Derek McInnes has branded his Kilmarnock team’s second half performance against Rangers as ‘pitiful’ as his side reflect on a 6-0 thrashing.
Rangers delivered their best Scottish Premiership performance of the season with goals from James Tavernier, Danilo, Vaclav Cerny, Hamza Igamane and Cyriel Dessers (x2) putting real gloss on a top performance.
But come the final time whistle Derek McInnes was in no mood to give his Kilmarnock players a break and lamented his team’s second half collapse.
The Kilmarnock manager also picked out two Rangers players whose movement ‘spooked’ the Killie defence on a memorable night at Ibrox.
‘Two Rangers players spooked Kilmarnock’
”We spoke at half-time about (two Rangers players),” McInnes told BBC Sport.
“Because (Hamza) Igamane coming off shape and coming towards the ball was causing problems.
“(Ianis) Hagi coming off shape off the side, their movement was spooking us a wee bit and we just tried to simplify it by going 4-4-2 against 4-4-2.
”But it became clear that we couldn’t cope with that. Once we got the second goal the third goal was always trying to stop the bleeding.
”Unfortunately for us, although we filled the middle of the pitch, although we stopped the kind of flow of their front lot enjoying the game, we still failed to stop crosses and we get our just desserts from that.”
Derek McInnes laments ‘pitiful’ Kilmarnock
Derek McInnes then went on to gut his Kilmarnock team for failing to do the basics right against Rangers at Ibrox.
The Gers were on relentless form as the confidence boosting victory over Killie turns heads around the Scottish Premiership.
But Derek McInnes insists his team never put in the sorts of performances Killie fans are used to when it comes to Glasgow’s big two.
Rangers were certainly very good, but McInnes reckons Kilmarnock made it far too easy.
”It was such a pitiful second half performance,” said McInnes. “We’re really disappointed by the manner of the goals.
”You can easily come here and lost two or three nothing, we get that, they’ve got so many huge advantages over us.
”But sometimes we pride ourselves and you get expectations because we just beat them a few weeks ago, we’ve shown we can compete against the Old Firm.
”But when we compete against the Old Firm and get results it’s normally because we do so much right.
”The second half we were the opposite of that.”
