We played some decent enough stuff in the first half without really looking threatening, and the Killie goal felt a bit like us being punished for not creating clear enough chances. The second half was as bad as I've seen us all season though: far too narrow, far too many misplaced passes, far too many lazy-looking through balls that seemed to suggest players thinking 'we'll just give it to Miles and he'll do the rest'. I felt sorry for Storey - he ran his socks off, but the Killie defence stuck close to him and dealt with him pretty effectively throughout. To be fair to Hughes, choosing to put on Mutombo and, eventually, Sutherland, did seem to hint that he wanted a bit more width in the team, but it seemed little strange to take off Raven rather than keeping him on to play behind Sutherland and taking off one of the four central midfielders that we ended the game with. None of Tansey, Christie, Polworth or Vigurs played particularly badly, but that area just looked crowded and messy. Mutombo, incidentally, still isn't doing it for me - as noted in the Dundee game, he has a decent enough skill level, but doesn't seem to look at what his team-mates are doing or know when to release the ball. One passage of play, where he skinned a couple of defenders and got to the edge of the box, then released a comically weak shot when he had far better passing options available, summed him up. Hopefully when Roberts, Doran and Sho-Silva come back from injury, we will be able to change up the system to something more direct when required; obviously yesterday was just one bad result after a very decent run, but we were crying out for a Watkins-type figure in the second half.
Decent away support for our longest league journey, and as usual it was a good laugh with the #caleyaway regulars, but I'm suffering for it today, and it would have been nice to have a decent performance to look back on to ease the pain.