KEY MEN ARE ON WAY BACK
Injury crisis easing as stars eye Accies return
Hamilton Accies head coach Stuart Taylor says Mihai Popescu and several other New Douglas Park men are closing in on returns to fitness.
The Hearts loanee was stretchered off in last month’s match with Morton but has completed some training this week ahead of facing Raith Rovers.
Shaun Want, Andy Winter, Miko Virtanen and Scott Martin are all making progress in their respective recoveries too.
Accies have drawn their last two Championship matches 1-1 against Morton and Arbroath.
The first was painful as a 97th minute goal was scored against them – despite only five minutes of stoppage time being added at Cappielow – while poor defending cost Taylor’s men against Dick Campbell’s.
On returning players, Taylor said: “Shaun Want has done a bit of training, Mihai Popescu has managed a bit of training, Matthew Shiels is still training which is good.
“Scott Martin is progressing well, Miko Virtanen has done the same and Andy Winter progressed well. So we just have to make sure we are getting these guys stronger each day.
“We were very short in defence last week throughout the game. Kieran Macdonald came off and he’s not trained this week and we’ll have to keep an eye on him to see how he is.
“We’ll keep working to get him stronger and available for Saturday.”
Hamilton are seventh in the table heading into this weekend’s match against Raith, but Taylor knows that they could be far better off as managing games is something they have to do better.
The head coach explained: “Game management is always something to look at.
“It’s something we were very poor at earlier in the season but it’s a case of now that there are some areas still to improve.
“We need to see what is suitable for our style and how we want to play. We like to move the ball quickly and play at a high intensity.
“It’s something we need to work better at as the games progress. The Morton one is incredible. There’s no point in going there as we don’t know the reasons for that.
“The Arbroath game was simply down to us not defending our box well enough. We didn’t defend a cross well enough and they took their chance. That’s not game management, that’s doing our jobs better.”