Scott McMann says Hamilton are confident of taking points from champions Celtic, despite crashing to defeat against Livingston.
The Lions ran out comfortable winners at New Douglas Park on Wednesday night, with goals from Jon Guthrie and Josh Mullin ensuring the points headed back to West Lothian.
McMann says Accies were disappointed with the result and their performance, but says they go into the Boxing Day clash at home to Neil Lennon's side in confident mood.
He said: "It would be massive for us to take something from Celtic and we will go into the game thinking that we can take something from it.
"We will go into it positively.
"We have an expectation, we believe - especially at home - that we can take results and pick up points against anyone, so we'll be going into the game confident that we can pick up a result.
"We're confident we can move up the table.
"The last month or so has shown us that we can get results, performances have been good, though it was disappointing against Livingston and we need to go again."
Boss Brian Rice pointed out that Hamilton were missing nine first-team players ahead of the Livingston game, but McMann insists they still should have had enough to see off the Lions.
He said: "I can't really put my finger on it - we knew what we were going to be up against with Livingston, they're a hard team to play against, but we had enough out on the pitch to go and take something from the game and just didn't show up, so it's very disappointing.
"We were missing a lot of key players but I think we have enough there to still go and compete and get a result, and we haven't so we need to dust ourselves down and go again on Saturday.
"The league is so tight this season and we knew what an opportunity it was for us to move up the table with a win, so again that just makes it more disappointing, but it's a long season."
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