His name does not appear on the scoresheet, but one player stood above the rest at Rugby Park yesterday.
By the time he flashed a free kick just wide, midway through the second half, Alexei Eremenko was in party mode. Every touch, every pass, every canny flick and every swivel of the hips drew happy applause from the enthralled crowd.
Even from the vantage point of the press box, looking down at the wide expanse of the pitch, it is difficult to predict passes the Russian-born Finn pulls off with such nonchalance. "Why has he put it there?" you think, until a team-mate appears out of nowhere and runs on to the ball in space.
When they could not stop him Partick Thistle fouled him. That, however, only gave the playmaker a chance to swing the ball in, and all too often Thistle's big men - Conrad Balatoni and Abdul Osman - struggled to clear. Thistle were troubled by high balls all afternoon, whether it be from little lofted passes down the channels, or from Eremenko's wicked dead-ball delivery.
For the hosts, centre-halves Manuel Pascali and Mark Connolly were authoritative in comparison, leaving Thistle to try to thread the ball through tight spaces, and although the visitors built up a head of steam before the end of the first half, they were out-thought and outplayed in the second. That was, though, largely down to the genius of one man.
"Alexei was frightening," said Allan Johnston, the Kilmarnock manager, whose side are in the top six. "It's the hardest part of the game to create chances, and he's got the vision to do that. He cut them open, a lot of times, created a lot of chances. I couldn't be more pleased."
The opening minutes were even, and edgy, unlike much of what followed. Chris Johnston, was played in behind and his low square pass from the byeline beat keeper Scott Fox, but was touched from danger. For Thistle, Steven Lawless hit a long-range effort which stung the gloves of Craig Samson, who palmed it into the path of Kris Doolan, but Samson leapt up to block the rebound.
Much of the credit for the opener will go to Ross Barbour, who darted free from full-back up the right wing, but he was only released into space brilliantly by Jamie Hamill's clipped through ball from the centre circle. The cross came in from Barbour, deep towards the back post, where Tope Obadeyi stooped low and glanced a header home.
Thistle responded well to going behind, and even dominated up to half-time. Doolan created a half-chance, but couldn't square it to the onrushing Lawless. Ryan Stevenson and Kallum Higginbotham smacked the crossbar and fired wide respectively. All the pressure was being applied by the visitors, but Thistle went into the break a goal behind.
And the second half only awakened the home side's killer instinct. Eremenko clipped a brilliant ball in to Johnston who had snuck in at the back post, but Jake Carroll just got a touch on it to turn it behind. His stretching intervention made little difference - Eremenko produced a pearler of a curling corner, right on to the head of Manuel Pascali who headed home from close range.
A few minutes later, Eremenko played a magical little reverse pass into Obadeyi. The crowd were applauding, even before the forward ducked inside at fired in the bottom-left corner. For his next trick, Eremenko took a corner short, shimmied left and right before swinging in another ball that, this time, Pascali could not convert.
By the time Josh Magennis hit a late shot over the bar the points were won. There was just time for a standing ovation as the substituted Eremenko trudged off, his fun over for the day, and the visitors put out of their misery.
"We've got to take our chances when we're on top," said Alan Archibald, the Thistle manager. "We stuck on a second striker and we didn't really hurt them. I thought a few of them felt sorry for themselves today, we let the game get too open."
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 hereComments are closed on this article