HAMILTON playmaker Ali Crawford is fired up to prove their many doubters wrong, but admits that they will have to be more clinical than they were against 10-man Partick Thistle on Saturday if they are to maintain their place in Scotland’s top flight.
“Everyone wrote us off last year and we went out and proved them wrong, so we just need to go and do the same again this season,” he said.
“It gives us a good incentive when everyone seems to think we are certain to be relegated. We are the underdogs immediately and that takes the pressure off us to allow us to go and do our stuff on the pitch.
“The match was really frustrating, especially since we had so many chances to score. It’s just one of those things.
“We need to take the positives from it. We completely dominated the game – even when they had 11 men.
“We need to take that forward into the game next week and look to get the three points.”
On a day when Christian Nade showed that he may well prove a handful for Premiership defences this season, it was Crawford who had and created the best chances for Hamilton, being denied by a miraculous Cerny save in the second-half, and blowing a golden opportunity just before half-time that he dragged wide of the target.
‘‘It was a great save, but we all know Tomas Cerny can do that,” Crawford said.
“He pulled of saves like that for us on a regular basis. So I will just need to take it on the chin, because it was a top save.
“But I should have scored with the chance I had in the first half. That was a sitter for me.
“I don’t know what happened. I should have hit the target and, in the end, it probably cost us the three points.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here