Neil McCann believes his Kilmarnock players should harness their “frustration and anger” and take it into their game against Dundee United on Saturday.
The Killie boss was generally pleased with the way his side performed last week at Aberdeen but the loss of a first-minute goal resulted in a 1-0 defeat for the Rugby Park outfit, who struck the woodwork several times.
With four William Hill Premiership fixtures remaining, Kilmarnock are in the relegation play-off spot, nine points ahead of bottom side Livingston and two points behind 10th-place St Mirren.
Ahead of the home game against United, McCann said: “I can see that there’s a bit of anger there and of course there’s disappointment.
“But the biggest thing is frustration and anger because of how the majority of the match has gone and how we train to get ourselves any opportunities to try and win the game and then these setbacks obviously, they are sore to take when you’re sitting in a coach all the way back from Aberdeen.
“I think they should still keep it. Harness is harnessing a drive, it’s trying to feed the desire to not accept defeat and to be honest, I don’t think they do accept defeat.
“Of course you’ve got to realise what’s happened but if you’re accepting defeat, sometimes you don’t look at the mistakes you’ve made and you overlook them and they can happen again and some people say, ‘well, they have happened again’.
“You look at certain things that have gone against us this year and it’s not a hard luck story but we’ve been completely so hard done by in terms of the punishment levels have been so high and that’s just sport.
“Football is not easy. Football management is not easy, being a football player is not easy.
“But we’ve got to try and make that as easy as possible for the boys in terms of information we give them.
“And I think they know that they’re going into any games feeling like they can win every game, it’s just executing.”
Dundee United are fresh off the back of a 3-0 derby win against Dundee and are sitting in seventh place, safe from relegation worries.
However, McCann insists Jim Goodwin and his players will not be cruising to the last game of the season.
He said: “I don’t think Jim is built like that. I don’t think he would accept that from his group, to turn the engine off.
“They’ll have their own personal gains, prides, bonuses that they want to play for.
“They’re on the back of a really big derby win, I don’t see any dip in United.”
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