McInnes says Kilmarnock may need to change set-up for away games

Derek McInnes has admitted that his Kilmarnock side might have to change their usual set-up when they go away from home after only winning two points on the road so far this season.

The Ayrshire side became the first team to lose to St Johnstone in the Premiership this campaign in Wednesday night’s 2-1 defeat in Perth.

It was their fifth away game in the league this season and from those game they have two draws and three defeats, which is in contrast to their impressive home form with 11 points picked up at Rugby Park.

The manager insists they usually approach every game in the same way but now says he will look at tweaking the playing style for certain games going forward and go away from home with a more defensive outlook.

St Johnstone scored two early goals midweek before Killie got one back and pushed for the equaliser but couldn’t take advantage of playing against ten-men for the last 15 minutes and eventually lost the game 2-1.

McInnes said: “Our performance for 80 minutes on was ok, we got off to such a poor start to the game and one of the last things we spoke about was not giving St Johnstone any sort of a lift.

“The first goal happens a bit quickly, we have one or two chances to clear it and Will makes a good save but Clark just follows it in. The second goal as I said on the night was a lovely delivery from Carey and we just don’t deal with it well enough and Clark’s on the move, we should be on the move as well and at least making it difficult for him.

“So two disappointing goals, but performance in the main we were the better team and dominant team in terms of getting the ball in good areas of the pitch. When you go with two wingers and two strikers you expect more of a dividend to that and there is a trade off.

“I think there is a train of thought that when you go away from home you play differently and set up differently and more defensive but the truth of the matter is that it’s the total opposite of that.

“We normally go into an away game on the back of a really strong home performance, we normally play well at home, we normally win at home so when the away fixture comes around we go into it in a positive frame of mind.

“But we’ve got to ask questions of ourselves, we’ve had five away games in the league this season and we’ve had three defeats and two draws and that doesn’t mirror our home form.

“So I need to look at doing things differently when potentially we do need to go a bit more defensive because I have always tried to take the away and home element out of it, we’ve always just looked at being us against the opposition and go and try win the game but maybe I’ll need to look at that next time we are away from home.”

Kilmarnock host Motherwell this weekend as they look to get back to winning ways against a team who are without a win in their last five.