WHO needs strikers, eh? Motherwell went into the Lanarkshire derby short of numbers, but long on fight and desire as an unlikely double from centre-half Tom Aldred gave them a crucial and deserved three points at Hamilton.

Their manager Stephen Robinson, serving the final match of his touchline ban, had an entire team of first-team players missing through injury, and then lost Richard Tait and Aaron Taylor-Sinclair along the way. But his side dug deep to eke out a victory that was as important as it was merited against a similarly depleted Accies outfit.

The significance of a victory at the home of your rivals can never be underplayed, but there was no doubting the ramifications this outcome could have on both sides. Had Hamilton managed to hang on to the early lead given to them by Dougie Imrie they would have clawed their foes from across the Clyde back to within a point at the head of the trio of teams fighting it out at the bottom. Instead, Motherwell pull seven points clear and back into a league of their own so far are they adrift of the pack above, but mid-table purgatory is a much more appetising prospect than the dogfight that now awaits Martin Canning and Hamilton.

“It would have been a travesty if we hadn’t won this game, having created so many chances,” said Motherwell boss Robinson. “There was a lot of good play and I thought we deserved the three points.”

Indeed, they were shading the opening exchanges, with Danny Johnson looking dangerous up top. The striker twice spun a Hamilton defender in the early knockings, skewing a shot high and wide from a good position just a minute in and then following that up by going closer past the opposite post.

The large visiting support thought their team had the lead when Elliott Frear swung in a corner that Andy Rose – playing his last game for the club before a January move to Vancouver Whitecaps – met with a thumping header, but the ball hit the outside of the post and nestled the wrong side of the net.

Hamilton made them pay for not making their good start count as they hit the front, Imrie running onto a ball over the top unchecked from midfield and making his way in on Mark Gillespie. The midfielder took his time as he drew the Motherwell keeper and slid the ball across him and in despite a touch from the keeper.

Given the poor run of form that the Steelmen had been on, you may have thought that their heads would have gone down, but their response was immediate.

Corners and set-plays had looked to be a profitable avenue for them with a claret and amber shirt getting on the end of most deliveries into the Hamilton area, and so it proved again as they drew level. A corner was floated in by Frear that Peter Hartley attacked, with the ball falling to his central defensive partner Aldred, who opened up his body well to side-foot a volley into the top corner.

That was the cue for wild celebrations in the Motherwell end and a spot of fisticuffs in the Hamilton one, proving that the residents of Lanarkshire take this derby just as seriously as the more high-profile rivalries kicking off around the country.

The second-half continued in the same vein as the first, with Motherwell dominating territory and looking particularly dangerous any time they got the ball to the feet of Frear. The winger gave Accies defender Aaron McGowan a torrid afternoon, summed up as the Hamilton player injured himself in the process of trying to drag him to the ground.

For all they were the better side, Motherwell’s support behind the Hamilton goal had to wait until 13 minutes from time to celebrate a winner, but boy how they did once that moment arrived.

It was no surprise that it came from a set-piece, as substitute David Turnbull played a free-kick into the danger area and Gary Woods failed to gather under pressure from Hartley. The Accies keeper was certain he was fouled, but Aldred wasn’t hanging about for a whistle that never came as he showed remarkable composure in the melee of the box to lift the ball into the roof of the net.

“I haven’t seen it back, but I thought that it could have been a foul,” said Hamilton boss Canning.

“I think it was a foul on Mikel Miller in the middle of the park before that, he was pushed in the back and the referee never gave that either.

“I said to the official when he gave the second free-kick to them that if it cost a goal it was another poor decision from him."