Mohamed El Makrini eager for Kilmarnock to end 2019 on positive note

Mohamed El Makrini hopes to leave Kilmarnock’s winter of discontent behind at the end of the year.

The Rugby Park outfit have now gone six games without a win and five without scoring.

Sunday’s trip to St Mirren is their last chance before the turn of the year to end that miserable run and Dutchman El Makrini hopes to get a result that will allow his team to start off 2020 on a more positive footing.

He said: “It’s very important to end the year well. We want to come back in for the start of 2020 with a win in our mind.

“It’s so big not just for the league table but for the confidence we feel. It would be nice to win on Sunday and it’s really important.”

Alex Dyer has taken over as caretaker boss since Angelo Alessio was sacked but there has been no upturn in results following defeats to Motherwell and Rangers under his watch.

But El Makrini insists the blame for the Ayrshire outfit’s woes lies solely with the players.

“If you saw the game at Ibrox, we were in a good shape and tried to make it really difficult for Rangers,” said the 32-year-old. “But against a good team like that they get the chances sometimes and we were unlucky.

“We can take the confidence of how we played but we need to get some results.

“It doesn’t matter how we win it, we need to get our confidence back to get the three points.

“Alex is really relaxed, he’s confident and tells us what we need to do.

“We tried to play in a good shape and from there make some good chances – but as players it’s down to us to do that on the pitch.

“As the manager, he points out some things and we do it.

“I think he’s doing really well but we need to get the points and as players we need to look in the mirror.

“Of course it’s difficult to feel confident but we try to do our best and the goals will come for sure.

“There are ups and downs in a season and yeah we’re feeling a little down right now but we will go up again for sure.”