McInnes Emphasizes “Squeaky Clean” Conduct for Players

At the weekend, Liam Donnelly was issued Killie’s fifth red card of the current season during a match in Dingwall. Derek McInnes is working to address his team’s disciplinary problems by eliminating unnecessary fouls and objections during practice sessions. The dismissal of Liam Donnelly during last weekend’s 2-1 loss to Ross County marked the fifth occasion this season that Killie concluded a match with only 10 players. According to Captain Kyle Vassell, players at Rugby Park incur fines for committing “silly fouls” during training; manager McInnes elaborated on this practice, simultaneously raising concerns about the uniformity of refereeing decisions. He stated: “We’ve done it for a while now, for things like pulling. “Sometimes in training games, players will make a foul and I want us to get away from that so we fine players for that type of thing, pulling players back and stopping promising attacks.” “Also questioning and complaining about dubious refereeing decisions, which is a million because I’m the referee most of the time.” “We introduced that and if anybody annoys me too much they get fined for that.” “So we are just trying to train the players to be more disciplined and more accepting of decisions, good or bad.” “Sometimes I’ll make decisions that are clearly wrong, just to test them, and I want us to try and be just a bit more concentrated on everything on the pitch.” “The message to the players is to be squeaky clean, to be really sure about our work.” Although stating his desire for his team to “own” their unsatisfactory disciplinary record, McInnes has simultaneously requested enhanced consistency in the adjudication process by match officials. He commented: “We’ve got not to give any sort of opportunities for people to be red-carded, but consistency has got to be there, and it’s not there. “I don’t care what anybody says, that isn’t there at a minute.”