Boyd urges Kilmarnock to build on fast starts
Kris Boyd has been ruthless all his days. Now the Kilmarnock captain has told his team-mates it’s about time they also developed that vital streak.
Boyd, in his usual predatory fashion, pounced to give the impressive Ayrshire outfit an early lead in saturday’s dens Park encounter before they contrived to let things slip once more and allow dundee to recover and gather a share of the spoils.
Lee Clark’s side did look every inch a team fit for the top six as they produced some slick stuff only for their end product to let them down through a combination of some wasteful finishing and their inability to shut out the opposition.
Former rangers and scotland star Boyd holds no doubts this current Killie team can catch the eye on their day, but maintains it would be in their interests to sacrifice some of their style in order to acquire the all-important art of grinding out results.
Boyd said: ‘When you look especially at the last two performances and the way we’ve dominated the ball the first 30 minutes, i think we switch off when it comes to the bread and butter of football. Working hard, stopping other teams playing, winning your second balls, winning your headers — things we’ve done in the last two games up until the 30 minute mark.
‘Then, all of a sudden, do we think we’re better than we are?
‘i don’t know. We end up popping it about, but it’s part of football. yeah, you want to look good, but you’re fed up listening to managers going into press conferences after it and saying we’ve had X amount of possession of the ball, we’ve had X amount of passes.
‘it doesn’t really matter how you win a game of football.
‘you go and score more goals than the opposition, that’s it — and for us that’s what we need to get back to in terms of going and winning the game.
‘sometimes it takes just doing the ugly part of the game to see it out.
‘When you look back at our performance last week at Hamilton and then today, it’s the exact same.
‘We’ve come and dominated the first 30 minutes of both games but we leave with just a point from each.’
Killie sit sixth in the Premiership, so their efforts weren’t entirely wasted, although a win on saturday would have given them some precious breathing space in their quest to finish in the top half of the table.
The rugby Park side have struggled for consistency like many others this season and Boyd, 33, cites the example of st Johnstone as one they should be aspiring to follow.
He said: ‘you look at st Johnstone. They’re the blueprint for the teams in that bottom six to put a run of consistency together, to get themselves consistently challenging in that top six.
‘At the start of the season, it was pretty much nailed on st Johnstone would be in the top six just because they’ve got that consistency. The rest of us need to strive to get there.
‘We have got experience in terms of going into games, and even young guys like rory McKenzie and players like that, they’ve played a lot of football, so game time isn’t the problem.’
dundee defender Kevin Holt admits Paul Hartley’s men put themselves under extra pressure ahead of this weekend’s match with managerless rangers at dens.
Holt, who netted the 27th-minute equaliser, said: ‘We should have been looking to take six points from the inverness game the week before and now this one.
‘it would have taken a lot of the pressure off us going into rangers this weekend but now we’re sitting seventh. it’s going to make next week even harder.’