Highland clubs got 'complacent' - Ross County Roy MacGregor

Ross County chairman Roy MacGregor has suggested the Highland clubs got too complacent after winning trophies.

The Dingwall men will join Inverness Caledonian Thistle in the Scottish Championship next season, with both clubs being relegated from the top flight a year apart.

And MacGregor says his team need to get back to "The Ross County way".

"Maybe we got too fat, too big, too complacent," MacGregor told BBC Scotland's Sportsound.

"Maybe what I call the Ross County way and our culture got lost with success.

"We need to go back and get another vision for the next five to 10 years because that vision of the last 20 years is gone.

"Probably for the last 20 years, both Highland clubs - who were denied entry to senior football - had a cause, and went from Third Division to the Premier League and won a cup. Maybe in winning a cup some of that cause went."

County, who started the season with Jim McIntyre in charge, won only six games all season, with Stuart Kettlewell and Steven Ferguson taking over in April following the departure of Owen Coyle, and that record ensured an end to their six-season stay in the top flight.

Former manager McIntyre, who brought League Cup success to the club in 2016, suggested that chairman MacGregor may regret the decision to sack him.

"In leadership you've got to make judgements," responded MacGregor. "Who knows if that was the right judgement. As we examine what went wrong during the season that may have been one of the contributory factors, but time will tell.

"When I look back over the season I'm not proud of the fact we had three management teams there - I have to consider if that was a contributory factor in the way it ended up.

Roy McGregor (right) celebrates in happier times with Jim McIntyre, who he sacked in September last year

"If you look at the record from the previous season, yes we had won a cup but we were fairly inconsistent in the league and we had to dig ourselves out.

"Looking to the start of this season, with an increased budget, (we wanted) to see some improvement. I hear the words "harsh" and "too early" used, but it was just a judgement that we maybe weren't getting what we had expected with the extra budget."

MacGregor says the Ross County board will invest to ensure their budget is "up there with the healthiest in the Championship", as they bid to return to the Premiership at the first time of asking.

He said: "As far as next year goes we're going to try and maintain as much of the budget. We do get a parachute payment. This is a difficult league we're going in.

"Again we have to make changes because the cost of going down from the Premier League to the first division is about a million and a half. So naturally we need to adjust the budget, but we also need to invest for the future."