Derek McInnes admits he sympathises with Kilmarnock fans who are being made to travel to Inverness on a Friday night.
The Ayrshire side's quarter-final in the Highlands has been shifted to March 10 due to BBC's TV coverage, and the Killie boss admits it's tough on supporters.
However, he admits he had a sneaking suspicion that it would be moved, and he's just glad for everyone involved they avoided the Monday night slot.
He said: “We kind of anticipated the Rangers and Celtic games would be at the weekend with the television companies, so we’d kind of prepared ourselves for the Friday or Monday.
“My preference would have been the Friday. You look at the early kick-offs on the Saturday or Sunday, or the night games – it’s so challenging for our supporters to get the long way up to Inverness.
“For me the Friday if preferable as its doesn’t impact as much going into the next game.
“But I can understand how difficult it if for the fans. It would have been a challenge either way for them.
“We know it’s the Friday and we get prepared for it. Ultimately you’d rather have these challenges of being involved in a quarter-final."
Meanwhile Killie head to Easter Road tomorrow as they bid to bag their first away win of the season against Hibernian.
And McInnes hopes they can use the positives of their win at Tannadice against Dundee United last weekend.
He said: “We did the basics well, I thought we were compact, aggressive and had good concentration.
“The game was pretty untidy at times, but I thought we were the better team.
“The most important thing is we got the first goal, as an away team if you can strike that first blow and put extra pressure on the home side then it’s pivotal.
“We’ve got to be trying to do that more often, we’ve done it in the cups and now we need to do it in the league.
“Our home form is fine, we’re on track with that, we still have work to do but we also need to get some buy-in from our away results and that needs to start on Saturday.
“We’ve tried not to make too much of the away form, as a manager I’m just looking for performances that will get wins no matter where we’re playing.
“It shouldn’t matter, I’ve always felt that as a manager, I’ve never looked at away games any different to home games.
“It’s something we need to resolve for us to be comfortable in our situation and we’re all working hard to address it."
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