02/01/2025 – KILMARNOCK (A)

The new year is not even 3 days old yet, and we have already completed the most difficult task we will probably be asked in all of 2025; write something positive about the St. Mirren match yesterday.

There’s no point in pretending otherwise, it was a pretty awful day for Saints, played on a beautiful but very cold winters afternoon in Ayrshire, where we seemed to forget the very basics of football, something confirmed by Stephen Robinson after the match during a brutally stark interview.

The 2-0 defeat is the latest loss against Kilmarnock and Derek McInnes, and although our record against both club and man is desperately frustrating, there’s little point in going into great depth about it here as we merely look at the last match, and for that we are entirely grateful as this is enough to concentrate on!

When we played Hearts at Tynecastle in October, this blog was not yet live, however in preparation for it we were already recording the players of the match for the season end awards.

On that occasion, we decided to award late debutant Evan Mooney 1 point, as so poor was the performance that day, nothing was given for the 3 or 5 points slots.

Although the match at Rugy Park wasn’t that bad in our opinion, for the same reason, the 5 points award is not filled for this match as we genuinely couldn’t identify any player for significant ongoing contributions during the match.

Ellery Balcombe was the pick of the players in our view. He saved another penalty, his third of the season and was desperately unlucky to see the rebound from that stop scored by Bruce Anderson, who also slotted home the second penalty.

Balcombe has been getting a lot of penalty practice away from home recently, that’s 6 he has faced in the last 5 away matches, courtesy of two awards each at Easter Road, Tannadice and Rugby Park.

We lost at Tannadice and Rugby Park because of this, and although you could argue three of these weren’t actually penalties, we need to be much more streetwise on our travels. There’s nothing wrong with picking up 0-0 draws away from home, in our opinion!

In addition to Balcombe, Killian Phillips diligently plugged away as usual in midfield and is undoubtedly one of the most important players at the club now. We can only hope Stepehen Robinson has the money to buy him outright from Crystal Palace.

At half time, Mark O’Hara returned to action after missing the last 3 matches, and the captain is a very welcome addition to the team again as him and Phillips compliment each other very nicely indeed, and both will be crucial in our battle for Europe.

Also introduced from the bench was Owen Oseni, a new signing from Gateshead. The forward joined the club the previous day for a reported fee of £120,000, and it was great to see him in action.

Hopefully Owen can settle quickly into life in Scotland, and the step up in club and level, to score the goals previously missing from our forward line, with the exception of Toyosi Olusanya who has contributed well over the campaign.

So it wasn’t all negative after all, and when we looked hard, we could find some positives from even the most mundane of afternoons, however we accept you may not agree!

Things will get better, of that we are certain.

COYS!

Kilmarnock Players of the Match:

5 points – N/A

3 points – Ellery Balcombe

1 point – Killian Phillips