Skipper David Weir was satisfied after Rangers overcame a below-par performance to snatch a 1-0 victory at Hamilton. Nacho Novo's late goal settled matters but Hamilton had plenty of scoring chances against a Rangers side which was missing several key players.

Weir told ESPN: "It's always tough, any time you go away in the SPL it's a tough game.

"We never played well enough in the first half but I thought in the second half we improved and I'm delighted for Nacho, getting the goal.

"The result is most important but you want to have the performance and the result. There's things we didn't do well enough today but the fact we've won the game is the ultimate aim.

"You don't get anything easy coming to places like this, you've got to work hard and do the dirty jobs."

Gers boss Walter Smith put the poor performance down to a lack of match fit senior players.

He told the club's official website: "We didn't play well at all in the first half of the game and we struggled to get to grips with Hamilton in all areas of the pitch.

"We perhaps ended up with better opportunities than they did which was strange but in the second half we picked ourselves up a bit.

"We played better and imposed ourselves on the game a bit more than we had done and we were delighted to get that goal late in the game."