Jens Berthel Askou was happy to hear Motherwell fans expressing their title aspirations during a 5-0 rout of St Mirren – but stressed he and his players would keep their focus short term.
The produced a dominant display in Paisley, which moved them 10 points behind William Hill Premiership leaders Hearts with a game in hand.
The visiting fans sang “We’re gonna win the league” as the goals rained down and the football flowed.
Askou said: “We want them to enjoy what we do, we want them to be excited, and then we know that excitement and joy might, at some point, when you’re in a run like this at a club of our size, that will obviously spiral into something where they should dream and are dreaming.
“That’s fair. We don’t want them to stop doing that. But we are not living in a dream world here. We’re in reality, trying to improve and win everything we can.
“And that’s one football game at a time, because we don’t play two or three or four or five or six at a time, we play one at a time and I think the players have been really good at just trying to bridge that gap.”
Motherwell have lost once in 19 league games and only conceded six goals during that spell.
When asked if they could maintain that form, their manager said: “I can’t predict the future, but what I can do is I can keep demanding the same and more from the players and I know they will do the same from each other.
“We have developed and grown and reached a level of consistency and high performance that makes it very difficult for anyone who plays us to beat us.
“And we also know that in the coming time we’ll play all the top teams once or twice and then we’ll see where that will take us.”
Well produced their biggest win of the season in front of former St Mirren manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
“When you have legends like that watching, then obviously you want to perform at your best level,” Askou said. “It was great to show who we want to be when he was watching.”
In contrast, current St Mirren boss Stephen Robinson was embarrassed and took responsibility for the heaviest defeat of his four-year reign after trying to match Motherwell’s 4-2-3-1 formation.
“I take total blame for it,” he said. “I changed the system in the hope I would see what I see Monday to Friday. We put more creative players in the team. And what I’ve seen wasn’t what we’ve seen Monday to Friday.”
Robinson added: “Let me please not take anything away from Motherwell – they’re arguably the best team in the league. Very, very good at what they do with an excellent manager. But we literally gifted them four goals.
“Would they have won the game anyway? Yes, they would have done. They were better than us, much better than us.
“I’m embarrassed by the performance. I’m embarrassed by the result. I hope the players are too.”
