No Good for St Mirren
St Mirren will have to cope without player/coach Jim Goodwin for Wednesday night's visit of Scottish Premiership new boys Hamilton.
The Irishman was shown a second yellow card for planting his forearm into the back of John Sutton's neck during Saturday's 1-0 defeat at Motherwell.
Boss Tommy Craig refused to discuss the sending-off but he did tell his players they need to discover how to kill opponents off before they endure another nightmare start like last season, when they went eight games without a win.
"The reaction to Saturday has actually been very good," said Craig, who replaced former boss Danny Lennon during the summer. "The guys came in on Monday morning and they were full of beans.
"They know they should have went on to win the game. They certainly played well enough to win the game.
"Our performance was outstanding at times but we conjured up another defeat when we should have won.
"Motherwell have this knack of carving out results, even if they are not playing well - that's what we need to find.
"We need to find that winning mentality. There's no point playing like we did if you don't get the three points.
"If I have got one beef with St Mirren from my time here is that we might go win-win or win-draw. But we can't string eight or nine results together like Motherwell do."
Hamilton forward Jason Scotland has told his young team-mates to banish the memory of their opening-day mistakes.
Accies fell to a 2-0 defeat by Inverness on their return to the Scottish Premiership and gifted Caley Thistle a number of chances.
Mikey Devlin's slip allowed Billy McKay to score the opener and Ryan Christie made it two after Louis Longridge lost possession.
But Accies have a swift chance to make amends when they travel to St Mirren and the experienced Scotland believes it is imperative that they look forward.
The 35-year-old said: "We know there's a lot of improvement to be made but the boys are still in good spirits.
"We know we made a couple of mistakes and got punished, and obviously we will try and cut that out, but it's just the first game.
"We can't dwell on the game and we have to focus on this game.
"Everybody makes mistakes, I make mistakes, the gaffer makes mistakes.
"In the Championship Mikey Devlin's mistake might not have led to a goal, but it was a good finish from Billy McKay.
"The higher you go the more mistakes get punished, but we have a chance to put it right.
"We have a lot of young players so we can't dwell on mistakes and past performances because their heads could easily go down.
"So we need to guide them as much as possible and always concentrate on the next game. The games come around thick and fast and hopefully we keep on improving."
Hamilton hope to have Darian MacKinnon back in their squad after being hit by a bug.
Source: PA
