consecutive Premier Leagues matches for the second time in his career.

“He is in outstanding form,” said ex-England goalkeeper and Match of the Day pundit Joe Hart. “You can tell he’s in unreal flow right now.

After 87 days without making the scoresheet, Palmer ended his barren run by scoring Chelsea’s first-half opener in Saturday’s 2-0 win over Everton – also in front of England manager Tuchel.

The 23-year-old is still managing a groin injury which has kept him out of for a large part of the campaign so far, while he also broke his toe in an accident at home before a 2-0 win over Burnley in late November.

After rusty displays against Leeds United and Bournemouth, Saturday’s calm finish from Malo Gusto’s pass suggested he has lost none of the instincts that helped him hit 15 goals in 37 league outings last term.

“What I find incredible is people saying Cole Palmer will be a problem when he comes back from injury,” Stephen Warnock told Final Score on Saturday. “He’s been unbelievable.

“I put him in the category as one of the best players in the world.”

Tuchel, of course, has another world-class ace up his sleeve too in Bellingham, who scored one and set up another against Madrid’s Clasico rivals Barcelona at the end of October.

But, like Xabi Alonso’s side as a whole, he has struggled for consistency of late.

The 22-year-old has scored four goals and set up another three this season, having registered 30 goal involvements in all competitions last term for Los Blancos.

Moreover, the former Borussia Dortmund midfielder’s unhappy reaction to being substituted in England’s World Cup qualifying win over Albania last month is unlikely to have boosted his chances of starting the Three Lions’ opening World Cup game against Croatia on Wednesday, 17 June.

“I just think you need someone who can do everything,” added Walcott. “Not just be good on the ball, but also be able to work defensively hard and set the press.

St Mirren character, St Mirren cleverness, St Mirren glory – all there in black and white and in fantastic technicolour too.

A triumph for the ages, a day to rank with any in their history. Deserved and, on the final whistle, delirious. Untrammelled, uninhibited joy.

In marching on towards a storied victory against all odds, St Mirren trampled Celtic underfoot. Out-thought them tactically. Out-fought them emotionally.

“Faith over fear” said their manager Stephen Robinson in the preamble. It might have sounded like a nice slogan then. Now, it sounds like something you might see on a tablet of stone.

When Jonah Ayunga and his marauding band of brothers feasted on Celtic’s desperate confusion and put them to sleep with two goals in a dozen second-half minutes, Hampden erupted.

There was time to play – time, in theory, for Celtic to fight back but it never looked likely. At half-time, Robinson recognised where Celtic’s danger was coming from and neutered it with his changes. So swift, so smart.

He said later that this should not have been possible, that the gigantic financial disparity between these clubs should have been unbreachable.

And Celtic? This is a diminished team with an uncertain manager, a furious support and a haunted board.

At the end, you looked one way and you saw two-goal Ayunga – “amazing, man” – and his driven mates and then looked the other and there was Wilfried Nancy, miserable in the midst of his baptism of fire.

Three games, three defeats. Records are getting broken all the time in the early days of his regime. The little bit of feelgood this club restored in the brief time Martin O’Neill was in charge has been shredded into a million pieces, like the abandoned ticker-tape on the Hampden grass.

O’Neill just about managed to paper over the cracks of a club that has badly lost its way but all those fractures are so obvious now. With supporters engaged in a toxic stand-off with the board and the team having lost any sense of direction and confidence they once had, Nancy has walked into something he cannot have understood.

His team played strongly for the final half hour of the first half but they went out like a light after that. When Robinson’s immortals – yes, that’s what they have become – turned on the afterburners and sped away into the distance, Nancy had no reply.

His team were hit on the counter, his defence ripped apart, his hopes of asserting himself as a manager of substance cast to the wind. This was savage.

Many doubtful eyes will be upon him as Celtic face Dundee United on Wednesday. There are questions here – as ludicrous as it seems, how many more games like this one does Nancy have before the Celtic hierarchy do something about it? What’s the tipping point?

There’s a bigger question, though. A more profound one. Nancy’s team may be making a mess of it on the pitch but what about the ones above him who, fans might say, have fallen asleep at the wheel?

In the best of times, Celtic’s communication with their support has been poor. Now, in the worst of times, do they retreat ever inwards to block out the flak? Where will that get them? Some humility is called for. Fans will not be holding their breath.

The club is going backwards on so many fronts. From going toe to toe with Bayern Munich earlier in the year to this? It’s a stunning drop-off.

The board’s apparent belief that nothing is as bad as it seems and that fans need to understand how lucky they are gets them nowhere – only further ensconced in their own echo chamber.

Paul Tisdale, the self-styled football doctor, is a powerful man at the club, the operator who helped bring Nancy to Glasgow. Tisdale is a footballing Trappist monk. If he has a vision, a way out of the morass, wouldn’t it be an idea for him to articulate it?

After the cup final, Nancy said he knows where “we want to go”. He also said: “I try to go beyond results.” By that, maybe, he meant he wants to not just win but win with style. After losing three games in a row the jam tomorrow line was a little misplaced. It came with a shuddering reminder of the kind of things that Russell Martin used to say when he was manager of Rangers.

Nancy is not the whole problem at Celtic, far from it. But he’s a symptom of it, a failing cog in a malfunctioning machine. One of their trophies from last season has now been taken from them and no sane voice could mount any sort of case against St Mirren being thoroughly deserving of their glory.

Another of their trophies, the Premiership title, is in danger in the face of a challenge from a club, Hearts, with cohesion and clarity, run by a manager who knows his stuff and a set of players who are organised and focused.

Celtic had an aura once. Not that long ago in fact. Now they are a husk of what they were – and this decline set in long before Nancy arrived and long before St Mirren humbled them at Hampden.

It was a day for the Buddies. They’ve had to wait a while. Watching them celebrate what was for many, or all, the finest day of their footballing lives was to be reminded of the romance of the cup.

Brentford midfielder Jordan Henderson paid tribute to former Liverpool team-mate Diogo Jota after scoring in Sunday’s draw against Leeds.

The England midfielder played 77 games with Jota, who died in a car crash aged 28 in July, along with his brother Andre Silva.

Henderson recreated Jota’s trademark celebration at Gtech Community Stadium – sitting down and pretending to play a computer game – to mark his first Premier League goal since December 2021.

That came in a comfortable 4-1 derby win for Liverpool at neighbours Everton when Jota was also on the scoresheet.

“It was his birthday recently,” Henderson, 35, told Sky Sports.

“We will never forget him. We always remember him forever. I can only imagine what the lads at Liverpool are going through.

The former Liverpool captain was in tears when he laid flowers in honour of Portugal international Jota outside Anfield on the day after his death.

On Instagram, Henderson wrote “it was a pleasure to share a pitch with you but more importantly a friendship”.

The pair both featured in the 2022 FA Cup final when Liverpool beat Chelsea on penalties at Wembley.

Henderson left Liverpool to join Saudi Pro League club Al-Ettifaq in July 2023, before moving to Ajax in January 2024.

He agreed an early termination of his deal with the Dutch club last summer and returned to English football with Brentford.

At 35 years and 180 days, Henderson became Brentford’s oldest Premier League scorer when his low shot deflected in off Leeds defender Jaka Bijol to give his side a lead that was later cancelled out by Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s header.

“Jordan’s experience, knowledge of the game is second to none,” Brentford boss Keith Andrews told Sky Sports.