EVERY manager has his own way of dealing with the disappointment and handling the pressure.

As games are lost, points are dropped and the slide becomes harder and harder to halt, the focus on the man in charge becomes even more intense. Martin Canning has remained cool, calm and collected, in public at least, throughout a miserable run that has now lasted eleven games and threatens to deny Hamilton Accies a place in the Premiership top six this season.

But Jason Scotland has seen the other side of the situation and witnessed how the pressure affects people in different ways, and what the outcome of a prolonged winless run ultimately is. Four years ago, the striker was part of the Ipswich Town side that lost seven games out of nine and slipped to 19th in the Championship standings. It was a run that lead to Roy Keane being axed at Portman Road after less than two years in the job.

There is little chance of a similar fate befalling Canning just weeks after he was named Accies boss but it is the manager who has the most to deal with and who must find the answers when the going gets tough.

"He (Keane) was pretty aggressive," Scotland said ahead of the visit of St Johnstone this afternoon. "The man you always picture on the field, that was the man he was a coach as well. He was angry, he was kicking down boards and pelting all sorts in the dressing room. It was nothing new when you knew Roy Keane.

"We would lose and we wouldn't be in the next day, we wouldn't be in for three or four days because he didn't want to see anybody. Sometimes you play on a Saturday and everybody had to be in on the Sunday to train because they didn't work hard enough.

"Sometimes you would lose on a Saturday and he didn't want to see you until Wednesday or Thursday and he told you to get ready for the next game. That was his way of saying that he didn't want to see the players. He just didn't have the answers and we didn't do well enough. He was the manager and we didn't do well enough so he ended up losing his job."

Having taken just three points from his first eleven games in charge at New Douglas Park - and failed to win any of them - there would be no time like the present for Canning to finally earn his first victory as boss. The visit of Tommy Wright's side this afternoon gives Hamilton a chance to edge closer to a top six finish, a feat that is likely to require six points from the meetings with the Saints and Dundee United next weekend.

A win at New Douglas Park this afternoon would be a step in the right direction in more ways than one and Scotland knows Accies can't feel sorry for themselves in their current predicament.

"I can't talk for the other players but, for myself, I don't think about it," he said. "I have been around long enough and this has happened to me throughout my career. I have been fighting relegation; I have been trying to get into the play-off positions. It used to get into my head but, throughout my career, I have had so many ups and downs. It becomes familiar to me so I just let it go by.

"I always try to talk to them and tell them not to let it affect them. Sometimes when things are not going right it is hard not to let it affect you. The manager has said it, in plenty of games before we have been doing well. If things go bad now, don't think it is the wrong thing you are doing, keep doing the right things and things will change."