Kilmarnock won’t blame protests for poor results

SANDY Clark has described off-the-field protests against Kilmarnock chairman Michael Johnston as a “sideshow” and insists the club’s players cannot use the situation as an excuse for their current woes on the pitch.

Kilmarnocks assistant manager Sandy Clark is eager for mistakes to be cut out on the field. Picture:SNS

Kilmarnock have endured a dismal opening two months of the season, failing to win any of their first eight Premiership matches and also being knocked out of the League Cup at the first hurdle.

The poor run has been played out against a backdrop of supporter discontent with the chairman which saw around 200 fans protest against his stewardship outside Rugby Park before last Saturday’s 5-2 defeat against Celtic.

It has been far from an ideal start for the managerial duo of Allan Johnston and Clark, who joined the club from Queen of the South in the summer following the dismissal of Kenny Shiels. But Clark is dismissive of the notion the players have been in any way distracted by issues off the pitch during a run which has left them third bottom of the Premiership, just one point ahead of St Mirren and with a ten-point cushion over administration-hit Hearts. “I don’t think it affects the players for one second and there’s no way we’ll ever use that as an excuse,” said Clark.

“All of that sideshow has no effect on Allan or myself. The players never mention it, so I don’t think it has any effect on them. Our job is to prepare for a game and we do that professionally every week and work hard.

“We’ve got to earn a break on the pitch that changes the thin line of losing or drawing a game into winning a match and we believe that time is not far away. But we need to do our talking on the park.

“It’s not getting harder every week, because it is hard all the time. I’ve been in football a long time and we’re well aware we haven’t won a game but believe me we’re working hard to try and change that.

“Some of it is our own fault, some of it is breaks going against us, but there’s no point talking about it because we’ve got to put it right on the pitch and the guys are all working really hard to make sure that happens.”

Kilmarnock have fresh problems to contend with ahead of tomorrow’s Premiership game against Dundee United at Tannadice.

Striker Mark Stewart will be sidelined for six weeks after breaking his jaw in a training ground accident this week, while experienced midfielder Barry Nicholson is doubtful with a knee injury.

Having already used the free agent market to add Ismael Bouzid and David Silva to their squad, Clark says the management team will not be asking chairman Johnston for further reinforcements.

“We have used the budget we agreed with the chairman when we came in,” he said. “If we went to him to ask him, I think he would help us. But we have got a really big squad now. We’ve got enough players and we need to try to work with what we have got.

“We are not the best team in the league, but we are not the worst either. Inverness Caley Thistle are challenging at the top of the table, but when we lost 2-1 to them recently we gave away an unbelievably bad second goal. Other than that, we were every bit as good as them. I’m not saying we are better than them, but there is such a thin line in football.

“Even last week against Celtic, Georgios Samaras was the only difference between the teams. We just have to stop giving goals away. If you look back, I honestly feel we should have won some of the games we’ve lost or drawn this season. The reason we didn’t was mostly down to our own mistakes.

“That’s the name of the game. Look at it with Celtic against Barcelona this week _ Scott Brown makes one mistake and how much did it cost Celtic? If we can stop making those mistakes, I know we have enough quality in the team to score goals and win matches.”

Kilmarnock were boosted last week by the return from injury of midfielder Sammy Clingan, who scored an outstanding free-kick against Celtic. His performance earned him an instant recall to the Northern Ireland squad yesterday.

However, his understandable delight at that news saw him pre-empt his international manager Michael O’Neill’s official announcement ahead of the World Cup qualifiers against Azerbaijan and Israel.

“Michael called Sammy to see how he was feeling and then told him he would be back in the squad,” smiled Clark. “But Sammy went and tweeted about it before the squad was actually announced – he will be getting a fair bit of stick from the rest of the Northern Ireland lads about it when they meet up next week.”