Craig McLeish wants to avoid another "hard luck story" when St Mirren face Rangers on Saturday night.

Since moving from the youth set-up to become Buddies boss in March - initially on a temporary basis before making the move permanent in June - McLeish's side have run both Rangers and Celtic close on several occasions.

Most recently, St Mirren lost to a last-gasp goal in a 1-0 defeat at Ibrox, following a 2-1 home defeat to Celtic and a 5-1 defeat away to Rangers in the League Cup.

In his dugout debut for Saints in March, Rangers won 1-0 in Paisley, before St Mirren went down 1-0 at Celtic Park then took the Hoops to extra time in the Scottish Cup semi-final, only to eventually lose 6-2.

McLeish said: "We don't want to be the hard luck story every time we play against them and you get plaudits like, 'oh well done you played well but unlucky again'.

"We don't want that. We want to be able to go toe-to-toe with anyone in the league and come out with positive results and against Rangers and Celtic, we have not managed to do that.

"A couple of the games have got away from us and that's what you're trying to fight against and make sure that the games do go right to the end and you're always in with a chance.

"That's the bit now for us as a group and confidence within the group, to go and get a positive result against one of them - that's probably the next step for us.

"We've had a look at Rangers twice (this season) as well, and we obviously have to change some bits just because of personnel available to us.

"You're just trying to constantly learn and adapt from the games that you're playing against teams.

"You have to take those experiences on and just tweak little bits to it, so there will be little bits that we try and throw at Rangers that they've not seen from us before as well.

"That's what we have to try to do. We have to try and be unpredictable with it."