KILMARNOCK suffered another home horror show as they lost 4-0 in front of their fans for the second time in three matches, with all of Ross County’s goals coming in the first half.
Liam Boyce opened the scoring with little more than 70 seconds on the clock in the first attack of the game, and with Kilmarnock in complete disarray, the visitors’ lead was doubled two minutes later through Rocco Quinn.
Boyce scored against just before the half-hour mark and Andrew Davies added a fourth, sending some of the Ayrshire club’s fans heading for the exits with 10 minutes of the first half to play.
Bookies Ladbrokes, the SPFL sponsors, last night suspended betting on Gary Locke being the first Premiership manager to be shown the door this season. A run of bets saw his odds tumble from 10/1 to 3/1 after this devastating defeat.
Losing early goals was already a worrying pattern for Kilmarnock, having conceded in the opening 10 minutes against both Celtic and Partick Thistle, it must now be a source of urgent concern.
Manager Locke admitted he does not know why it is a recurring problem for his side, but maintained he is the right man to sort it out. He said: “I honestly do not know why this keeps on happening. We cannot keep giving ourselves so much work to do at the start of matches.
“I have a project to do here and I have confidence in myself to do it. It’s not good enough just now though. We have to rectify it, and quickly.”
Ross County displayed their attacking intent from kick-off and left Kilmarnock shell-shocked. Jim McIntyre’s side have carried on from where they left off last season and remain one of the form teams in the country.
The partnership between Craig Curran and Boyce will give many defenders in this league a torrid afternoon, and they combined to great effect time and again in the first half.
Some supporters were still making their way to their seats when County took the lead. Jackson Irvine broke through the home defence to collect a lofted pass and laid the ball inside to Curran. He instantly fed Boyce, whose right-footed strike was deflected past a helpless Jamie MacDonald.
Before Kilmarnock had a chance to recover, Michael Gardyne caught out Mark Connolly and drove past the defender to cut the ball inside to Curran.
The striker fired in a shot that was cleared off the line by Lee Ashcroft, but Quinn was on hand to despatch the rebound into the unguarded net.
Kilmarnock had no answer to a rampant County and things got even worse for the home side as they were forced into using all three substitutes in the opening 45 minutes. Connolly, Darryl Westlake and Lee McCulloch all had to go off with injuries, leaving Locke with no scope to make tactical changes.
With Kilmarnock’s defenders dropping like flies, Curran was twice thwarted by MacDonald before Boyce added his second goal when he was given the freedom of the penalty area to tap in Jamie Reckord’s wayward shot.
The fourth goal came when Davies was left totally unmarked at the back post at a Jonathan Franks corner and his volley bounced into the ground before finding the net.
The home side came close to pulling a goal back after 40 minutes, but luck was not on their side. Kris Boyd’s deflected free-kick was superbly tipped on to the post by Scott Fox before it was cleared for a corner.
The second half was unsurprisingly a much calmer affair with County happy to sit on their insurmountable cushion and Kilmarnock reluctant to push forward and risk further embarrassment.
Their day was summed up when a rare attacking move on the hour mark saw Kallum Higginbotham drill a vicious left-footed cross into the six-yard box but neither Boyd nor Josh Maggenis could provide a touch with the goal at their mercy. McIntyre said: “That was our best 45 minutes since I took over.
“We knew we needed a quick start because Kilmarnock had had a couple of positive results. We did not want to give their supporters much encouragement and I felt we achieved that really well.”
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