MARTIN CANNING was left to rue a series of defensive errors from Hamilton as they saw their efforts count for nothing against Rangers.

Accies went down 5-3 at the SuperSeal Stadium as they missed the chance to move above Partick Thistle in the Premiership standings.

Darren Lyon gave Canning’s side a dream start before David Templeton brought them level at 2-2 midway through a dramatic first half.

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But Rangers were able to pull away as a Josh Windass hat-trick and strikes from Jamie Murphy and Alfredo Morelos clinched the win for the Light Blues.

And a late penalty from Dougie Imrie was no more than a consolation for a disappointed Canning.

He said: “If someone had said to me before the game we would score three goals against Rangers I would have expected to take something from the game.

“But when you defend like we did today that makes it hard. Four of their five goals were avoidable. ‘We were defensively poor. We switched off, like we have done too many times this season.

“This was a game we wanted to have a go and take the game to Rangers. We probably left ourselves open but we wanted to press them high and force them into making mistakes. That worked for our second goal.

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“They made a mistake and we punished them but over the course we made more mistakes than Rangers. And that’s what ended up costing us.

“We scored early but we didn’t give Rangers the chance to become nervy or panicky. Every time we scored in the first half we conceded within five minutes again.

“We’ve not done enough to get anything from the game but there were positives in the return of Templeton, Rakish and Dougie.

“I thought Jenkins did well and big Kenny will be a good addition for us. Now we’ve got a run of games against teams near us in the league and we need to make the most of these matches.”