In a season that threatened to end in disaster at times, Ross County avoided relegation comfortably and finished the season strongly in seventh-place under Jim McIntyre. The Staggies often struggled for consistency throughout the campaign, and County lost games against Raith Rovers and Alloa Athletic to bow out of the league cup in the group stage. It was a pitiful start to the campaign, and things never improved over the first half of the campaign. An opening day 3-1 defeat to Dundee really set the tone for the first half of the term with odd impressive victories over Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Kilmarnock, as good as it got for the Highlanders.
County would win only three more games between before the end of 2016, and after a morale-boosting 6-2 win at home to Dundee United in the Scottish Cup fourth-round, County would lose their next four home games in what was a dismal run of performances in front of their own fans. The main source of inspiration was Liam Boyce. The Northern Irishman finished the season as the Premiership's top scorer with 23 strikes. Yet the service he was getting from Alex Schalk and Michael Gardyne, who was also a goal threat, was similarly impressive.
Performances generally picked up, as did results, in April. But that was only after a 2-1 loss to Partick Thistle at Firhill that ultimately ended their top-six ambitions. County were slightly flirting with relegation, but their players really rallied towards the end of the season. County would go on a blistering run out of nowhere that saw them string together a run of eight games without defeat, including five wins.
McIntyre will be disappointed that he didn't see more of this confident County side that really started to click towards the end of the season, but hanging on to Boyce now becomes his biggest challenge of the summer.
