St Johnstone punish slack defending to beat Hamilton 2-1

St Johnstone punished Hamilton Academical's lacklustre defending to secure successive Premiership wins.

Blair Alston bundled in the opening goal after David McMillan's header had been saved and McMillan then nodded the visitors' second.

McMillan and Chris Kane fired wide as Accies continued to struggle after the break.

Rakish Bingham lashed home to give Hamilton hope but they could not avoid a third defeat in four league games.

Tommy Wright's side move on to seven points before the international break while Martin Canning's Accies are three points above bottom side Dundee.

Hamilton recruited James Keatings, Scott Martin, Matthew Kilgallon and Frederick Brustad on transfer deadline day while Saints added two Friday captures - Ross Callachan and Danny Swanson - to Tristan Nydam's arrival earlier in the week.

But none of the new signings started in Lanarkshire and only Callachan and Nydam made the bench.

The lack of fresh faces did not seem to affect Accies early on with Bingham's low shot testing goalkeeper Zander Clark and Steven Boyd's effort deflecting just wide.

But the hosts passed up several opportunities to get the ball clear after Scott Tanser's free-kick had hit the wall and eventually McMillan's diving header was clawed away by Gary Woods only for Alston to score.

And Saints took advantage of Hamilton's passive approach again when McMillan applied a simple downward header to Richard Foster's delivery.

McMillan volleyed a glaring chance wide from Tony Watt's cross before Accies scored against the run of play with Boyd holding up well and Bingham applying a ruthless finish.

Neither Boyd nor Kane could emulate that kind of finishing prowess in the closing stages.

Boyd flashed a shot past Clark's goal before, at the other end, Watt's replacement Kane knocked wide of the gaping goal after Woods had come off his line to clear at the feet of Alston.

BBC Scotland's John Barnes at the Hope Stadium

A Hamilton official prior to kick-off advised me that St Johnstone were their bogey team and so it proved once more.

Accies have now won only one of their past 12 matches against the Perth club and that was done against nine men with a last-minute goal on April Fools Day, 2017.

McMillan should have made it 3-0 and put the game out of sight when he volleyed wide.

The second-half introduction of Dougie Imrie and Sam Kelly paid off for Hamilton with Bingham soon scoring to put them back in the game.

However, Wright's men produced a competent performance to see off the threat of the home side and extend an impressive league run of only one defeat in their past eight Premiership matches stretching back to last season.

Hamilton manager Martin Canning: "Had the signings happened on Thursday, one or two might have been involved in the game.

"Frederik is still in Norway, we managed to get the deal done in time but couldn't get him across in time for the game and Keatings I spoke to last night and he's just a little bit short on match fitness, so he'll come in and do a little bit of work tomorrow. But it's good to have all four boys on board.

"The two goals we conceded were really poor from our point of view and if you give a good team like St Johnstone a 2-0 head start it's difficult to come back into the game. Second half, we get our goal but we don't really threaten as much as we would like."

St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright: "I think we deserved to win. We were in control for large parts of the game.

"We went 2-0 up and probably second half we were wasteful as we had numerous opportunities to kill the game off and while it's 2-0 it always leaves it open for the opposition to get back in the game and they did but they didn't really threaten us after they scored.

"Danny gets all the headlines but Ross Callachan is going to be an important player for us. He's got a bit of physicality about him and he can nick a goal."