If Hearts was the ‘biggest’ test imaginable, Kilmarnock on their dodgy pitch is the ‘biggest’ test imaginable.

In short, nothing is easy at the moment, and after Rangers blew away the country’s (previously) most in-form team with ease at Ibrox, Killie’s dodgy pitch is the real banana skin fans genuinely fear.

We published a piece on this last night, that they lie in wait, but this really is a new experience for Philippe Clement.

Remember how horribly Rangers struggled on St Johnstone’s dire mud bath of a McDiarmid pitch?

Well this will be worse, and is the most notorious venue in Scotland to travel to. The last team to win at Rugby Park was Hearts, in December, and that was 0-1 courtesy of an own goal.

And overall it’s just two losses there, County being the other in September.

Their home record reads P14, W8, D4, L2.

It’s impressive, and it’s claimed scalps like Celtic and ourselves too.

So Clement definitely has a different challenge here to Hearts – Killie are in ok form, they’ve 3 draws in the last 5, so they’re not sparkling, but at home they’re tough, and with that pitch playing into their hands and not ours, Clement will have to suss something new.

And that’s the thing we’re wary of.

The one big blot on the Belgian’s Rangers bingo card is the ‘first’ time he takes on a new challenge – he failed at Pittodrie and he failed at Parkhead.

He learns fast, but the trip to Killie is his first, and rarely does the team under him shine when dealing with the ‘first’ challenge of a new situation.

In this case, this is one to get in, get out, and if the match has to be won via a 98th minute penalty, we’ll take it.

We’re as much facing the pitch as the team and we’d take 3 points and do a runner any day of the week here.