Blair Alston was bitterly disappointed with Hamilton's 3-0 defeat to Ross County in their Premiership opener, and says there needs to be marked improvement against Kilmarnock today (Saturday).
The midfielder says nobody is panicking just yet with 37 league games still to go, but knows their performance in Dingwall wasn't good enough.
He said: "Everybody was quiet in the dressing room, we weren't happy, but at the same time we've got 37 games to go this season, so it's not all doom and gloom, it's far from that.
"It's a blip and a disappointing result, but at the end of the day it's the first game of the season and there's a long way to go before we need to start worrying about anything other than making sure we're better on Saturday. It's nowhere near panic stations.
"It was a tough start to the season and we couldn't have made it much worse for ourselves.
"We gave away soft goals, we were cheap in possession, just everything we didn't want it to be, and I thought we looked soft all over the pitch. We didn't compete in the way that we wanted to, and ultimately got exactly what we deserved.
"In this league if you don't play how you need to, teams will punish you. We've been poor in the Betfred Cup so far, we've lost goals that we're disappointed with, and ultimately we carried that in to Saturday, but it's the first league game of the season.
"We need to make sure we don't play like that again, make sure we sort it out. The Kilmarnock game on Saturday becomes more important, we need to make sure we put in a good performance."
