St Mirren on completely different level for Rice
Manager cools expectation for his overachieving Accies
THAT Hamilton Accies have remained in the top flight since 2014 is nothing short of remarkable, according to Hamilton manager Brian Rice. There is a widely held perception that there is much of a much when it comes to the budget constraints of lower league clubs, but Rice has explained just how challenging Accies find it to compete when even Championship clubs can have a bigger budget to attract players with.
Hamilton travel to Paisley to take on St Mirren tonight with the recent surge in form from Jim Goodwin’s side raising the possibility of a top-six finish for the club. By contrast, Rice’s ambitions are all around maintaining the top flight status of Hamilton but there is a reason why their focus is centred on survival.
“I am at a completely different level to St Mirren budget wise,” said Rice. “It is different planet stuff, let’s not be kidding on. I know that for a fact. My aspirations are to keep us out of the bottom and play-off spot and keep us in the Premiership. You can’t compare Hamilton to any other club in the league if you are talking financially. People out there have the wrong idea. Financially we are the lowest in the league by a long way.
“It is remarkable [that we stay in this league]. People don’t really understand what we have to do. That is why I am saying it.
“I have tried to sign two or three players and I have lost out because the finances are better with Championship teams. That is just solely down to finances. That is no criticism of my club because we have a budget that we stick to and we know that.
If we go in for someone we offer what we can afford and if we can’t get them then we move on. It is no criticism of any player choosing to go to a Championship side and it is no criticism of the club who do everything they can to support us, because the most important thing is that Hamilton survives as a club.”
Rice’s cause has been helped by recent results with Hamilton going into tonight’s game on the back of a resounding win over Motherwell at the weekend, their third successive derby win of the season. It came on the back of a point against Steven Gerrard’s side and Rice has challenged his squad to sustain the form of recent games.
Hamilton, Ross County and Kilmarnock are all facing the threat of relegation at the bottom of the table, with the Rugby Park side a point ahead of Accies but having played two games more.
“It is easy to play well in one game but can you go out and do it again the next time,” said Rice. “You need the same effort and energy and build on the good performance. That’s what the best teams do. They build on victories and move forward. It is difficult for a club like ours to go five or six games unbeaten and what Livingston have done is remarkable. The challenge at the weekend was could we take it on [from the Rangers game] and we done that. The next challenge is can we do it again against St Mirren?”
Meanwhile, St Mirren keeper Jak Alnwick insisted Hamilton deserve the same level of attention as the Old Firm as he prepared for tonight.
Alnwick has seen enough of Accies not to be complacent.
“We know how good a lot of teams are in this division, we are going to approach it as we would any other game, as though we were playing against Rangers or Celtic,” he said.
People don’t understand what we have to do