DON’T LEAD ME ON YET AGAIN LADS
MARTIN CANNING has watched his Hamilton side lose more leads than a careless dog walker over the last 12 months.
Now he wants his naive rearguard to start learning from their mistakes so they can make their flying starts count.
The Accies boss admits the last four games – when they lost to Ross County, Motherwell, Rangers and St Johnstone despite scoring the first goal – had an all too familiar feel.
Had Hamilton been able to consolidate their good starts to games last season they would have been a top-six side rather than relying on a play-off to save their Premiership skins.
Now Canning is determined they won’t keep falling into the same trap.
Ahead of tonight’s home clash with Partick he said: “Last season we lost more points than anyone from winning positions.
“The difference is we were drawing games then while now we’re finding a way to lose them.
“We’re working hard on that especially defensively.”
An injury crisis that has robbed Canning of some of his most experienced players isn’t helping.
He said: “Naivety has cost us. On Saturday six of the team were 20/21 or younger and that’s working against us just now.
“That’s not a criticism of the lads because they’re giving me their all and doing their jobs properly but we’re not reading the game as well as we could.
“County’s first goal on Saturday was so avoidable and if an experienced player had been in there he’d have seen it coming.”
Thistle head into the game boosted by their first win of the Premiership campaign at the weekend.
And boss Alan Archibald hopes the 2-1 victory over Dundee has taken some of the heat off his men.
He said: “The pressure is on us to win the games and we hadn’t done that in nine.
“So we were delighted to get the victory and lift the pressure off the players because it’s them it affects.
“We saw that on Saturday where decision-making starts to change because of that pressure.
“Now we can go above Accies with a win and that’s a good incentive.”