Recent Struggle To Cause Trouble For Accies

Friday night’s Scottish Premiership action sees Hamilton host Motherwell, who are fighting for their top flight status in a bid to avoid the relegation playoff.

Form
The Accies have been nothing short of abysmal since the turn of the year, picking up only two league victories since last December – both of those came in the first week of 2015. Under player-manager Martin Canning, Hamilton are now 13 games without a win, with only four points picked up over that run of games.

Canning’s side have also failed to score in six of their last eight outings, including a meek 1-0 defeat against Dundee United last time out at Tannadice, when Chris Erskine bagged the only goal of the contest. Still seventh after a fine opening half of the season with 43 points they are safe of relegation but can’t finish in the top six since the league’s split last week.

Ali Crawford has scored nine league goals this term but the now-departed Anthony Andreu remains the club’s leading scorer with 12 goals in Scottish top flight before following former boss Alex Neil to Norwich in February.

A 2-0 defeat to Partick Thistle a fortnight ago brought an end to a run of three successive Scottish Premiership victories for Motherwell. Although that was only their second loss in seven, Well remain in in the relegation play-off spot one from the bottom of the table, and six points adrift of Ross County in tenth. Lyle Taylor’s double for Partick saw off Motherwell’s challenge in their last outing, but was a first time Ian Baraclough’s side have failed to score in their last seven while they’ve got the worst record of any team in the division away from home this season.

With 11 league goals, including four in his last four appearances, John Sutton is the club’s top scorer this season.

Team News
Player-boss Canning is available for selection once more for Hamilton after serving a one-match suspension for a red card he was given against St Johnstone. Nigel Hasselbaink could lose his spot in place of Jason Scotland, who impressed off the bench in their recent defeat to Dundee United.

Stewart Carswell is suspended for Motherwell after his sending off at Partick despite only appearing as a substitute with less than 15 minutes to play. On loan midfielder Conor Grant is set to miss out through injury once more.

Head-to-Head
In four meetings to date this season both teams have dished out and suffered huge defeats with Motherwell winning the most recent encounter 4-0 in late March but only after they had lost 4-0 and 5-0 to the Accies in two previous clashes.

Their first meeting of the season came in the Scottish league cup, when Hamilton progressed following a penalty shootout after the match finished goalless. Both teams have failed to score in each of the last nine, and 13 of the last 14.

Recommended Bets

With the hosts struggling so badly and Well’s big win against them just over a month ago, the value in this game must lie with the visitors at 23/10, particularly with them scrapping for every point against a team with nothing but pride at stake.

The scorelines have been unpredictable in this fixture but both teams failing to score has been a staple, so take that to be the case again at 7/10 while Motherwell winning either half at 11/10 is another play well worth making.