JW1989

The talk of tactics, player selection etc. is all well and good but, fundamentally, we needed to not get beat against a team of part-timers last night and failed to do so.

All of the above. Prioritise getting through to the next round - it's a knockout competition. Clarke is the definiton of pragmatism and last night's approach was anything but pragmatic.

I feel the same for some strange reason. The guy has applied for a job, got an interview and put forward a vision for the team which seems too far removed from what has worked for us recently. Looks like a mistake from the board for multiple reasons, unfortunately.

A decent manager would look at the players in front of him and get us through a two legged tie against part timers, in my opinion. That performance couldn’t be further from what I’d come to expect under Clarke.

On the evidence so far, do you trust him to rebuild the squad?

The board unanimously agreed to hire a guy that wanted to change our way of playing despite 1. there being no reason to and 2. not having players to do so. Seems like pure naivety to me. His decision making for tonight's game was abysmal.

Would love to see the names we knocked back for this guy

Agree with this. Should have enough to beat that lot, so there's clearly an issue. This new playing style seems completely needless to me. We finished 3rd playing pragmatically and to our strengths week in, week out. With a poorer quality in the squad thus far he's trying to change the playing style, which is a high risk move and has ultimately resulted in us exiting Europe. His off-field changes are a huge concern too - he seems to be creating a revolution for no reason.

Was thinking the same actually - could this be him to the left of Leven's elbow? LM said he's still in contract at the AGM but not sure if that means he's free to find another club?

As if by magic, the signing has just been announced. http://www.kilmarnockfc.co.uk/Article?id=5816&ShowCat=

What about a greeny for the guy that revealed the two year deal and his reasons for joining : P Only joking, great work Cammy!

Confirmed signing. http://kilmarnockfc.co.uk/Article?id=5793

Agreed! The player is a Celtic fan, so even more encouraging LM could leave such a good impression. He was talking about winning at all costs (or words to that effect) which the player liked apparently.

Got told yesterday by a reliable source that a two year deal has been agreed with Higgins. Apparently he's been impressed by the vision sold to him by LM - little or no loan signings, building a squad for the future, a club on the up with the off-field changes etc. The player was sold on LM as a bloke too, he's got a real winner's mentality and came across really well.

Will be interesting to see how we set-up for these games given the results so far. As the Premiership club, we were the team trying to dominate, playing a higher line etc and didn't really set-up to be hard to beat. I suspect we'll keep it tight for the first few games and almost play on the break, which might play into our hands. Fingers crossed.