Kilmarnock Preview

The performance against Aberdeen was much better than what we produced against Partick Thistle but it couldn’t prevent us going out the CIS Cup by a 3-1 margin. Indeed, the same flaws were still apparent. We continue to play some nice football in the middle of the park but all too often we lacked the cutting edge in the final third. The defence did look slightly better with Partridge returning to a back four in place of Sengewald but we were still left woefully exposed on a number of occasions. We can play good football all day but since we struggle to score and let in soft goals, we will always be up against it. Whether Terry Butcher can do anything to halt our slide with our limited resources will determine our fate this season.

Will we be celebrating on Saturday?

We go into the Kilmarnock game with our thin squad being stretched to the limit. McFadden’s thigh will keep him out leaving Dirk Lehmann and presumably Khaled Kemas to go searching for goals. Whoever has played up front for us, we have not had a good partnership since the early days of Dirk and Faddy. Terry may be persuaded to gamble with Ferguson or Russell, just because a change of some sort is needed.

The midfield will be missing both Scott Leitch and Keith Lasley, leaving Butcher with an interesting choice. Does he play five across the middle and pack the centre of the park or does he rely on the decidedly lightweight combination of Adams and McDonald in the middle? Kilmarnock, as we saw at Rugby Park, are not afraid to put the boot in and we will have to look after ourselves. The midfield, as usual in Scotland, will be the battleground where the game is won or lost.

Kilmarnock are also on a bad run and are only four points ahead of us in the league. They have not won since the middle of September and need a good result as desperately as we do. It is at times like this that the big players in the team need to stand up and be counted. For us that means some boys turning into men very quickly indeed but now is the time that they will. It will be end to end stuff but a 2-1 home win will ease our relegation worries.