Ali Crawford to miss Lanarkshire derby amid Hamilton injury crisis

Ali Crawford will miss the first Lanarkshire derby of the season after suffering a knee injury in training.

Hamilton boss Martin Canning faces an injury crisis after revealing the midfielder will miss a couple of weeks with the problem.

Accies were already without five first-team players due to injury, and Antonio Rojano is likely to miss out again this weekend against Motherwell as he waits for a work permit leaving Canning to bemoan his bad luck.

“Ali joins the (injury) list,” he said. “He won’t make the game but hopefully that’s it (in terms of further injuries), but the way things are going I wouldn’t bet on it!

“It was a blocked tackle in training and he just opened the inside of his knee a little bit so he will be a few weeks out.

“It just seems that every wee thing turns into a big one (injury).

“Gary Woods, Michael Devlin, George Saris, Grant Gillespie, Ali Crawford and David Templeton are all big players for us.

“It’s not as if they are squad players, they’re all guys who would probably all start the game if they were fit, but it’s an opportunity for six guys to come into the team and make sure they take their opportunities.”

The game against Motherwell comes at an important time of the season for Canning, whose side lost four games on the bounce before the international break.

However, he is hoping the two-week break between matches has been good for his players to prepare for a run of what he thinks are winnable games starting with a match against their local rivals, who have won five of their last seven games in all competitions.

He said: “It’s going to be a big game and a local derby as well, there’s no motivation needed.

“When you look at the next four, we have Motherwell, Ross County, Partick Thistle and Dundee, so they’re huge games against teams around us.

“Our form against the teams around us has been good, but against the top teams we haven’t done well enough.

“Going back to teams who are around us - they’re big games and ones we need to pick points up from.”