Two home defeats in the space of three days may not usually be seen as a sure sign of progress, but then again it all depends on the context of those results.

For Kallum Higginbotham and his Kilmarnock team-mates, the frustration of narrow defeats to Hearts and Hamilton last week are comforting signals of improvement to add to their victories over Dundee United and St Johnstone in their previous two games, particularly when compared to early-season shellackings at the hands of Dundee and Ross County.

He said: “If you were watching the performances over the last four weeks compared to the beginning of the season, you can see a massive improvement in how we’re playing,” he said.

“We should really be winning at home, especially when you go in 1-0 up at half-time, but we’ve not won today so we need to dust ourselves down and go again next week at Tynecastle.

“I wouldn’t say our confidence is fragile. I think our confidence has improved a lot over the last couple of weeks, but taking a defeat on Wednesday and losing again today is a blow.

“We know what kind of quality we’ve got in the dressing room, but we still need to be working hard because that’s where it starts. First and foremost you’ve got to match the opposition that you’re playing against with work-rate, especially Hamilton as that’s what they’re based on, and all credit to them, but we’re disappointed we’ve not come away with the three points.

“We’re at home, and I think we’ve had enough chances to win the game.

“No disrespect to Hamilton, they played well, but I would say we had the better of the chances on the day and on another day we go and win the game.

“It’s happened too many times this season already, and it’s still only early on in the season, so we need to pick it up.

“It shouldn’t take us to go behind to start playing again. When we were already 1-0 up we should have been confident enough to come out in the second-half and try to get that second goal.”