Analysis Corner: How Steve Clark has turned Killie around

By Dougie Wright (@dougie_wright)

In the years to come, the revolving door of Scottish Premiership managers will continue to whirl. It’s safe to say that fans across the country will be hoping that the new man will be able to “do a Steve Clarke”.

Appointed as Kimarnock manager at the end of October, the Saltcoats native became the club’s fourth manager in two years.

The results since have been extraordinary.

When he took over, Kilmarnock were second from bottom with six points from nine games. In the twenty one games with Clarke at the helm, they’ve been the best team in Scotland not called Celtic.

34 year old Kris Boyd was gradually fading away into the world of punditry. He now finds himself the league’s top scorer.

It’s all very well pointing all this success to Steve Clarke. His CV bursts with accomplishments in the English top flight. Yet Owen Coyle was similarly decorated, and lasted only five months at Ross County.

CVs don’t win matches; it’s the decisions the guys behind them take that do.

So how has Clarke revolutionised Killie?

Take a look at this chart:

Ok, Clarke’s not done an awful lot with Killie defensively. However, under his leadership, the Rugby Park side are now scoring at twice as high a rate as they were before.

Let’s see how this has been achieved:

Youssouf Mulumbu

Correlation does not equal causation. Just because something shares a pattern with something else, doesn’t mean that something causes something else. Take this example of the amount of oil America imports from Norway and the amount of people who died from driving into a train:

Unless the Norwegians are up to some seriously underhanded business, it seems obvious that any pattern between these two things is just coincidental.

However, what does not appear coincidental is Youssouf Mulumbu’s impact on this Kilmarnock team.

A West Brom stalwart for six years, the Congolese arrived in Ayrshire without having played regular football since 2014. After taking a couple of games to get back up to speed, he made his debut in a 5-1 mauling of Partick Thistle and hasn’t looked back.

He scored the winner against Celtic, set up the winner against Rangers, and has only tasted defeat in one of his thirteen league matches to date.

In Alan Power and Gary Dicker, Kilmarnock naturally had a fairly industrious midfield. However, there was a significant difficulty in bridging the gap between the middle of the park and the final third.

Mulumbu’s composure on the ball is there for all to see. All too often in Scottish football, defenders instinctively clear their lines without really looking for a pass. In Mulumbu, Kilmarnock have a player who is always there to provide that outlet.

While not the tallest, Mulumbu is excellent at using his body to shield the ball from the opposition. No Kilmarnock player receives more of the ball; no Kilmarnock player gives the ball away less.

Furthermore, when Kilmarnock are attacking, Gary Dicker is quite happy to sit back. This allows Mulumbu to choose when it may be worth making a run into the opposition penalty box. He can’t do it all the time, otherwise Killie could easily be picked off on the break, but his forays forward have directly led to wins over both Celtic and Rangers this year.

In Mulumbu, they have a player who allows them to play a more thoughtful style of play when winning the ball back in their own defensive third. He then has the game intelligence to help finish the very moves he started.

Boyd, Brophy and Jones

It’s all very well bringing in an undervalued star like Mulumbu, but one player does not make a team.

When Clarke arrived, the trio of Kris Boyd, Eamonn Brophy and Jordan Jones weren’t going anywhere in a hurry.

Boyd had become more notorious for his punditry than his goalscoring, having only hit the back of the net twice in the first nine games of the season.

Brophy had traded the bench at Hamilton for the bench at Rugby Park, as he looked to uphold a reputation of flattering to deceive.

Jones was stuttering after a stellar first season in Ayrshire, only being involved in three goals all season, despite being an ever present.

Yet, the trio had the raw ingredients to form a successful Scottish Premiership attack. In Boyd, they had a poacher who had scored over 200 top flight goals. Brophy and Jones could carry the ball at pace- using that trait to cut inside from the wings is horrible to defend against.

Under Clarke, the trio have blended beautifully, scoring twenty two goals between them (two thirds of all goals scored since Clarke’s appointment).

Killie used to be fairly one dimensional. A long ball to Boyd, with Jones chasing the flick on. Now, Brophy and Jones are causing havoc with diagonal runs all over the place, and Boyd can play to his strengths in the penalty box.

How does this go together?

No team in the Scottish Premiership has made it into the opposition final third fewer times than Kilmarnock.

No team in the Scottish Premiership sees less of the ball than Kilmarnock.

And yet, during Clarke’s tenure, only Celtic and Rangers have scored more goals than Kilmarnock.

When you have a composed, clever passer in Mulumbu, and two pacy wingers with a poacher up top, you have the guts of a really effective counter-attacking machine.

Kilmarnock will defend deep. They won’t press until the opponent gets deep in the Kilmarnock half. And just when the opposition commit that extra man forward, the ball goes from defender to Mulumbu, Mulumbu to winger, winger to Boyd, and a goal for Kilmarnock.

That’s obviously a dumbed down summary of their game, but that’s the essence of Killie’s tactics. As a Mourinho acolyte, Clarke bases his game on opposition mistakes. You tempt them into overcommitting, then get the ball up the park in two or three passes while the opposition scramble to reorganise themselves.

It’s certainly proving to be a well-oiled machine thus far. Scottish football is watching on to see how far it can go.

For more analysis like this, follow Dougie on Twitter (@dougie_wright)

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