Derek McInnes has emphasised that Kilmarnock must continue their efforts to solidify fourth place in the Scottish Premiership.
With just three matches left, Killie maintain a six-point lead over fifth-place St Mirren, whom they will face this Saturday in Paisley. St Mirren, in turn, holds a five-point advantage over Dundee, who make up the top-six positions.
Although Kilmarnock secured European football last week, McInnes remains focused on securing the coveted fourth position sooner rather than later.
“We don’t need to do it this weekend but we would like to," insisted the Killie boss, who was today nominated for the SFWA manager of the year award.
"That’s the intention. Obviously we have been in fourth spot for a while now, we are enjoying where we are.
READ MORE: A list of SPFL players Kilmarnock could potentially sign
“It was a great feeling last weekend watching as we got into Europe with four games to spare but now we want to finish off what has been a fantastic campaign by securing that fourth spot.
“There is still a job to be done to do that and hopefully we can do that job on Saturday.
“Obviously St Mirren are in a fight with Dundee for fifth and in a fight with us for fourth.
“Our games against St Mirren in my couple of years have been pretty right but we have a pretty good record against them.
“That said, we have to make sure at this stage of the season, in order to get improvements we need to try to make sure the motivation remains pretty high.
READ MORE: Montgomery issues plan to help Hibs players block out 'negativity'
“We don’t think for a moment that we have secured fourth spot. We feel there is still work to be done, we will still try to push the players to the limits and see what we can get out of this season and to get fourth spot means a lot and should do for the players and it is important they recognise there is still a job to be done.”
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