IT was, said Stuart Findlay, the “best moment of his career”. But in fact celebrations like the one which followed the former Celtic central defender inflicting the Parkhead side’s first-ever league defeat from a winning position under Brendan Rodgers have become rather frequent in this corner of Ayrshire.
Not only did Kilmarnock leapfrog last year’s champions with this result – their fourth unbeaten encounter against Celtic in a row – but it is they as much as Celtic who can argue they should in fact be higher in the table. Dealt what they felt were refereeing injustices against both Hibs and Hearts (even if they were the beneficiaries of one against Aberdeen), it is worth forgetting about the Celtic part of the story for a minute and cottoning on to the fact that Kilmarnock under Clarke have no intention of succumbing to second season syndrome.
“The record against Celtic just shows the belief the manager had installed in us,” said Findlay. “We know that if we play the way we can, especially with the way we set up, that it suits us playing against the better teams in the division. So we go in with that belief and feel as if we can get a result against anybody – including Celtic.
The jury is still out as to whether this is a stronger Kilmarnock team than last season, when they finished fifth. While Youssuf Mulumbu appeared lacking in match practice, he is still a player who would add to any squad, even if young Aaron Tshibola looks ready to deliver a big season in his place. But they are still a team capable of consistently doing damage at the top end of this division, even if they don’t have a Betfred Cup quarter final to look forward to.
“Beating Celtic is beating Celtic at the end of the day,” said Findlay. “It’s a result everyone is really proud of. But we are disappointed with every game that we don’t win. Last week against Hibs we didn’t do ourselves justice in the second half but we were still disappointed not to take something from the game. But for a club like Killie to be sitting where we are in the league and to think we should still be doing better, shows how far the manager has been able to take us.
“You don’t know what the season will bring. We’ve had a really hard run of games – Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen then Celtic – and we’ve managed to get six points when deep down we know we could have got more. Obviously we lost a couple of important players. But getting Tish [Aaron Tshibola] back was massive for us and we kept most of the players from last season especially in the middle area and at the back. It’s a different squad from last season. We did remarkably well then and we’re doing very well to match it so far.”
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