Hamilton manager Martin Canning has launched a passionate defence of his record after criticism from fans prompted family members to leave Saturday's game against St Johnstone.

Canning's father exchanged words with a Hamilton fan during the 2-0 William Hill Scottish Cup defeat after the Accies manager's nephew became upset with the abuse directed towards the dugout.

The 37-year-old has been in the role for four years, during which time Accies have enjoyed their longest run in the Premiership – they had previously only had eight years of top-flight football in total since the Second World War.

"It's not often that I defend myself, I usually just accept it and move on, keep my head down and work hard," Canning said ahead of Wednesday's visit of Aberdeen.

"But my job is to keep Hamilton in the Premiership. Every year we are tipped to go down, every year we fight extremely hard to stay up, and we have kept the club up four times. That's our record, we have never done that before in our history. That's success.

"My job is to bring young players into the first team and move them on. Since I've been the manager, Stephen Hendrie has moved, Michael Devlin has moved, Lewis Ferguson has moved, Greg Docherty has moved. The club have earned good money from these moves.

"That's exactly what we are asked to do and we are doing that. But fans want to win, I want to win, we all want to win, and it becomes difficult.

"If someone had said you'd be on 14 points at this stage of the season but there would be two teams below you, I would have taken that.

"It shows how competitive the league is at the top end that the teams at the bottom are finding it more difficult to get points.

"This year has been a struggle, we have had a lot of players to turn round. In the last 12 months we have lost Michael, Fergie, Greg, Ali (Crawford), Temps (David Templeton) and Ioannis (Skondras). Probably the only team who can say they have lost players of equal importance is Hibs and they have found it difficult on the back of that.

"We lose players who become three or four or five-grand-a-week players and we can't go out and replace them with the same money. We have to start again with our own kids, let them make mistakes and get them in the first team, and that's the process we are in at the minute."

Canning clarified that his father did not leave McDiarmid Park because of abuse he personally received.

"The reason he was leaving the game was because my nephew was at the game and he was obviously upset because I was getting abuse, which is part of modern-day football," Canning added.

"It was just circumstances as well. My dad wouldn't usually sit in that area, my uncle is disabled so he sits in the disabled section and that happened to be right next to the fans that were being vocally critical.

"They are entitled to their opinion but my dad wanted to make it clear that he never left the game or wasn't forced to leave the game because of any personal abuse towards him or my family. That wasn't the case at all and I wouldn't want the fans getting that labelled at them either.

"When he got up to leave just before half-time, someone said something at that point and he has said something back. There was no contact, he was nowhere near anybody."