Accies face "biggest game of the season"

Mar 19 2009 by Andrew McGilvray, Hamilton Advertiser

HAMILTON boss Billy Reid this week labelled Saturday’s crunch clash with St Mirren as the club’s biggest game of the season.

A run of three 1-0 league defeats has put Hamilton perilously close to the relegation dogfight, a position which would be greatly helped with a win over Gus MacPherson’s Saints.

With the international break next weekend, Reid will take his side on a mid-season break to Marbella on Sunday and hopes to have three points safely tucked away by then.

Last week’s injury crisis has only eased slightly but Reid knows that whatever side he puts out at New Douglas Park on Saturday will give all they’ve got.

He said: “This is the biggest game of the season so far but we’re at home and we’re going for the three points.

“We haven’t taken a point from St Mirren this season and that has been disappointing but we haven’t really played to our potential against them. We’d like to make amends for that.

“St Mirren have been on a good cup run but they’ll be edgy about being down at the bottom end of the table.

“But we’ve got to focus on ourselves. We’ve toiled since the Hibs game because we haven’t been able to get our strongest team on the park and we’re still in that situation.”

Having been virtually ever-present for the last two seasons, defender Brian Easton looking likely to be out for a while with hamstring problems.

Australian right-back Trent McClenahan hasn’t trained in nearly a month and needs a groin operation, while stopper David Elebert will be out for some time with a hamstring injury.

Striker Richard Offiong has shrugged off a knee injury picked up in the 5-1 defeat by Rangers and should be available, while Mark McLaughlin feels ready to carry on his defensive duties.

Reid said: “The injury situation is much the same as it was last week and it’s a case of nursing people through this. We need to patch people up and get them out there.

“It’s frustrating because we know that when we’re fully fit we’re a hard team to beat.

“A few of the lads have trained slightly without going overboard and James McArthur and Martin Canning trained a wee bit on Tuesday but we need to be really careful with those two.

“They will go under the knife but it’s about timing and when we can allow that to happen.

“Ideally, I would like to win our next two games before James and Martin can go in for their operations but I think St Mirren and Celtic would have something to say about that.”

Reid reckons the disappointment in Saturday’s 1-0 defeat against Aberdeen at Pittodrie – the Dons’ first win in three attempts against Accies this season – shows how far his side have come.

He said: “Against Aberdeen, we were not outclassed by any stretch of the imagination and they were never in control of the game but we didn’t do enough in the final third to test them.

“We worked really hard. We’re solid as a unit now and don’t concede many goals but we need to take our chances when we get them.

“The fact that we were disappointed to come back from Pittodrie with a 1-0 defeat shows how far we’ve come as a club.

“Our two full-backs, Jordan McMillan and James Gibson, have had six SPL games between them, and although we didn’t have our strongest team out there we weren’t far away.”

Midfielder Simon Mensing, who was already suspended for Saturday’s match with St Mirren, was red-carded for violent conduct in Tuesday’s 2-1 reserve win over the Paisley side and he is now banned for the match against Celtic at Parkhead on April 4.

l Defender Brian Easton has been included in the Scotland Under-21 squad for the double-header against Albania.

The first game takes place in Elbasan on Saturday, March 28, with the return at the Falkirk Stadium on Wednesday, April 1.

Motherwell striker Jamie Murphy is also in the squad.