Derek McInnes Q&A: Hearts links, referee frustration & injury update

Derek McInnes' press conference in full as Kilmarnock boss responds to Hearts job speculation, offers injury update and reveals Willie Collum phone call.

Here’s every word of Derek McInnes’ Kilmarnock press conference…

How was this mini-break, the week off, what was it like for you guys?

I hated it to be honest, truth be told. I think when there are international breaks, there's that general feeling that nobody's playing your league and you can get a wee bit of maybe much-needed downtime, but when there's other teams playing, I hated it. I was skulking about with people asking, ‘How you've not got a game today’ and I said ‘No, we’re out the cup’. It was just a wee reminder every time somebody asked me that we'd not got a cup tie. I enjoyed watching the games as you do, but when there's other teams playing in Scotland in a cup competition and you're not in it, it can hit home really. I just want us to be relevant, I want us to be in semi-finals, finals of cups and top six and playing in Europe. Saturday was a wee reminder that we weren't there this time around. In answer to your question, I didn't enjoy the break at all. International breaks at times can be good, but having a free weekend wasn't what we wanted.

Just a look ahead to this one, Dundee United going well. Is there a sense that you need a win to kickstart them a bit and get them on a run?

Yes, I think for any team, there's been an understanding from everybody. I think we've come out of Europe with our heads held high. I genuinely feel that against three teams who were seeded. We lost two away games, narrowly to Brugge and narrowly to Copenhagen away. There was a consequence of that domestically, but we're now out of that. Obviously, we drew with Hibs and we've drawn with St Mirren. Both games for different reasons, the point was good. I think for me, the performance last time out against St Mirren was exactly what we are. It looked as if we had a full week's training. It was the first full week's training we'd had going into domestic games this season. I think it showed in the performance. There's two parts to the St Mirren game. There's the actual performance part, which people forget about because it gets overshadowed by all the carry-on that went on. We were so good against St Mirren. With 10 men, 11 men. We were really impressive. It was two strikers, two wide players, competitive, passed the ball well. It really was a reminder of how good we can be. The emphasis for us now is can we try and be in a top six team before the first round of games. That's my challenge to the players. We need to get a few games. The performance is my biggest gauge. The performance against St Mirren after a full week's training was exactly how we were last season. For me, it was a winning performance and if officials do their job right we probably win that game, there’s no two ways about it for me. We felt really let down in some of the decisions. That has now been validated by the refereeing department. It was validated by a phone call that I had with Willie Collum on the Monday after the game. There's not much they can do after the event. I accept that there's a need for them to be better and they should have been better. I thought it was a real low for the refereeing department, that performance. At times we can see the benefit VAR, that was a real case in point where VAR highlighted how poor a VAR decision it was.