The decade comes to a close for St Mirren tomorrow afternoon as the Buddies host Kilmarnock at the Simple Digital Arena.
FORM
St Mirren - LDDWLL
Kilmarnock - LLLLDD
Saints come into tomorrow's match on the back of a narrow loss to Celtic on Boxing Day. Cammy MacPherson's 89th minute free-kick came too late for The Buddies after first-half goals from Callum McGregor and James Forrest had Celtic ahead.
Managerless Kilmarnock sit in sixth place in the Ladbrokes Premiership with 23 points from 20 matches. But the Ayrshire side have lost four on the bounce heading into tomorrow's match, including a 1-0 loss against Rangers on Boxing Day, and have failed to win in any of their last six matches.
A poor run of form, culminating with a 1-0 loss away to Ross County earlier this month, saw Angelo Alessio leave the club with assistant manager Alex Dyer taking over as caretaker.
Killie's last win came back in November when they defeated Hearts 3-0 at Rugby Park. Ironically, Hearts were also the opponents when Killie picked up their last win on the road back in October.
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Kilmarnock edged Saints out at Rugby Park in October in the only meeting of the two so far this season.
Despite a strong showing from Saints, Gary Dicker headed home with less than 10 minutes remaining to give Killie a 1-0 win.
St Mirren lost all three league encounters against Kilmarnock last season losing 2-1 on two occasions and 1-0 on the other.
The Buddies last league win over Killie was back in April 2015 with Saints running out 4-1 winners at the Simple Digital Arena.
TEAM NEWS
Kirk Broadfoot, Gary MacKenzie and Kyle McAllister are all still out for Saints while Calum Waters can't feature against his parent club.
MANAGER'S THOUGHTS
"Kilmarnock are a decent side. They have some good players in the forward areas, they've got some good experience throughout their team and we know it's going to be an extremely difficult game.
"Mr Alessio has lost his job and Alex Dyer has come in and taken over. I suppose Alex will probably go back to doing things the way Steve Clarke did and rightly so as it was very successful for them over the last couple of seasons.
"I think Kilmarnock will bring a good support with them and hopefully our own people will turn out in good numbers as well and fingers crossed we can give them a good win to finish 2019 off."
