MY KILLIE BATTLERS WILL DRIVE YOU GRAFT
Willing workers give Del so much satisfaction
KILMARNOCK manager Derek mcinnes has hailed his players as the hardest working men in showbusiness ahead of their meeting with Dundee where a win for the ayrshire side could effectively guarantee them a top-six finish.
He’s signed players who are prepared to outrun and outfight as well as outplay their Premiership rivals and that attitude has them in contention for a European place.
Last season they avoided being sucked into the play-offs by a lastday win over Ross County but they’re currently fourth and McInnes credits adding graft to craft for making them miles better.
“The stats are phenomenal – the boys are running between 11-12km in every game,” he claimed.
“But it’s not just the ground that’s covered, it’s about the sheer intensity of the work they put in – the number of high sprints that we do in and out of possession.
“We spoke at the start of this season about how we always wanted to be a tough opponent, week in and week out.
“Obviously, we knew that performances can fluctuate because that’s where we are and we’re not going to be perfect every time but we wanted to ensure that the teams who were preparing to play us would know exactly what they would be coming up against.
“We have the type of people in our squad who understand that and realise how crucial it is. We train hard Monday to Friday so we can replicate it on a Saturday and that becomes the norm.”
In spite of an arduous schedule, McInnes won’t look to give first picks weekends off as they approach the business end of the campaign.
“It’s no coincidence our best runs this season have coincided with us having a settled side, with the same eight or nine players most weeks,” he insisted.
“But I also understand the importance of having good lads who train hard every week and who can come in at a moment’s notice without a downturn in the team’s workload. That pleases me because you need to know what you are.
“Some teams don’t know that but you need to have an identity and anyone looking at us can at the very least see the effort that we put in and that was true against Rangers on Wednesday.
“The intention from us was that Rangers wouldn’t enjoy the game. In the end they enjoyed the result because of a couple of special moments but they didn’t enjoy the 90 minutes.”
McInnes doesn’t anticipate a hangover from that setback, having lost consecutive matches only once since last April.
“That says a lot about our improved form on the road because we’ve lost just four away games this season – two at Ibrox, one at Parkhead and one to a lastminute goal at
Motherwell,” he said. “However, we’ve drawn too often to be closer to Hearts in third and I’d like to see us turn some of those draws into wins, although those draws have kept us away from the bottom six.
“If we can get a win at Dundee then, of the teams in the bottom half of the table, only Hibs would be able to catch us – and they’d need to win most of their games while we didn’t win any of ours.”
Goalkeeper Will Dennis will be making his 35th appearance of a campaign which has gone exactly the way he wanted since arriving on loan from Bournemouth last summer.
“I’ve had 14 clean sheets but I can’t take all the credit for that because we’ve done that as a team,” he said. “We’ve been doing well and I’m loving every minute of it.”