Dundee boss Barry Smith says he won’t be caught in the trap of believing Hamilton are a team ripe for the beating.
As the relegated SPL club, Billy Reid’s Accies were many people’s favourites to take the title this season. But their recent form hasn’t been that of prospective champions and they now sit in sixth place as a result of four defeats in their last five.
Smith, whose Dark Blues side travel to Hamilton on Saturday, isn’t writing them off.
He said: ”Hamilton have lost their last two games but I won’t be reading too much into that. They’ve got a lot of experienced players who won’t allow things to go badly wrong there.
”Billy Reid’s an experienced manager as well. He got them promoted, so he knows what it’s all about in the First Division.”
Smith isn’t putting too much stock on Hamilton’s form slump. Nor is he getting carried away with his own team’s improvement.
He said: ”I’ll be saying it every week I’m only concentrating on the next game. It’s too easy to start talking about runs and saying we’re going to do this and we’re going to do that.
”You always want to be looking up the way, which is what we’re doing, but we’re conscious of the fact that we’re still only seven points off the bottom.
”We can’t afford to think we don’t need to worry about that.”
One man who is struggling to be in the Dundee squad is Ross Chisholm. He injured his knee in a closed-doors game earlier this week and the swelling has not yet gone down.
Smith reported: ”It was a kick so we’re hoping his knee won’t be too bad. He’s still stiff today so he’s a doubt for the weekend. Other than that, everybody else trained today.”