The Bubble Hasn't Burst - Neil

Photo by Jeff Holmes Hamilton player-manager Alex Neil hopes his young players can reproduce their early-season form after some mental rejuvenation during the international break. Accies have lost three and drawn one of their four most recent games ahead of Saturday's home clash with St Mirren. However, they sit just two points off Scottish Premiership leaders Celtic and Neil feels that they can come back fully recharged at New Douglas Park. "In recent games we have still been scoring and looked a threat in an attacking sense," he said. "We have just made a few costly errors at the back. "I think a week freshening up mentally as much as anything else will hopefully help us. "I don't think people talking about us being top of the league has been draining - it's just the fact we have such a young group and they have stepped up a level, and to maintain the performance levels and hunger week in, week out, against this calibre of opposition is difficult. "They are not always going to be at the top of their game. For the first 10,11 games we were at the top of our game or close to it. The last couple of games we have had a five to 10 per cent dip and that makes it hard to win games at this level. "So mentally it's important to refresh and get back to that real hunger and desire and work-rate." Hamilton's start to the season has been recognised wide and far, with a feature on the club appearing in the New York Times. But Neil and his players have remained grounded and he does not anticipate them over-reacting to a minor drop in form. "When people said we were top of the league and were going to do this and that, I wasn't getting carried away," he said. "I knew it was going to stop at some stage. Do you think Hamilton were going to come up and win the league? "I knew it was going to be extremely difficult to maintain that form throughout the season, and we have a small squad. "The bubble hasn't burst. There were games earlier in the season that we won because we took our chances and the opposition didn't. "The last couple of games, we haven't taken chances and the opposition have. We have made a few errors that we weren't making at the start of the season, but that is bound to happen at some stage. "There is no panic at all - we have 24 points from 13 games. We are in a terrific position but I have been stressing to the players that we don't want our fantastic start to the season go to waste."