This piece is an extract from yesterday's The Rugby Road Gates newsletter, which is emailed out at 6pm every Wednesday. To receive our full, free Kilmarnock newsletter straight to your email inbox, click here.
Has everyone who attended the Tony Macaroni Arena woken up from Saturday’s match yet? It was far from a classic, eh?
We all know that games against Livingston will never win any beauty contests, but jings, that was a hard watch, it must be said. It was my first trip to West Lothian for the football – I haven’t even travelled to Almondvale for work. Safe to say I’m in no rush to go back as a fan and fully understand why it’s not the most popular away day among the hardcore support who follow the team up and down the country.
Losing Marley Watkins to an injury early in the game certainly didn’t help matters. Hopefully, it’s nothing serious and he will return in time for this weekend’s game against St Johnstone, but we’ll wait and see what Derek McInnes has to say at his press conference on Friday.
READ MORE: Killie defeat Aberdeen & Celtic - it doesn't get much better
The manager will surely be questioned for an update on Kyle Magennis’ situation. The 25-year-old lasted roughly six minutes on the pitch upon his return to the team after recovering from a hamstring injury. It was an issue sustained in the 1-1 draw with St Mirren at the end of September and it had kept him out since. McInnes was confident he would have the former Hibernian midfielder available for the bench at Livi. To actually see him come on was a surprise given he hadn’t played any competitive minutes in well over two months.
Whether anyone is to blame for Magennis pulling up again, who knows? There seems to have been plenty of debate surrounding who should be held accountable. Perhaps he was simply unlucky. Fingers crossed it’s not as damaged on this occasion – it’s hard not to feel for him at this point.
Anyway, it’s time to look ahead. The home match against St Johnstone will be followed up by a short trip to Paisley next Wednesday, before finishing the year back on home soil as the club welcomes Dundee. It’s a nice little run of games. Given the strong home form and the tendency to pull out a win at Rugby Park, another seven points out of a possible nine from the next three games has to be the aim. If that can be achieved, building upon the recent run of form where Killie beat Celtic and Aberdeen, and have gone three away games in a row without defeat, then the prospect of European football returning to Ayrshire will not be out of the question.
AND ANOTHER THING
A report that emerged at the start of the week suggested Killie would find it difficult not to consider an offer of £600K from FC Charlotte in the MLS for Danny Armstrong. I find that incredibly hard to believe. Given that at Hearts’ recent AGM, sporting director, Joe Savage, was quizzed about Armstrong specifically and he revealed that Killie valued him at seven figures, that should tell you all you need to know about this new sum published by Team Talk.
I’ve delivered my thoughts on Armstrong repeatedly in these columns and I don’t mind backing that up once more. His influence on the team is undeniable and he will be sorely missed when the time comes for him to move on. Whether that’s in January or in the summer, it now seems inevitable that the 26-year-old will be sold at some stage.
In my view, he should be given a warm handshake, thanked for his services to the club and wished all the best. If we want to enjoy players like Danny in the squad, then as fans we have to be prepared to see them leave to try to better their career. He scores, he assists, he has skill, and he works his balls off – his importance can’t be highlighted enough. But the club should, and I’m quite confident will, be handsomely compensated when he’s sold.
Ideally, Killie wants clubs in England to be showing some serious interest. After all, the Championship and above is where all of the cash-rich clubs are on these shores. Of course, much depends on Armstrong’s ambitions. Perhaps he would rather go abroad. But a bidding war between a couple of Championship clubs will keep the power in Killie’s hands.
What should the message from Billy Bowie & Co. be? £1m then we’ll start talking.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here