Kilmarnock manager Derek McInnes has confirmed he is handing out fines to his players for needless fouls in training in a bid to improve the club’s disciplinary record.
The red card shown to midfielder Liam Donnelly for two bookable offences – the first of which came for kicking the ball away – in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat away to Ross County was the Rugby Park side’s fifth dismissal of the season so far, the most in the top-flight. Skipper Kyle Vassell had previously revealed that Killie players are financially punished for silly fouls in training, and ahead of Wednesday night’s trip to Tynecastle to face Hearts, gaffer McInnes has expanded on the new approach.
He said: “We’ve done it for a while now, for things like pulling. Sometimes in training games that 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 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. 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.
“We’ve got to own the fact that we’ve had so many red cards and we’ve got to be better at that because it’s having a big impact on results, big impact on team selection, and it’s not an ideal situation for me. It is the first time I’ve ever had as many red cards managing a team and it’s something that I don’t want to become a habit.
“Looking at even the games in terms of league, we could potentially be another seven or eight points better off. There’s two ways about it and we’ve got to make sure that we are, we’re better and it doesn’t become an issue as the season goes on.”
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