Derek McInnes hopeful Kilmarnock home form can carry them forward

Derek McInnes hopes Kilmarnock’s Boxing Day destruction of Aberdeen is a sign that they are ready to “reinforce their home form” after a difficult start to the season.

Killie finished fourth in the Scottish Premiership last term after winning 10 and losing only four of their matches at Rugby Park

Having won only one of their opening six home league games and languishing near the bottom of the league as a result, McInnes was delighted to see his team follow up their recent 1-0 success over Hearts in Ayrshire with a 4-0 victory over Aberdeen.

After Sunday’s trip to Hibernian, Killie kick off the new year with three consecutive home games, giving the manager hope that his team are now set to climb back into the top six.

“I think there’s reason for where we were, in terms of not scoring enough goals and having to chop and change a wee bit through suspensions and the early part of the campaign where we still had to try and juggle Europe,” said McInnes.

“I did say about this period coming up that there was no real excuses, but we had to just get on with the job and reinforce particularly our home form.

“We’ve had two away points, we got an away point at Motherwell and then that’s only a good point if you win your home games.

“We came into the Aberdeen game feeling pretty good about ourselves, and we’ve been looking for this kind of real strong home performance.

“I hoped we would win, I had an idea how the game would play out. Did I think we would score four goals against a strong Aberdeen team? Probably not, but it was nice to see a lot of things pay off.”

McInnes’s only grievance about Killie’s recent form is that they do not have three consecutive wins to show for their efforts after the Scottish Football Association’s Key Match Incident review panel deemed that they should have had a penalty in a 1-1 draw at Motherwell last Friday in which the home side also had Dan Casey wrongly sent off.

“There was a lot made after Motherwell of ‘poor Motherwell, getting a man sent off’, but the biggest thing in the game was us not getting a penalty,” he said, addressing the situation for the first time since the SFA’s concession that an error was made.

“Us not having a free shot from 12 yards to get 2-1 up was a real injustice. We felt that was really harsh on us not to have the penalty that it should have been.”