Steven Ferguson regards Ross County’s first season back in the Premiership as mission accomplished.
After the Premiership season was called to a halt due to coronavirus, County finished the campaign in 10th position on a points-per-game basis.
The outcome guarantees County’s top flight survival, with bottom side Hearts to be relegated to the Championship unless league reconstruction can be forced through.
Ferguson, insists securing top-flight safety completes the target he and co-manager Stuart Kettlewell set out to achieve after winning the Championship title the previous season.
Ferguson said: “What Stuart and I were tasked with was trying to stay in the Premiership this season.
“We understand it was never going to be plain sailing. There have been massive lessons learned, but when you look at the position we are sitting in, we were not in the discussion about whether we will be in or out of the league.
“We have earned the right to be in that position with the games we have played.”
The Staggies’ season was cut short on March 13, with all eight of their remaining matches scheduled to be against bottom half rivals.
County had fared well against those teams, having posted just one loss from 12 matches against teams occupying bottom six places when the league was stopped, and Ferguson insists the Staggies were always optimistic about their prospects for the run-in.
He added: “I still say, the eight games we had remaining were games we felt pretty confident about.
“This is where it becomes personal and individual, because everybody has got a story throughout the season.
“But our next eight games were all against teams around us, that we had done really well against – and we would have had more home games than away games.”
County endured some difficult outings on their return to the Premiership and ended the campaign with the highest goals conceded record of any team in the league.
Ferguson hopes the Staggies will be stronger as a result of some harsh lessons in their first campaign back in the top flight, adding: “We think we will learn from it. Now we are playing Premiership football next season, it has to be mission accomplished regarding what we were asked to do.
“That was to win the Championship and then we always believed the first year was going to be a massive learning curve for us and our players.
“We have stayed in the top league so we get another go at it next year.”
