McCulloch warns his Kilmarnock players they're not safe yet
Lee McCulloch saw Kilmarnock take a giant stride towards safety in the Premiership after a convincing win over Hamilton but insists his side are not out of danger yet.
Lee McCulloch saw Kilmarnock take a giant stride towards safety in the Premiership after a convincing win over Hamilton but insists his side are not out of danger yet.
Conor Sammon and Jordan Jones gave Killie a 2-0 victory, though they were indebted to their goalkeeper Freddie Woodman for pulling off two impressive saves to deny Dougie Imrie.
The Rugby Park outfit are now seventh, six points clear of the relegation play-off spot with four games to play, but the Kilmarnock boss is not taking anything for granted.
He said: “I've not looked at the table so I don't know how far we have to go. That's obviously good that we can't now finish bottom but we are not out of the woods yet.”
On the performance, McCulloch said: “I thought it was a well-deserved victory. They have hit the post early on in the game and after that we have regrouped, scored a good goal from a set-play that we have worked on all week and scored a great second goal.
“In the second half we were comfortable. We hit them on the counter-attack a couple of times, JJ's and Conor's pace with Boydy Kris Boyd up front holding it up for us, and possibly could have had a penalty as well so really pleased.”
Meanwhile, Martin Canning felt his Hamilton charges were unfortunate not to extend their unbeaten run to five games.
He said: “It was a strange game as I thought we were the better team.
“I thought we controlled a lot of the game, although Kilmarnock sat off pretty much the whole second half - I don't think they had an effort on target.
“It was frustrating because we didn't defend our box properly and they get the breaks and they score from it.
“The keeper makes a fantastic save from Dougie early on in the game. We huffed and puffed but didn't really have a glaring opportunity.
“They had two or three real good blocks at crucial moments to stop us getting a goal and getting back into the game and we didn't get any breaks.
“It was one of those games for us, we need to dust ourselves down and now every game becomes bigger.”