ALLAN Johnston paid tribute to the impact of his assistant Gary Locke after picking up the SPFL Premiership manager of the month award for September.
The players may be embroiled in a bonus row with the club but Kilmarnock have made a strong start to the season and Johnston feels much of the credit has to go to his former Hearts team-mate, Locke having replaced the unpopular Sandy Clark, now in charge at Albion Rovers.
"I had great success with Sandy at Queen of the South, but last season didn't turn out the way we hoped it would," Johnston said. "But I'm lucky that Lockey has come in alongside me and I have someone I can trust.
"He brings a lot to the club. He's a bubbly character and the players love him. You can see what he brings to the team with his enthusiasm."
Johnston must hope the bad feeling over the bonus issue doesn't derail the spirit that has been building within an excellent squad at Rugby Park. "You can see it all coming together whereas last year when I came in there was a lot of stuff going on off the park as well," he said. "There wasn't much money to bring in new players and it was kind of last-minute."
Continuing the Hearts connection, East Fife's Gary Naysmith collected the League 2 manager's award. The former Everton and Scotland player said: "The last individual award I had was young player of the year award at Hearts.
"Back then you got a massive bottle of Bell's whisky. No-one in my family drank whisky so we traded it in at the miners' club and got eight bottles of vodka for it."
Scotland finally appear to have found a replacement left-back in the Naysmith mould in the shape of Andrew Robertson of Hull City. Naysmith is a huge admirer. He said: "Andrew is like me when I was younger. I didn't care so much about defending, I just wanted to go forward.
"For me, the best way to defend was attack. He seems the same way and the biggest thing you can say about him is that he's gone to an English Premier League club and is doing fantastically well."
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