Dee drop to bottom

PLAYERRATINGS Hallowe’en horror show as 10-man Accies take points

DUNDEE are bottom of the Premiership after they were brushed aside by bogey team Hamilton at Dens Park.

Accies had gone into the contest on the back of an eight-game winless streak but shrugged off the Dark Blues on a deeply disappointing day for the home side.

This season Neil McCann’s men have been good on the eye without getting the points their play merited — this time around they got exactly what they deserved.

Being nice in the middle of the park but poor in both boxes is a recipe for a losing football team and that combination did for the Dee.

Throughout, there wasn’t much between the sides but there was a huge gulf in the two 18-yard boxes.

Dundee conceded sloppy goals and struggled to open up a stubbornlyorganised Accies side, sending them to the foot of the table on goal difference.

A huge frustration for the Dark Blues management is that, for much of the first half, the home side were bossing the game without, it has to be said, opening up Hamilton.

The first sight of goal for either side came after a long 26 minutes as Marcus Haber held the ball up for Paul McGowan to gather and have a go at goal but the shot drifted harmlessly wide.

That, though, was about the only time Dundee were able to get the ball into either of the strikers and get runners off the ball in a dangerous position.

Hamilton were well set-up, knew the Dark Blues were going to play it short and try to build attacks from the back and policed the home attackers well.

Five minutes before the dread Dundee fans now feel when facing Hamilton began once more, Lewis Spence — on the back of a really positive first half — strode forward and brought a fine save from Gary Woods with a shot from the edge of the area. Something like that might have sparked the Dark Blues’ confidence but, on 39 minutes, the belief drained even further.

The opening goal came out of nowhere, the way Hamilton seem to catch teams out every season.

It really was a fine ball from Dougie Imrie from the left but the home defence were caught flat-footed as right-back Ioannis Skondras barrelled in at the far post to plant a header beyond Scott Bain.

After the break, the pattern continued with Hamilton happy to let Dundee try and play it about on the halfway line but no further.

Cammy Kerr’s introduction gave the stadium a lift but that soon disappeared.

Again you can criticise the Dundee defence for getting caught with it, but Hamilton’s set-piece worked a treat as a blocker gave David Templeton all the space in the world to fire a second beyond Bain.

The tide turned, though, just three minutes later when A-Jay Leitch-Smith, who had barely featured, burst into life, winning and taking a penalty that gave his side a lifeline.

Then the tide turned even more in Dundee’s favour when the most experienced man on the park, Massimo Donati, inexplicably got himself sent off for kicking the ball away.

The way it was set, it was all about Dundee’s ability to open up the 10-man visitors — in the end, though, the visitors opened them up through Greg Docherty’s fine play and Antonio Rojano’s bundled finish on 86 minutes to seal the points for Accies.

It was a horror goal to concede ahead of Hallowe’en and it’s going to need some serious hard work to ensure this nightmare run doesn’t go on for too much longer.