NEIL ALREADY HAS CANARIES SINGING
HAMILTON’S new caretaker player-manager Martin Canning will be praying he gets off to the same kind of flier tonight as Alex Neil enjoyed with Norwich City on Saturday. The 33-year-old defender, who was promoted last Friday, has assured fans there will be no radical changes for tonight’s Premiership visit of Dundee United, in which a win would take the Lanarkshire team level on points with Celtic in second place. But he will do well to get the same kind of response from familiar faces this evening as departed Accies boss Neil prompted from the bunch of players with whom he had just been introduced at the English Championship club. His team’s 2-1 win at league leaders Bournemouth was as extraordinary as some of the miracles he had pulled off with Hamilton of late. Briefing his new squad on Friday night, he put the final touches to the plans drawn up by caretaker boss Mike Phelan and first-team coach Gary Holt to bring down the hosts. Neil must have been frazzled by the time he took his seat at the Goldsands Stadium, ostensibly for a watching brief. When, at 1-1 on 64 minutes, Jonny Howson was shown a straight red card for an illadvised tackle on Yann Kermorgant and 10-man Norwich faced a tense last half-hour against the Championship’s best attack, it was time to clear his head, walk down to the dugout and take total command. It clearly had the desired effect. A quarter of an hour later, Cameron Jerome picked the ball up 25 yards from goal and, with no other thought, nudged it right and curled an unstoppable shot into the top corner to leave Bournemouth’s 14-match unbeaten league run in tatters. ‘I thought I was better suited to lending my support at the side of the pitch to the players rather than sitting in the stands,’ said 33-year-old Neil, now likely to strengthen by poaching the Scottish topflight’s leading goalscorer, Tony Andreu, from Accies. ‘Thankfully for me, we managed to get a goal and go on to win the game. It was a perfect start. ‘The one thing we really want to try to do is rally everyone. It’s important the fans and everyone at the club gives me their complete backing because all it’s going to do is benefit Norwich if we’re going to be successful.’ There will naturally be trepidation among Accies fans at how they will fare without their talismanic manager whose name was cheered to the rafters by Norwich fans. But Canning stressed: ‘The biggest thing for me is to try to maintain the continuity. There will be tweaks because obviously you have different ideas on certain things but, on the whole, what we have been doing has been working, so there won’t be any wholesale changes. ‘I didn’t work closely with Alex but I had a little insight into what he did and I will have to learn it as I go.’