Kilmarnock 0 - 1 Hamilton Accies: Rakish Bingham seals it

A last-minute penalty scored by Rakish Bingham, pictured, made this the debut from hell for Karleigh Osborne, the defender signed from Plymouth Argyle by Kilmarnock manager Lee Clark.

Rakish Bingham celebrates his goal

Then again, you cannot hand first starts to five new signings (Freddie Woodman, Kristoffer Ajer, Sean Longstaff, Callum Roberts and Osborne) and expect a fluid display and Kilmarnock’s performance was, understandably, of the stop-start variety. Hamilton had no such excuse.

Even so, after going 11 games without a victory, Accies manager Martin Canning has learned to take his pleasures where he finds them.

“Dougie Imrie was actually down to take the penalty if Alex D’Acol was off the pitch but big Rakish was so confident and demanded the ball,” he said. “It’s not an issue because he scored but it might have been different if he’d missed.”

There was lots of movement but very little action during a dire first half, the highlight of which was a perfectly timed tackle from Ajer to block Alex D’Acol’s shot.

Dougie Imrie was shown a yellow card by referee Crawford Allan for trying to buy a penalty, going down for no reason as he ran alongside Luke Hendrie.

A glancing header by D’Acol from Danny Redmond’s cross cleared the crossbar by inches but it was the hosts who looked more purposeful after the break.

Souleymane Coulibaly, the subject of a £500,000 bid from Egyptian club Zamalek in midweek, was sent on midway through the second half along with Kris Boyd.

Unfortunately, there was no immediate rise in the quality of the football but the breakthrough eventually came via Bingham’s penalty after Osborne tripped Hamilton defender Grant Gillespie inside the box.

“Bad decisions at the back cost us,” said Clark. “We went out with a whimper.”