Samuel revealed that the players omitted from the starting line-up know that they have to take their chance to shine when it comes, as competition for places is fiercer than it has been for years at McDiarmid Park.

That he did, scoring Saints’ second goal.

The Trinidad and Tobago international said, “The team is playing really well just now and it must be very hard for the manager to pick 11 players.

“The guys who are starting deserve to stay there and because of that I know that whenever the chance comes I have to take it. So it was great to get the goal.

“Everybody is working really hard in training every day. We didn’t make a good start to the season but we had a look at what was going wrong and put it right.”

Saints were not at their fluent best on Saturday but, apart from an inevitably nervy last few minutes after County pulled a goal back, they were always in control.

Martin Hardie twice came close to opening the scoring early on but it was the stroke of half-time before the midfielder found the back of the net with a header from a Liam Craig corner.

Samuel’s strike came on 80 minutes when he found space in the six-yard box to guide a header from a perfectly weighted Paul Sheerin cross past Derek Soutar.

Mark McCulloch responded for the Staggies with a header of his own from a Richie Hart cross that Alan Main was unable to cut out, but the Saints defence stood firm and held out for their sixth win in a row, which took them four points ahead of Livingston on an afternoon when results elsewhere went for them.

McInnes admitted that if his team are to emerge as champions in May “it will be the squad that will do it for us”.

He pointed out, “The squad is playing its part and I’d like to stress that.

“Before the game we only had Andy Jackson unavailable and that’s the best the injury situation has been since I’ve been at the club.

“When Stuart McCaffrey got injured I was able to bring on Steven Anderson.

“I also had Collin Samuel, Jody Morris and Peter MacDonald on the bench, who would get straight into a lot of teams in this league.

“There’s a long way to go though, and nobody will be getting carried away.

“We’ve worked hard to get to the top of the table and the challenge is there for us now to stay there.

“There are a lot of good teams in this league and we could find ourselves slipping back down. It’s a cliche but it’s true, we have to just take it game by game.”

On his team’s Saturday performance, McInnes observed, “Last week against Dunfermline was a great win for us, but we were always every bit as concerned about this game.

“I thought we started well and should have scored early on. It was great to get the goal just before half-time.

“I don’t think it was a polished performance by any means, but we worked hard for an important win.”

Ross County boss, Derek Adams, didn’t have any complaints about the result.