If Hamilton’s McDiarmid Park mauling on Saturday has dented the self-belief of their players, then you certainly wouldn’t know it by speaking to their defiant defender Jesus Garcia Tena.
The 4-1 reverse came as something of a surprise given the Lanarkshire outfit’s impressive start to the season.
Taking that result in isolation though and comparing it to the herculean effort produced by Aberdeen at the weekend to defeat Celtic, then you might fear the worst for Martin Canning’s men as they follow the champions into the lions’ den of Pittodrie this evening.
Garcia Tena insists though that the Accies players have brushed off the humbling at the hands of St Johnstone, and are ready to pull off a major shock by succeeding where Ronny Deila’s men failed.
“It was really disappointing against St Johnstone and this is going to be a really hard game,” he said.
“Aberdeen have plenty of points and it is a huge game for them. But we have to go there and do our job.
“It was bad result for us at the weekend but we didn’t get carried away after our win over Hearts and it will be the same now.
“Hopefully for us it will be good that Aberdeen won against Celtic, Maybe they will be overconfident.
“They are the team to beat. They are genuine contenders for the league title.
“If they keep going like this they are obviously contenders. But it is a really long season.”
Before Saturday’s disappointment, pre-season relegation favourites Hamilton had enjoyed a bright start to the campaign.
This was punctuated with a winning run in the lead-up to the international break that culminated in a thrilling 3-2 win over Hearts – the team then at the summit of the Premiership.
Garcia Tena sees no reason why they cannot repeat the trick against the Dons.
“It has been a good start to the season for us and we won three games in a row. But we need to keep it going,” he said.
“We have analysed the weekend game and put it to bed. We start from zero again. It is another game and we have to show what we are capable of against Aberdeen. We have to try to get the win.
“Against St Johnstone we showed again we are a team that never stops. There have been times we have come back from losing goals. That didn’t happen on Saturday.
“But we still tried to get back into it despite being four goals down.
“Aberdeen have very good players and we will show them the respect they are due.
“But on the pitch they are just boys like me. I don’t care about the names.
“We have to go with the same mentality in every single game. Each one is a final for us because we want to achieve our targets for the season.
“We need to go game by game, work hard and that will take us where we want to go. If we can raise our game against the best teams we will try to do it. We won’t give up.”
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