The pitch you have to do some off it
and he seems to be relishing his new position while taking on board some of the things he has learned from former team-mates in that particular post.
“Gordon Greer at Brighton and Matthew Upson at Birmingham would have been two of the better players I played with in that role,” he said.
“Matty Upson was in cruise control at the back. I don’t think he broke sweat. People forget he won the league when he was at Arsenal and went for big money to West Ham, Stoke and Birmingham.”
Kilmarnock were certainly in cruise control for much of the first half on Saturday. A goal up thanks to Sean Longstaff, they allowed Hamilton to gain a foothold and, after Eamonn Brophy had equalised just before the interval, the match became a tightly contested tussle.
Hamilton remain in the relegation play-off place and, with a fan boycott tempered, the club’s captain, Michael Devlin, issued a rallying cry of unity.
“I understand the frustration of the fans but it’s vital at a club like ours that everyone is pulling in the same direction,” he said. “I live a stone’s throw from the stadium so I see our supporters whenever I go to the gym or pop out for a coffee plus, with social media, you’re never too far away from their opinions anyway.
“For us, it’s not about scraping by; we want to push on. I think the fans understand how tough it is but what’s getting to them is that they’ve seen how well we’ve done in previous years.”
Devlin’s manager Martin Canning does not believe talk of a supporters’ boycott in the build-up affected his players.
Accies fans had threatened not to attend; however, the club held a positive meeting with a group of supporters prior to kick-off. Hamilton have now picked up four points from their last two games.
Canning said: “I don’t think the players are doing anything different in the last two games than we have been doing.”