Late goal kills off toothless Accies

Feb 4 2010 by Andrew McGilvray, Hamilton Advertiser

HAMILTON midfielder James McArthur has targeted three points from Saturday’s derby game at Motherwell, and admits the seven-day ‘break’ will be essential to their chances.

Bottom-placed Accies will be training throughout that period but don’t have a midweek fixture for the first time in weeks – a situation James welcomes.

He said: “The break is massive for me; I feel like I’ve been running on empty if I’m being honest.

“I’m very tired, same as a lot of the boys in there, but we just need to keep working away when we’re playing and try to get through it.

“We’ve got a derby next week, it means everything to the fans and the players, but we need to make sure we rest and recover and get going.”

With just one more fixture remaining against the Old Firm ahead of the split – at Ibrox in April – James knows Accies need to start focusing on staying up.

He said: “It’s not a good result for us and we need to pick up points.

“We’ve played Rangers and Celtic and came close so many times, so it’s disappointing and frustrating not to come out with the result we were looking for.”

A debut goal by Danish striker Morten Rasmussen was the main difference between the teams, although Celtic dominated a poor game.

Accies were badly missing striker Mickael Antoine-Curier, although the return of Brian Easton on a loan deal from Burnley was well received, with the defender showing some real touches of class throughout.

Hamilton went close to scoring in three minutes when Easton’s corner on the right soared over Artur Boruc and was headed off the line at the back post by Andreas Hinkel.

Six minutes later Joel Thomas linked with Simon Mensing to carve an opening for Jordan Kirkpatrick, but he shot past the left post.

At the other end desperate defending from an Aiden McGeady cross saw Mark McLaughlin put the ball just over his own bar in 12 minutes.

And in 32 minutes Zeng Zhi sent Marc-Antoine Fortune down the left but his low shot was saved at the near post by Tomas Cerny.

Young Kyle Wilkie nearly scored an own-goal in 42 minutes when he connected with a Fortune cut-back, but McLaughlin cleared the danger.

In 59 minutes McArthur found Thomas on the right and his shot from a narrow angle was well parried past the near post by Boruc.

Celtic should have scored in 60 minutes when a Fortune flick was nodded down by Georgios Samaras, but the ball was headed past the right post by Sung Yeung Ki.

Celtic boss Tony Mowbray then threw on Niall McGinn and Rasmussen in 64 minutes, which changed the game in Celtic’s favour.

Cerny was forced into a superb save to parry a fierce Yeung Ki shot 60 seconds later.

But he was beaten in 67 minutes when Yeung Ki’s shot deflected off Martin Canning’s foot and Rasmussen was fastest to react, turning to slam the ball into the bottom left corner.

Celtic could have made it 2-0 in stoppage time when a clumsy challenge by McLaughlin gave Fortune an opportunity to go down for what was a really soft penalty.

Fortune dusted himself down but Cerny guessed the right way to parry his spot-kick away from the bottom left corner and the ball was cleared.

HAMILTON: Cerny, McClenahan (van Zanten, 51), Easton (Crawford, 81), Canning, McLaughlin, Elebert, McArthur, Mensing, Thomas, Kirkpatrick (M. Paixao, 70), Wilkie. Subs (not used): Murdoch, Hastings, Elliott, F. Paixao.

CELTIC: Boruc, Hinkel, N’Guemo, Hooiveld, Thompson, O’Dea, Zhi (McGinn, 64), Yeung Ki, Fortune, Samaras (Rasmussen, 64), McGeady (Caddis, 86). Subs (not used): Zaluska, Crosas, McCourt, McGowan.

Booked: Rasmussen.

Referee: Calum Murray.

Attendance: 4922.

Advertiser Man of the Match: Brian Easton