MANAGER Jack Ross was pleased to see his St Mirren side extend their lead at the top of the Ladbrokes Championship to three points with a 2-0 win at Dumbarton.

Goals from Gavin Reilly and substitute John Sutton made it seven wins from nine in the league this season.

Ross said: “I spoke to the players a lot last week and built the game up as the biggest of the season.

“Simply because I looked at the other fixtures and thought it could be an opportunity for us to stretch [our lead] at the top of the table.

“It is still very early, it is not by a big margin, but I knew teams around us had difficult matches and that will flip.

“There will be time when they look at our games and think we might drop points.

“But we wanted to make sure we didn’t not take advantage of that and we did it and we will enjoy the next couple of days.”

Livingston moved up to second after beating Dundee United 2-0 at the Tony Macaroni Arena.

Daniel Mullen gave the hosts the lead in the seventh minute when he latched on to Alan Lithgow’s long free-kick and fired in from an angle.

Nikolay Todorov scored the home side’s second from close range in the 76th minute which, after his side had won their previous two league games, left United boss Ray McKinnon “very frustrated”.

McKinnon said: “We spoke about the momentum and keeping that positive feeling and confidence going and we gave it away in the space of five minutes with that goal we lost. There was indecision and it cost us.

“The way they set up, we had a lot of the ball going side to side and I said to them, our quality, bar one or two players, wasn’t good enough. We expect a lot better from that group.”

Andy Murdoch scored with just nine minutes remaining as Morton moved into fifth place with a 1-0 win over Brechin City at Glebe Park.

Paul Hartley’s first game in charge of Falkirk ended in a goalless draw at home to Inverness, while Queen of the South and third-placed Dunfermline also drew a blank in Dumfries.

Dunfermline boss Allan Johnston said: “Probably Queen of the South were the better team in the first half, and I thought we were better second half without either team having much quality.

“It is an important point but we were looking for more.”