MORTON boss Dougie Imrie insists there will be no love lost when he returns to Hamilton's New Douglas Park in the opposition dugout tomorrow.

The 38-year-old spent nine years as a player in South Lanarkshire over two spells and is highly thought of by Accies fans.

But he says he knows where his loyalties lie as he looks to bring three points back to Inverclyde.

Imrie told the Tele: “It will be nice to go back and see some familiar faces but my full focus is on our club and doing everything possible to go and win the game.

“There are a lot of players who I coached and played with still at Hamilton, so it will be emotional, but as soon as that whistle goes I'll be looking to make sure that the three points are coming back with Morton.

“Once the full-time whistle goes we’ll all be friends again but I work for Morton now, I'm a Morton man."

Imrie says he believes 'every game is going to be tough' between now and the end of the campaign because the division is so competitive.

He said: “The gap between the bottom five and the top five is getting closer and closer and everyone’s got something to play for.

“From now until the end of the season, there will be potential banana skins in every game that we play so we need to approach every match, including this one against Hamilton, in the same way we’ve approached the last seven.

“It’s a game that we can go and enjoy, one we can go into confident thanks to the momentum that we’ve created and one that we’re looking to go and win.

“We also don’t want to get carried away - last weekend in the space of two minutes we went from results not going our way and sitting in ninth position to scoring two goals and sitting in sixth place.

"It shows you how tight the league is.

“We’re in a good place and playing pretty well, we just need to keep pushing.

“The aim is still to finish eighth and anything above that is a bonus.”

Imrie feels that the fantastic run his side have been on is down to the workrate and commitment his players have shown.

Now he is challenging his side to keep their momentum going into the final quarter of the season.

He said: “The run we’ve been on has been fantastic, we were seven points off of Hamilton when I took over and now we’re level with them going into the game.

“I’ve got to give a lot of gratitude to the players and the staff, it’s down to their determination and effort that we’re getting ourselves out of the situation that we were in.

“The league is not finished - there’s 12 games to go and a lot of points still to play for.

“At the moment we’ve got good momentum so we’re looking to keep that going."