The former West Brom and Reading manager has achieved all that with a fraction of the budgets boasted by some of his rivals but McInnes says Clarke's achievements over the past 12 months come as no shock.

He said: "I don't think you're really surprised when the result came through on Wednesday night.

"I think Kilmarnock are notorious for making life difficult for teams and they've managed to get good results over a period of the last year or so and have been very consistent since Steve went in.

"There's a familiarity in how they want to play, and they've done extremely well.

"Like most teams outside of the ones that can spend loads of money, the strength is in the team and how they play.

"I don't think there are any real stars at Kilmarnock, but what they have is a real solid work ethic and it's very admirable how they go about their work.

"There's no real surprise that they are still getting results – it's just continued from where they left off.

"It may seem like an easy thing to do, but it isn't and that says there's a lot of good work going on there both from the players and the manager.

"We're well aware of Kilmarnock's strengths but we've had good results at Rugby Park in the past and I'm hoping it'll be good enough on Sunday to get another good result."

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