Derek McInnes seeks ‘best version’ of Kilmarnock against in-form Celtic

Derek McInnes believes Celtic are still improving but has challenged his Kilmarnock players to show confidence they can repeat last season’s victories against the champions.

Killie twice beat Brendan Rodgers’ side at Rugby Park, in the Premiership and the League Cup, before the Hoops clinched the title at the same venue with a 5-0 victory in May.

Celtic produced their best performance of Rodgers’ second spell in charge on Tuesday when they beat RB Leipzig 3-1 in the Champions League.

McInnes said: “I thought it was a top-class performance, I think they’re clearly improving.

“I thought there was a maturity about the performance against a top-class opponent.

“It wasn’t so long ago I could hear a fair majority of pundits saying that Celtic just can’t match a top Bundesliga team after the (Borussia) Dortmund game, it’s just not possible to do that. And you see that is the case (that they can).

“Rangers did it two or three years ago in the European run, beat top-class German teams, and you need to be so confident with your work, so good with your work and I thought Celtic were that.”

The European win came days after Celtic beat Aberdeen 6-0 in a clinical display in the Premier Sports Cup semi-final.

“Obviously we’ve seen two versions of how different managers approach Celtic games in the last couple of games,” the Killie manager said.

“Aberdeen go and sit off, work from shape at Hampden, and Celtic still are devastating with the scoreline and how they manage to breach you. And then you see Leipzig really coming after Celtic and trying to press them.

“So it was two different types of approaches from managers and clubs with a lot of good players and Celtic still got the desired outcome.

“From our point of view we take confidence for the fact that we have had some good results against them last season and we have got to try and be the best version of us to get results against Celtic as we did last season, we had to do so much right in the game.

“We are not daunted by it as we’re in the same league, we’ve got a home fixture against them, it’s up to us to go and try and make it difficult for them but there’s no doubt that they’re improving and there’s no doubt it’s going to be a huge challenge.

“My players will have to make so many good decisions on the pitch in and out of possession, we have to be so organised.

“But we also first and foremost have to be confident in ourselves that we can get a result and it’s important that Celtic see that, they’ve got to feel that on Sunday.

“Hopefully we can be good enough to make things at the very least uncomfortable and if we can strike the first blow and get that first goal and get the confidence from that then that’s something we’re going to try and do.”