Wecan’tbe sowasteful, sayssmith
Lewis Smith is thankful Hamilton’s wasteful finishing didn’t come back to bite them against Queen of the South.
But he insists they can’t afford to be as profligate at Morton this weekend.
Josh Mullin blazed a sitter over the bar in the first half and Accies should have ran out handsome winners over the Doonhamers after a catalogue of chances on Tuesday night.
As it was, Andy Ryan tapped in the winner after 75 minutes when he made sure Mullin’s strike found the net, in a game where Accies had 17 attempts on goal and six on target.
They now head to Morton looking to avenge a 1-0 defeat at home in August.
And Smith, who had a hand in Ryan’s goal when he played in Mullin to shoot, said:“that win for them earlier in the season was a frustrating one for us.
“It was another game where we felt we deserved more from it, so hopefully we can get three points this time.
”The gaffer is trying to get us to be more ruthless because we are creating chances, we are getting in the right areas. We just need to be more clinical.
”Thankfully, it didn’t come back to bite us this time but we need to take more of our chances in the future.
”I think as a team we really deserved it. We could probably have won by more, especially given the chances we had in the first half.
”Thankfully, in the second half we got that goal to win the game.
”Maybe you think it wasn’t going to be our day again, but Josh is always getting into those positions, which is the main thing, and the gaffer said at half-time not to worry. Keep doing what you are doing and you’ll get chances.
”Josh’s run was brilliant for the goal and it went in that time.”
Some might have expected Ryan and Mullin to be jokingly bickering about whose goal it was at full-time, but Smith insisted the overriding feeling was one of relief Ryan wasn’t offside, as they returned to winning ways after a 6-1 defeat to Partick and a 2-1 reverse at Kilmarnock.
Smith added:“there were no arguments [about the goal]. Everyone was just relieved that we won and the goal wasn’t offside because that would have been a disaster.”