Derek McInnes has explained why he’s used St Mirren as a yardstick for Kilmarnock this season.

The Buddies secured a top-six finish last season in what had been a long quest for the Paisley club after narrowly missing out on a few occasions.

McInnes is an admirer of Stephen Robinson and the work he’s carried out at the SMiSA Stadium.

Tomorrow’s game between the sides at Rugby Park could go a long way to determining who finished fourth in the Premiership this term. The visitors are just a point ahead of Killie, so a win for the hosts would see them leapfrog their rivals and all but secure their top-six place.

The 52-year-old said: “For clubs like ourselves, if we can get into those types of positions in the league it’s an indication a lot of things have been done well at your club. It’s not just a manager, a squad of players, it’s recruitment, it’s support from the board, it’s supporters getting behind everybody. A lot of things have to go your way to be as high as that.

“I feel as though the challenge for the players was to be a top-six team and I don’t want to shift that too much, I want to make sure that’s still what we’re after. I

“If we can get that top six secured, you do go ‘what’s next’ - and hopefully that’s the conversation we’re having.”

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He added: “The reason I used it was because a lot of our recruitment was done by then and they were good players so I wasn’t just saying it to put unnecessary pressure on a team that I didn’t think could do it.

“I used the fact St Mirren didn’t beat us last year, there wasn’t a lot between us in the games but equally they had that bit of know-how, they had the benefit of being a more experienced squad at Premiership level than ours last season.

“I think there were 13 points between us and them at the split. So that was effectively four wins for us to be what St Mirren achieved last year. And when we went through it we thought surely we could win four more games than we did last year by the time the split came. I used them as a reference as to what could be done.

“St Mirren have an identity and it’s important teams know what they are. I think you can see what we are, we try to play with two wingers, we’ve committed to two strikers this season, we play with a lot of energy, quick and aggressive football. It’s important we have that identity and St Mirren have that.

"We spoke about that helping us but we haven’t achieved anything yet - I’d rather be talking about this in May rather than March. I’d have taken this when we had that meeting at the start of the season.”