Kilmarnock must show confidence against 'improving' Celtic to cause upset, insists Derek McInnes

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Derek McInnes heaped praise on 'improving' Celtic after their Champions League victory over Bundesliga title hopefuls RB Leipzig - and insists his side can cause an upset at Rugby Park.

Brendan Rodgers' side have earned plenty of plaudits in the last week for a 6-0 dismantling of Aberdeen in the League Cup semi-final at the weekend before following that up with an impressive win in Europe.

But McInnes says his players have to show confidence when the two teams battle it out in front of the Sky cameras on Sunday (3pm kick-off). And they have recent history to prove they can do it, having beaten Celtic twice last term.

Speaking to the media ahead of the game, McInnes said: "I think they’re clearly improving and I thought there was a maturity about the performance against a top class opponent (RB Leipzig).

"It wasn’t so long ago I could hear a fair majority of pundits saying Celtic just can’t match a top Bundesliga team after the Dortmund game - it’s just not possible to do that - and you see that it is.

"“I think from our point of view, we take confidence from the fact that we’ve had some good results against them last season. We have got to try and be the best version of us to get results against Celtic. We’re not daunted by it, we’re in the same league and we’ve got a home fixture against them. It’s up to us to try and make it difficult for them."

He added: "There’s no doubt that they’re improving and it’s going to be a huge challenge. On the pitch, my players will have to make so many good decisions but first and foremost we have to be confident in ourselves that we can get a result and it’s important that Celtic can see that.

“The stadium will be full, it’s live on Sky, it’s the type of game everybody wants to be involved in. We’ve got to try and make it uncomfortable and to do that we need to play well. It’s my job as manager to give my players the best chance to win the game.

"Our approach won’t be to just sit back and watch Celtic dictate the game. There’ll be times when Celtic’s quality forces that but it’s not through design and in those moments it’s important that we’re comfortable with that."

Killie go into the game off the back of a collapse at Dundee which saw them squander a 2-0 lead and come away empty-handed after a Ziyad Larkeche injury-time strike handed the home side the points.

But McInnes believes they're still well placed to improve on last season, when they finished in fourth place and tallied 56 points.

He said: "It’s a sore one and you have to try and overcome the disappointment of that. I think we’re a point worse off than we were last season and we had such a strong campaign.

"Once the season plays out, we feel we’ve got the players here who can hopefully improve on last season and we’ve seen elements of that at different stages but it’s up to us to keep finding that consistency."

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