Imrie will teach new boys all about Accies
Dougie Imrie will have an important message for new recruits arriving at Hamilton Accies.
The veteran midfielder is determined the Lanarkshire club won’t be involved in another relegation dogfight this season.
Achieving that will require players who are ready to battle from the first whistle.
Imrie, 34, said: “Over the past few years, we’ve only just kept our place in the league, and we don’t want to be doing that again this season.
“We want to push on and not have to worry come the split.
“St Mirren and Livingston have done well to get promoted, but, for a lot of people, they will be favourites to go back down. We can’t think like that. We have to worry about ourselves.
“We are in a transitional period right now. A few players have left the club.
“We have a rebuilding job going on, and we have to try to gel when we start back for pre-season training.
“We have lost the likes of Greg Docherty to Rangers, Ali Crawford, Grant Gillespie and Louis Longridge have all moved on, Mikey Devlin and Lewis Ferguson have joined Aberdeen.
“That was the nucleus of a squad who knew what the club was all about.
“It is only myself and Darian MacKinnon who have been with Accies for a good few years. We will try to teach the new boys what we are all about.
“We have had a good start to the last few years, and that has probably kept us up.”
Imrie looks at teams like Kilmarnock, Partick-Thistle and St Johnstone finishing in the top six in recent years.
He’d love to see Accies defy the odds and compete in the upper reaches of the Ladbrokes Premiership.
“There’s no reason why that can’t be us,” he went on. “The biggest thing for us has been consistency.
“We’ve gone on runs where we’ve been unbeaten in six, then we lose six-in-a-row.
“If we can knock that out of ourselves, it’s the platform for a good season.”
Accies are currently laying a new artificial pitch, and Imrie hopes that will stop complaints about their surface.
He said: “It gets boring hearing it after a while. It is what it is – deal with it.
“We’ll play on worse grass pitches when winter comes. “This will be my fifth season on it. “I don’t feel any less fit or any sorer after a game – it’s the same, whatever the surface, for me.”