Darian MacKinnon says that Rangers could have avoided their midfield woes this season by signing his teammate Ali Crawford.
MacKinnon reckons that Mark Warburton missed a trick by going after marquee signings like Joey Barton and Niko Krancjar while ignoring the man he calls Accies’ “magician”.
As if to underline his point, Crawford left Krancjar on his backside as he scored a stunning goal at Ibrox on the first day of the season, and his two strikes last week were the only crumbs of comfort for Hamilton in the Lanarkshire derby.
MacKinnon is delighted to still be the man who wins the ball before passing it to Crawford in order to weave his magic, but he knows it may not stay that way for much longer.
“I’m surprised he’s still at Hamilton,” MacKinnon said.
“I was actually thinking he’d go to Rangers in the summer. That was the scenario I was convinced about.
“I thought he would’ve been the real deal for them. I think when you’re playing for a team that dominates possession, I thought he would’ve been ideal playing in that wee hole.
“Celtic? I’m not so sure. They go with pace and power. But, Rangers were different for me. I thought he would’ve been a great signing for them.
“I’m not going to say he’s better than Kranjcar and Barton because I’ve never worked with them. They are good players.
“But Ali will hold up with anybody in this league, 100-per-cent he’s as good as any of the technical players in this league.
“The wee man’s a magician and I think it’s only a matter of time before somebody takes a chance on him. He fully deserves it. I work with him every day and he’s every bit as good as Tony Andreu when he got his move.
“So, hopefully, it can happen for him too. We don’t want to lose him, but you want to see him make his money somewhere else, wherever he goes. He deserves it because he’s been magic since I’ve been here.
“Ali might not be big, but he’s that clever, when you’re playing against him you can’t get near him. He’s quick and sharp.
“I can understand people talking about his build. But I can assure you, when you’re working with every day you can see his great quality. Ali can get away from you no problem.
“We know he’s got quality and if we give him chances he’ll take them.”
MacKinnon is hoping that Accies can bounce back from their disappointing derby defeat to Motherwell when they take on St Johnstone at the Superseal Stadium tomorrow afternoon.
One thing that he is sure about is that if Hamilton are to have any chance of overcoming Tommy Wright’s men, they will have to avoid the sort of horror start that they endured at Fir Park.
”Your home games are especially important,” he said. “As long as we don’t start the way we did against Motherwell then we can win.
“I was a bit depressed after Saturday. It was a horrible 20 minutes for us. We just didn’t give ourselves a chance, so that was disappointing.
“We did okay for the rest of the game. But we’re not good enough to switch on and off, we need to be bang at it from the start.
“We’ve identified the problems where it went wrong and hopefully it doesn’t happen again.
“But St Johnstone are a good side. All of their players know their jobs and they’ve got a good manager.
“It always seems to be a fighting game against them. I like a battle as well, although I don’t think it’s all I can do.
“I get the ball back and then give it to the magician wee Ali!”
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