We were naive: McInnes vows to learn lessons
Kilmarnock manager Derek McInnes bemoaned yet another three points lost on the road following their defeat at the Tony Macaroni Arena, claiming that his side were guilty of naivete against battlehardened Livingston.
The Ayrshire club remain second from bottom, two points clear of Dundee United, but McInnes knows that the display yesterday won’t be good enough going forward.
“It’s another away game where we’ve lost by a single goal but there wasn’t a lot in it,” he claimed. “We struggled to deal with Livingston’s physicality at times as a back four.
“We gave away too many cheap freekicks, allowed them to put the ball into our box and the law of averages tells you that eventually they will get their head on something.
“There was a bit of naivety with that and sometimes that can happen with younger players but we definitely need to change this narrative away from home.
“We need to make sure that even when we are not at our best then we are at least not losing matches.
“It’s an old saying but we need to be smarter and a bit more streetwise. On another day, if we had been a bit more pragmatic, then you come away with something.”
McInnes is desperate to start putting points on the board in order to hoist his club out of the drop zone and closer to the top six.
“Ross County had a poor start last year but then started picking up results and got there in the end,” he said. “I don’t want to get used to losing games – we want to be a winning team and, if we can’t always win then we need to get something for our work-rate.
“We don’t feel great about ourselves after a defeat and it’s not ideal that we now have to wait two weeks for another game due to the international break. Losing like this is the worst hangover you can have in football and we’re going to suffer from it for a fortnight now.
“We need to prove next time out that we are learning as we go along. I do feel that we’re not all that far away and, even though we’ve been losing games, we aren’t being mugged off and nobody is murdering us.”