McInnes set to make Kai flyer his first deal
KAI KENNEDY could be the first signing of the Derek McInnes revolution at Kilmarnock.
The 19-year-old was recalled by Rangers from his loan spell at Dunfermline at the beginning of this month and could be set for another temporary move.
According to Football Scotland, new Killie gaffer McInnes is considering a deal to bring Kennedy in from Ibrox.
Kennedy is highly thought of at Rangers but found himself in and out of the Pars side following John Hughes’ appointment as manager.
IT’S not gambling when you know you’re going to win.
Which is why Derek McInnes walked out of his new office at Rugby Park on Tuesday night feeling as if he’s already hit a personal jackpot even if he’s agreed to drop back into a division which is some way beneath his own hard-earned, managerial standing.
It’s probably fair to say that eight years spent in the coal face at Pittodrie was supposed to pay out a bigger professional dividend than this.
He said no to Sunderland before agonising over an offer from Rangers which tugged hard on his heartstrings but never quite sat right inside his own head after a series of increasingly awkward conversations with Dave King.
Then the Scotland job came and went when McInnes was pipped at the post by Steve Clarke in a two-horse race to the Hampden hotseat.
So when the end finally came for him at Pittodrie nine months ago, McInnes may not have envisaged that his next gig would take him all the way down to the second tier of the Scottish game.
But even if he doesn’t plan to stay there for long he has already admitted he doesn’t
BY KEITH JACKSON like the idea of hanging around in the Championship any longer than he has to – this longer than expected break from the front line has helped to give the ultra-ambitious 50-year-old a muchneeded sense of perspective.
“It’s alright saying these things,” McInnes says when asked about his aim of leading Kilmarnock into the top six of the Premiership just one year from now, “But, in order to achieve it, a lot of things are going to have to be done properly.
“I’d like to think I know how to get results and get things done. I feel I have proved that at every club I’ve been at in different ways.
“And it’s important now that I knuckle down and get on with the job in hand.
“But Kilmarnock can be good for me at this stage and I can certainly be good for them.”
And this is where McInnes feels like a big winner already.
A decade spent on the road has, at a stroke, been reduced to a half-hour commute from his