Steve Clarke admits Kilmarnock will find it a whole lot tougher next year - because their top-six rivals will be training their sights on the Rugby Park side.
The former West Brom and Reading boss was named manager of the year by the Scottish Football Writers' Association after masterminding Killie's incredible turnaround campaign.
The Ayrshire outfit were bottom of the table when Clarke was appointed back in October but they ended up setting a club-record points total as they finished fifth in the Ladbrokes Premiership.
Clarke, though, is refusing to get carried away ahead of next term as he believes his team will be targeted by the likes of Motherwell, Dundee and St Johnstone as they look to replicate his recipe for success.
"I'm guarded about next season," he told Press Association Sport. "All the big clubs with bigger budgets than ours will improve.
"The teams on similar budgets who finished below us will want to finish above us next year, so we'll be a little target for them.
"I'm sure they'll all be saying to themselves, 'Well if Kilmarnock can do it then we can do it too'.
"So we know it will be tougher next year."
Clarke has tied down the majority of his squad for next season and is still hoping Youssouf Mulumbu will opt against chasing more lucrative offers elsewhere in favour of another year at Rugby Park.
But he admits his meagre budget means he will have to bide his time before finalising his summer transfer dealings.
He explained: "I've tried to do as much business in terms of tying up this squad so I can have a relatively good idea of what I'm working with next year.
"I know one or two positions or one or two types of player that we need to help us improve.
"But we're not a club that can attack the transfer market with money and tie up players early. So I think we'll be waiting for the fall-out from the window, waiting to see who goes where and who is available later in the window.
"I've got a small budget so I don't want to use it all up and then find a couple of great opportunities turn up in August and I have no scope left to do anything.
"We'll try to be careful, we'll try to be clever and put together a competitive squad for next season.
"How many new faces do I expect? I'd love it to be only one or two but it might be three or four. It could even be five.
"It's very difficult to sit here and say all these players are staying because we can't do that. We're not in a position to do that.
"We'll wait and see what happens over the summer and we'll be ready to react if we have to react."
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel