KILLIE MUST HALT ALARMING SLIDE TOWARDS DANGER ZONE

KILMARNOCK are plummeting back down the league. If things carry on like this, it won’t be long before they’re in the sort of position they were in before Steve Clarke took charge. The club can’t allow things to drift any longer. It’s too tight at the bottom of the table to take that kind of risk. After yesterday’s loss at St Mirren, which could easily have been more emphatic than 1-0, they now sit just five points above the relegation play-off place.

I still believe they will have enough to survive come the end of the season. However, the rot is beginning to set in slowly but surely. Once that sort of negative momentum takes hold, it can be a hard thing to change. That’s now five defeats on the bounce. It’s also a third straight defeat since parting company with Angelo Alessio — a decision which is surely now open to question given that they were sitting pretty in fifth in the league. It looked a strange one at the time and all the more so now that they have failed to score a single goal — let alone win a game — since the Italian was sacked. All the chat was about how Alessio focused too much on tactics and shape. But, given that he had won league titles with Juventus and Chelsea, the Kilmarnock players should have shown him more respect. There are no excuses for them now.

Player power effectively got the manager sacked but results haven’t picked up at all. If anything, their form is actually getting worse. It’s funny to think now that it was only a few months ago Billy Bowie declared Alessio the best manager in the country after appointing him. It’s been a bizarre episode all round and one which has tarred Killie more than Alessio. The players have been left with egg on their faces.