Accies return to action after a 2 week break with a visit to Dens Park to play 3rd placed Dundee. Dundee have signed former Scotland striker Craig Beattie since last week's penalties defeat by Stenhousemuir in the Challenge Cup, but whether he will be fit to play on Saturday is anyone's guess. Accies are on a fine run of form and I look forward that continuing, with the starting XI likely to reflect our success at Falkirk a couple of weeks ago. While that game was not without its difficulties for Accies, it is clear that when we play well we have little to fear from any other team in this league. Consistency will be the key to a good run in the Championship this year. We have reinforced encouragingly in the last few weeks with Garcia Tena finally signing in the last week. I don't expect him to feature as anything other than a sub on Saturday, but he certainly seems to have made an sound debut as Accies' u20s defeated Dundee Utd on Tuesday.
This game will be provide another indication of the likely strength of our fledgling promotion challenge. Would I take a draw if it was offered now? I'm not sure, really, given the last few weeks…
I think it says a lot about how well things are going that I came away dissatisfied with a draw. We totally dominated the first half and could have been 3 up at half time except for their keeper who was man of the match. Second half they came into a bit more but even so i don't think I ever felt threatened. Dundee under Brown currently are not title challengers. Signing craig beatie who the BBC match commentator describe as running with a limp does not strike me as the way forward. So 2 points dropped sadly IMO. However Falkirk getting beat means we are no worse off and perhaps a little better actually.
ReplyDeleteI agree with much of Ian's post above. At half time I certainly would not have settled for a draw, but with 20 mins to go would have been quite happy to do so. Alex Neil deserves much credit for allowing the team to express themselves as they did in a great display of attacking football in the first half - Dundee had no answer and their keeper dug them out of a big hole. However, John Brown and his team deserve great credit for countering Accies very effectively in the 2nd half and creating a number of chances of their own - unlike Ian, I felt they threatened! (Too many years of watching Accies, perhaps?) MacKinnon was very good but lacked a real product, Hendrie was excellent and Devlin has made great big steps forward. MAC worked hard, but it wasn't his day - the same could be said for Keatings. We were certainly the better team overall, but we didn't find the net and on that basis a draw was a fair result. I did hear one abusive shout to Alex Neil during the 2nd half - who are these people and what would satisfy them?
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