Scare tactics won’t work for Canning’s Accies but

Martin Canning is refusing to scaremonger his Hamilton side into playing for their Premiership lives fearing the consequences of failure. Meanwhile, Ray McKinnon is piling the pressure of what promotion means for Dundee United on his players’ shoulders – because he believes they will thrive on it. The managers’ play-off approaches couldn’t be further apart.

But only one of them will provide a play-off pay-off.

Canning insisted: “I don’t think we need to spell out the consequences.

“I’m not going to scaremonger any of the players into ‘you need to do this’ or ‘you need to do that’, because if this happens that happens then these are the consequences. It’s a game of football.

“It’s a home game against Dundee United that I would expect us to be motivated enough to go and play.

“There’ll be a big crowd, it’ll be an exciting game and I said before the tie the team who handles the pressure of both games best will win.”

With midfield inspiration Darian MacKinnon now suspended, captain Mikey Devlin out injured and Massimo Donati and Dougie Imrie both serious doubts, Canning is down to bare bones.

But he warned: “That’s one thing our boys will always do – they’ll dig deep for the cause, they’ll fight hard.

“And we have to make sure we do that one last time here.

“It’ll be a tight game, there won’t be a lot in it and we need to make sure first and foremost we have a team on the park who can go and compete.

“Once we do that, then we just have