Ross County defender Paul Quinn is determined to silence the doubters who believe the Staggies have already peaked after last season’s success.
County made great strides last term, winning the League Cup and breaking into the Premiership top six, having scraped top-flight survival the previous campaign.
Rangers’ promotion from the Championship is expected to make next season’s league tougher, however, while Celtic, Aberdeen and Hearts are likely to strengthen further.
Quinn, whose side starts the new Scottish Premiership at home to Dundee, sees no reason why County should not target further progress, insisting last season’s achievements have made the Dingwall men hungry for more.
Quinn said: “If it was the case that we thought we couldn’t have a season like this again we might as well go home now and not bother turning up next season.
“With the teams who are going to be in there, it’s going to a be fantastic league and our domestic challenge will be to make the top six again and see how far we can go in the cups.
“That’s maybe where other people will think the league is going to be tougher, so we’ll never top this. But we don’t think we had a lucky season, we think we’re a team and a club in progress and we’ve hit a peak point and we are now looking to surpass that and go again and end up in the top six on a regular basis, like St Johnstone do.
“Can we win a cup every year? No. Can we win a cup again? Yes.”
Quinn is in his second spell with the Staggies, having had a brief seven-month stint with Aberdeen last season.
The 30-year-old feels competition in the league can help County’s attempts to increase their own standards and he added: “The league will be better next season, so we want to concede fewer goals, score more, get more points and run more distances with our possession. We want to improve every aspect of our game.
“What I learned when I went to Aberdeen is that when we were winning games we were also looking at different kinds of improvements within these games, to show we were going in the right direction on top of winning points.”
