Canning would be happy to continue run of draws at Celtic

Martin Canning has been frustrated by the number of draws Hamilton have chalked up this season but will gladly take a stalemate against Celtic on Tuesday night.

Accies have had to settle for a point in their last five Ladbrokes Premiership games and 10 in total this campaign, leaving them in eighth place in a tightly-packed bottom six.

They will face a rampant Hoops side who are unbeaten domestically this season and who can go back 11 points clear at the top of the table with a win, a scenario which sees the Lanarkshire club's player/manager reassessing his expectations.

"Yes I think we would take a point at Celtic Park,'' Canning said.

"Obviously it is a difficult place to go. Celtic are on good form, they are creating a lot of opportunities and winning a lot of games.

"We need to make sure we go there and be as difficult to break down and as difficult to beat as we can be.

"If we can do that, we have players like Ali Crawford and strikers who can score goals and win games and maybe get points from difficult venues.''

Accies lost 8-1 at Celtic Park in January and Canning is determined to make it more difficult for the champions this time.

"It is one of those things you want to make sure you want to avoid,'' he said.

"You know Celtic are going to make opportunities.

"Look at this season, they have put five past Rangers, four past Aberdeen, six past Kilmarnock.

"We have to make sure we are difficult to play against, we have to be dogged, hard to break down and on the night if we get our opportunity we have to take that as well.''

Hamilton midfielder Darian MacKinnon played that night when the goals rained in at Parkhead but is confident that there will be no repeat.

He said: "There is always a fear you could go there and take a doing (heavy beating) but I'd like to think we are more professional than that and we are not going to ship that many goals again

"We were talking about it the other day.

"It was 3-0 after nine minutes and you were thinking to yourself, 'this could be anything' because we weren't playing well and every chance they had it looked as if it was going to go in.

"So that was a long, long night.''