Football changing rooms can be unforgiving arenas at the best of times, particularly if a player is linked with a transfer to another club. Spare a thought then for St Johnstone striker Michael O’Halloran, who can’t even escape the wind-ups from his team-mates over Rangers’ attempts to prize him away from McDiarmid Park in the journey to and from training.

O'Halloran shares a car there with Brian Easton, and the left-back has admitted that the St Johnstone players have been merciless in their treatment of O’Halloran since the Perth club rejected two approaches from Rangers for the forward. After going through a similar experience himself in his younger days when at today’s opponents Hamilton, he says that the jocular nature of the dressing room can soothe any tension that such a situation may bring.

He said: "Sometimes the speculation can be a distraction but I don't think the transfer talk will cause problems for Mikey, especially in this changing room where there are players who have been about and experienced it for themselves. We know how to handle it.

"There has been a bit of stick flying around, especially in the car up to training. We have been asking him if he wants a lift to Murray Park. Having a laugh about it probably relaxes Mikey. It's good for any player in that situation. But really it is all flattering and should be great for his confidence."

St Johnstone haven’t scored since the win over Ross County at the start of December, and Easton is hoping to get over the heartache of last week’s Scottish Cup exit to Kilmarnock with a win over his former club today.

"In the last four games we are disappointed not to have scored but at least we have been making chances,” he said.

"It's a long time to go without scoring and that's not been like us this season. But we have been playing well enough so there is no sense of panic here."

Chris Millar joins Liam Craig on the sidelines for the match after injuring his hamstring last week, although Simon Lappin should return. The visitors will be without Dougie Imrie after he breached the disciplinary points total.

Hamilton defender Ziggy Gordon meanwhile has called upon his teammates to toughen up and address their defensive deficiencies as they look to lay their own Scottish Cup nightmare against Annan to rest.

An encounter with a side they have lost four goals to in both of this season’s previous clashes, despite their recent goal drought, is therefore far from ideal.

Gordon said: “The boys are mortified. The only way we can get out of this though is to win games, and we’re more motivated than ever to get out of this slump.

“It’s blatantly obvious what’s going wrong, we’re making too many individual mistakes right throughout the team.

“We’re conceding far too many sloppy goals from set-pieces or easy goals that we never seem to get ourselves.

“I remember the last game [at McDiarmid Park] well. We started really well in the first 20 minutes and should have had a clear penalty, but we didn’t get it and we lost three sloppy goals in the first half.

“We need to put it right, go back to basics and make sure that they need to work to score against us and make it really difficult for them.”