KILLIE LOOK LOST IN TRANSITION
Alessio already feeling heat as dark clouds replace sun-drenched optimism of the Clarke era
FROM the moment Steve Clarke gave an exclusive interview to an English journalist back in early April, it was probably the worst-kept secret in all of Scottish football that he would be leaving Kilmarnock at the end of last season.
Managers in the Scottish Premiership do not invite Fleet Street’s finest up for tea and biscuits and to chew the fat. There’s invariably a clear message which underpins it all.
On this occasion, it was Clarke’s desire to put out some feelers for a job down south. Explaining that he felt ‘unfulfilled’ in England, the alarm bells should have been ringing loud and clear at Rugby Park.
That was when the penny really ought to have dropped; the moment when drawing up a contingency plan should have become a matter of urgency. Instead, when Clarke subsequently opted for the Scotland gig on May 20, it took Kilmarnock the best part of four weeks — 27 days in all — to appoint his successor.
They dragged their heels in a way that they could never afford to do. Not with the Europa League qualifiers looming just around the corner.
Now, on the club’s first European adventure for 18 years, a trip to north Wales will represent the grand sum of their travels.
The fact they were knocked out by a team of part-timers, and before the winning putt had even been holed in The Open Championship, is an embarrassment from which new boss Angelo Alessio may never recover.
Killie fans feel so bemused at how quickly their club has summoned rain clouds from a clear blue sky that Michael Fish would struggle to provide them with an explanation of how it happened.
Billy Bowie, the club’s major shareholder, proclaimed Alessio as the best manager in the country when he appointed him.
With the dawn of the new league season just around the corner, Bowie would be hard pushed to find anyone who agrees with that assessment.
It was a ridiculous thing to say about a guy who had only managed in Italy’s lower leagues and had spent the vast majority of his career as an assistant. Bowie must surely realise that his new manager is already swimming against the tide.
The honeymoon period is over and the goodwill has evaporated.
The delay in appointing Clarke’s successor meant that Killie were horribly under-cooked by the time the European qualifiers rolled around.
Prior to the first leg against Connah’s Quay Nomads, they had played just two pre-season games — and, tellingly, failed to score in each of them.
A 0-0 draw with Gaz Metan Medias, the 11th-best team in Romania last season, was followed by a 3-0 drubbing against Dinamo Bucharest, who finished ninth in the Romanian top flight last term. In all four of his games in charge thus far, then, Alessio’s team have scored just two goals — a penalty kick and a header from a corner in the 2-1 victory in Wales. They are yet to find the net from open play. The squad is wafer-thin at the top end of the pitch. Of the team which secured a thirdplaced finish in the Premiership last season, Kris Boyd, Jordan Jones, Liam Millar and Conor McAleny have all left the building and are yet to be replaced. What was even more worrying than their lack of firepower against the Welsh minnows, though, was the way in which they imploded during the second half of the game at Rugby Park.
The sense of panic that set in only told half the story. What really did for Kilmarnock that night was the players’ lack of fitness.
For a team of professional footballers to be outstripped physically by a team of plumbers, electricians and taxi drivers is simply inexcusable.
Senior figures inside the Kilmarnock dressing room have expressed a concern that, in over ten years as a professional, they’ve never had such an easy pre-season. Barely any running has taken place when, by their own admission, the players are crying out for a bleep test to feature in their training schedule. Alessio’s methods have instead focused largely on team shape and tactics.
The system itself is not a massive deviation from the Clarke days. The three-man midfield is still there, with a central striker supported by two wide men. But the way in which Gary Dicker has been instructed to orchestrate the play from deep looks awkward.
The Irishman has been simply outstanding for Kilmarnock for the best part of two years and has now taken the captain’s armband following the retirement of Boyd. But Dicker would be the first to admit that he’s not Andrea Pirlo. When the play broke down against
the Nomads, it was staggering to see how exposed Kilmarnock were to the counter-attack.
There is also unhappiness among the players at the way in which Alex Dyer, Clarke’s former assistant, has been marginalised.
Dyer remains hugely popular around the club. But his role is largely withdrawn from what it used to be. If Kilmarnock weren’t going to hand him the job, then the decision to retain him always looked like awkward business.
Massimo Donati is Alessio’s righthand man, the one who provides the bulk of advice on the touchline and translates for the manager in interviews with the media. Alessio’s English is fairly broken; semi-fluent in a way that made it obvious just how much he struggled to get his message across to the players during that second-half debacle against the Nomads.
It already feels like this unheralded figure, whose last job in frontline management was 11 years ago with SPAL in the fourth tier of Italian football, is caught in the wrong movie.
In handing him a three-year deal, Kilmarnock have gambled on a man whose reputation is built solely on the fact that he served as Antonio Conte’s No 2 with Juventus, Italy and Chelsea.
In the second leg against the Nomads, Alessio’s decision to substitute Chris Burke — by a distance Killie’s best player on the night — was understandably met with boos from the home fans. Make no mistake, some of them have already seen enough and the need for Alessio to get off to a positive start in the league can hardly be overstated.
But, with four of his first six games coming against Rangers, Aberdeen, Hibernian and Celtic, it’ll be easier said than done.
Steven Gerrard’s men are first up at Rugby Park this Sunday. The atmosphere, you suspect, will be a far cry from the raucous party which saw the Ibrox men defeated on the final day of last season.
Clarke gave it big licks that day in an emotional farewell speech. The feeling that Alessio has taken the microphone from Sinatra is one which is increasingly hard to avoid.