Scott Martin admitted there is no hiding place for Hamilton Accies, and that every game between now and the end of the season is a ‘must-win’.
The midfielder was left shell-shocked after Accies slumped to a 3-1 defeat at home to Aberdeen on Tuesday night, in which the visitors scored all three goals in the first half.
Derek McInnes’s side hadn’t scored for five games leading up to the crunch at the Fountain of Youth Stadium, but were ahead inside 15 minutes.
Martin says that wasn’t good enough, and with clashes at Hearts and at home to Motherwell looming, he knows a big improvement is needed – and fast.
“The game was done at half-time,” said Martin. “I know it was a better second-half performance, but they’ve taken their foot off the gas.
“We need to look at ourselves and everybody to a man needs to be better, including myself.
“I don’t know what happened between the performance against Rangers and against Aberdeen, I can’t really explain.
“I don’t know what it is, it’s us as players, we can’t really blame anybody else, we need to take responsibility for it.
“The good thing is that we have a game in the next couple of days. We need to try and rectify it there and do our best on Saturday.
“Again, it’s a cup final, a must-win game. I think we know ourselves that we’ve not been good enough this season.
“I think we need to take each game as it comes, rectify the mistakes we’ve made and push on. It’s in the past, so we need to move on from it.
“It’s a bit of a must-win, but every game is a must-win now – I don’t think we can go into any game and think ‘we can get a draw’ or sneak anything, every game for us needs to be a must-win.
“That’s the attitude that we all need to have, so it’s just another big game for us, same as the next couple, but we’re fully focused on the Hearts game.”
Nobody at Hamilton is under any illusion that they’re immersed in a relegation battle again this season, but Martin hopes they have the fighting qualities to stay in the top flight for another season.
He said: “It’s a big push. We need to be better in every way possible, so if we stick to the right things we will be all
right.
“We are on a bit of a sticky wicket just now but we just need to try and do our best .”
