As the so-called minnows who have shaken up England’s Premier League prepared to launch into their celebrations on Saturday evening favourable comparison was being drawn to the attributes of a club that can only look at Leicester City’s wealth with awe and envy by the scorer of the goal that ensured Hamilton Accies’ survival in Scotland’s top flight.

Never mind paying their wages and assembling the supporting infrastructure, the £54 million or so in transfer fees that it is reckoned to have taken to purchase the new English champions’ playing squad would, of course, probably be enough to buy and run pretty much every club in Scotland other than Celtic and Rangers and dwarfs anything that even the Glasgow giants can muster.

However even by Scottish football’s comparatively penurious standards Accies have defied their economic status through their presence in the Premiership during a period that has seen Rangers and Hibs struggle to get out of the second tier, while Dundee United, Dunfermline Athletic and two of Hibs, Kilmarnock and Falkirk will do battle for a maximum of two escape berths again next season.

It was not, then, as daft an observation as it might have sounded when Carlton Morris, on loan from English Premier League side Norwich City, offered his assessment of their efforts this season.

“I can’t say personally I am overly surprised that Hamilton will be in the Premiership next season. From the moment I arrived here last summer, I knew this was a special group,” he said.

“The club may not have too many resources but our quality and team spirit were too much to go down.

“How are we special? I want to say we are similar to Leicester City in our togetherness and how tight knit a group we are. There are no divas here, no superstars who think they are it. We are all on a humble level and that’s what got us there.”

Those Dundee supporters who were agitatedly informing Morris and his colleagues that they were an embarrassment to Scottish football as they used every known trick to break up play and run down the clock following his early strike, will not be inclined to agree.

Yet such criticism is far from the truth because, even if they are not currently playing with the style that made them a joy to watch under Alex Neill, the way they work for one another which has brought, among other things, home and away wins over Dundee in these crucial closing weeks of the season, seems all the more commendable given the lack of backing they receive from the grandstands.

If Leicester are to be commended for maintaining their drive with, it has seemed, a whole city of 330,000 people behind them while they are reckoned to have become most other English football lovers’ ‘second team’, what are we to make of the energy and enthusiasm the Accies can muster for a cause that saw only 129 supporters file into their end of Dens Park on Saturday?

It took them just eight minutes for Morris to pounce upon a Julen Etxabeguren error, round Kostadin Gadzhalov in the penalty area and then slide the ball left-footed past Scott Bain into the Dundee goal to put his team into ‘what we have we hold’ mode.

As they had been at Hamilton three weeks earlier, on the day a victory would have put them into the top six for the post-split session, Dundee’s vaunted attackers were largely well policed from that point and, as a result of admittedly cynical-looking methods, never given any chance to generate rhythm. However as, to his credit, Dundee's Kevin Holt admitted afterwards, the home side had to take their share of responsibility for that.

"It was up to us to raise our game but we didn't really do it,” he said

"That is down to the players. We didn't play the way we know we can.”

In one sense that was understandable given the contrast in the mood at Dens with earlier in the week when they applied the coup de grace to city rivals United, but if Dundee are to achieve what some of their performances have hinted they are capable of, they can perhaps take tips from Saturday’s visitors in finding ways of motivating themselves more consistently.

"We showed we can raise it for big games like Monday but we know we need to do that in every game," Holt observed.

"We can't always rely on the crowd although they were brilliant on Monday. It was a bit quieter but we should still have lifted ourselves."

"We knew how big it was for the fans on Monday and then it was a case of getting back to work on Tuesday. Training was good and although we had a few injuries we can't make any excuses for this performance."