Martin Canning is hoping that video re-runs of their crucial win over Dundee last time out can inspire his players to dump their neighbours United this weekend.

Canning was disappointed to have no fixture last weekend as he had hoped to use the momentum from their victory in the crunch match with the bottom-side this Sunday.

He has made sure he has kept the feel-good factor from the win fresh in his players’ minds though.

“The Dundee result was good and came at a good time,” he said.

“We usually analyse the game on the Monday after the match but we left it this time and analysed it this Tuesday.

“It was a conscious decision and the reason for that was so to put it straight back into the players’ minds and they know we’re straight back to work and preparing for Sunday.

“I didn’t want the players just to come back and plod along this week so the fact we analysed the game on Tuesday has hopefully focused us straight away on getting back to work. We worked all week last week and training has been good.

“We had a break after our last game but we worked away as normal. With the Dundee United game put back to the Sunday we had Sunday and Monday off, so they had an extra day to help them recover mentally and be ready to go again.”

A win over Mixu Paatelainen’s strugglers will take automatic relegation out of the equation for Hamilton, and give them a further boost ahead of taking on eleventh-placed Kilmarnock in the following game.

Canning insists though that all Hamilton can do is concentrate on their own performances, with their full focus on the trip to Tannadice.

“There’s five games to go and they’re all equally important,” he said.

“We need to make sure we approach it properly and we believe if we go up there with the right attitude then we can win the game.

“We won’t be actively looking for the Kilmarnock result but we’ll know the score before our game starts. But we can’t influence that result - we can only affect our own performance.

“We can only concentrate on ourselves and try and be mentally right. We have won at Tannadice already this season so we’ve shown we can do it and we need to make sure we do the same again on Sunday.

“Their fans will be down but it’s up to us to do our job. It’s a difficult league and anyone can go on a run of losing games. Dundee United have lost more than most but I’ve seen them play a few times and they haven’t carried much luck this season.

“If you look at their Scottish Cup semi-final they missed a few one-on-ones and it was the same when we played them earlier in the season but I can’t influence what happens at another club. “