Angry McCann ready to ‘batter’ his Dee players
HAMILTON ACCIES 3 MacKinnon (23), Boyd (35), Imrie (pen, 85) DUNDEE 0
DUNDEE boss Neil McCann was frustrated with his players for the sitters they missed, including a Scott Allan penalty, and angry with his defenders for not following instructions.
In the end, they went down to goals from D arian MacKinnon, Steven Boyd and a Dougie Imrie penalty as Hamilton Accies produced another convincing scoreline after they battered the Tayside club 4-0 at this venue on the final day of last season.
McCann has vowed to work his players into the ground in training to get an improvement and said: “We created six clear-cut chances and missed a penalty.
“That was frustrating so I can’t be too hard on the players for that.
“I was disappointed with the goals we conceded, particularly the second one.
“We worked hard all week to eradicate the space Steven Boyd found for that goal.
“That one really tipped us over as a coaching staff. We can’t accept that and we will batter the players day in and day in out in until they surrender to us.”
Dundee wasted opportunities and should have been two goals ahead inside the opening five minutes.
Allan was clean through, one on one against Gary Woods, when he inexplicably opted to square the ball to Faissal El Bakhtaoui. Scott McMann intercepted and his challenge resulted in the ball making its way back to Allan but his shot was saved.
Then a long ball over the top caught out the Accies defence with El Bakhtaoui clean through. Woods made a great block to deny him and the striker then hit the rebound off the crossbar.
The home team must have felt luck was on their side and they settled into the game when their midfi elders, MacKinnon, Ali Crawford and Greg Docherty, got on the ball.
It wasn’t a huge surprise to see them score in the 23rd minute with a beautiful goal.
From a corner, the ball broke to Docherty and he played a cushioned pass into MacKinnon.
The tenacious Accies man – a signing target for Dundee earlier in the summer – found the bottom right-hand corner of Scott Bain’s net with a rightfoot volley from 18 yards out.
The Accies’ advantage doubled in the 35th minute and it was another goal to be proud of.
The ball bounced and sat up nicely for Boyd, 20 yards out. He saw Bain off his line and, on the spin, he lobbed the goalkeeper.
To be fair to Dundee, they never gave up and had most of the pressure in the second half.
Until the closing minutes, Bain was pretty much redundant as his team-mates mounted attack after attack, but their finishing was poor.
Sub Danny Williams missed a sitter in the 71st minute and Marcus Haber also should have pulled a goal back.
Williams was then tripped inside the box in the 77th minute for a dubious spot kick but Allan blasted it high over the crossbar.
Accies were awarded a penalty with seven minutes remaining when sub David Templeton was pulled back.
Skipper Imrie showed how it should be done and drove a powerful left foot shot past Bain.
A delighted Martin Canning said: “Getting the second goal was crucial and that was something we weren’t doing last season.”