Stoke City and Kilmarnock loanees helped our defence, now Hamilton Accies must get strikers in, says John Rankin

dailyrecord.co.uk:

John Rankin reckons his new signings helped his struggling Hamilton Accies produce one of their best defensive displays of the season in their narrow defeat to Ayr United.And now he is determined to add further fresh faces to make sure they can do the business up front.Accies sealed loans for centre-back Dylan McGowan from Kilmarnock and defender/midfielder Tom Sparrow on loan from Stoke City, managed by Accies legend Alex Neil, and the pair helped shore up the backline with solid debuts at Somerset Park.But it was ex-Accies Josh Mullin who had the final say, with his deflected free-kick after 32 minutes earning the Honest Men all three points.Rankin's men may still be bottom of the table and six points adrift of Arbroath, but he reckons he has seen plenty of positives defensively and is now focused on remedying their form in front of goal, which has seen them go five games without scoring.He said: It's a disappointing result but I don't think there was a lot wrong defensively.

I thought it was one of our best defensive performances."We looked strong, we didn't give away any chances. Fults has maybe one save to make."Over and above that I felt there was a desire to stop shots and stop crosses today, which probably hasn't been there before."Attacking-wise, though, we need to do more to score goals."You can see that.

We looked toothless at times and when the ball was getting played into the box."We know where we need to strengthen."We have obviously been conceding goals so, first and foremost, we need to stop the goals going in."Today's goal comes off the wall.

Could we defend it better? The only way we could do that is by not giving away the free kick in the first place."It takes a nick, there's not much you can do."But