Motherwell's top six ambition halted

[Footymad]

Kilmarnock took the spoils at Fir Park thanks to a long range strike in the first half. Motherwell battled to recover but the visitors' defence held out and we suffered the first home loss of the year. - External Link

[dazlhigh]

Kilmarnock took the spoils at Fir Park thanks to a long range strike in the first half. Motherwell battled to recover but the visitors' defence held out and we suffered the first home loss of the year. - External Link

I'd hoped that the days of watching an opponent ambling up the middle of the park, untroubled by tacklers, to have a pot - shot at our goal, had gone. It was a good strike, but absolutely preventable.
It's not a necessity - yet! - but I hope the OF do us a favour tomorrow.

[neillyboy]

We're sh1t Robinson...no matter how you dress it up. 0 points from a totally winnable game says it all

[dasdeid]

I repeat myself .. our midfield is weak.
They provide nothing for forwards, resulting attempts on goal miserably low. We ran into well organised defence and clueless our attempt to break down. It required a change and made subs but TOO LATE (10 minutes in Grimshaw’s case).
This game was winnable and 3pts lost at HOME. Hello bottom 6.

[Handsome_Devil]

Disappointing to lose a game unnecessarily but it's hardly the end of the world. A win from the next two would be nice to set us up for the quarter-final though.

[Wellup4it]

I repeat myself .. our midfield is weak.
They provide nothing for forwards, resulting attempts on goal miserably low. We ran into well organised defence and clueless our attempt to break down. It required a change and made subs but TOO LATE (10 minutes in Grimshaw’s case).
This game was winnable and 3pts lost at HOME. Hello bottom 6.

A very close game but you're right. The midfield was poor when it really mattered. When Grimshaw replaced Cadden everyone knew the game was up.

[wellin]

We commented at half time how weak our midfield is. There doesn't seem to be any balance there at all. Our midfield doesn't seem to operate as a unit. We haven't any players in there with the guile to break down a defence or grab the game by the scruff of the neck and drive us forward in games like yesterday where the opposition are content to sit in and hit on the break. It's something Robinson will have to get sorted in the summer. Our budget will take a bit of a hit as it looks like the top six is out of our hands now.

[LawSteelman]

I thought we were dire yesterday and couldn't for the life of me understand why so many at the game seemed to think we were unlucky. Kilmarnock played the game perfectly as the away side, they sat in, nicked one on the break and then comfortably kept us at bay for the remainder. It was a carbon copy of the Hibs home game earlier in the season in that we had no idea how to break down a well drilled side defending a lead and could have played until Christmas and never scored. But then again, that is a problem that various Motherwell sides under various Motherwell managers have had.

Another historical issue we seem to have is, as has already been touched on, a powderpuff midfield. Since Steve Jennings left in 2012 (six years ago) we have never replaced him and it was basically down to Lasley for years to carry the entire midfield. Carl McHugh, when he's in there, simply isn't cutting it in there and needs dropped asap, his passing and ball retention are deplorable and he offers nothing and hasn't done all season long. Andy Rose? I'm sorry but I think he's hopeless and the fact he is subbed off almost every week is pretty damning as it is predictable.

I don't think we will be relegated which is obviously a bonus, a big one at that, but I expect the season to now peter out in drab fashion with us in the bottom six. We can forget going further in the Scottish Cup as Hearts will beat us in two weeks time.

[Handsome_Devil]

Clearly depends on how you define unlucky. You can obviously say we made a mistake, they found a brilliant finish to score and as such who wins and loses is entirely deserved. Or you look at the whole game, say the teams were basically the same other than one mistake and as such we were unlucky as it could easily have gone either way. You can certainly say we were unlucky not to (probably) be one up before they scored as Ciftci's penalty claim was an absolute stonewaller.

I take the view that everyone in the league outside Celtic and occasionally Aberdeen is dire so there's no point in getting wound up about us being dire in losing a tight one, nor getting too excited about edging a tight one despite being dire.

We'd all but secured top-flight status by the first week in February, reached one cup final and are a home win away from being back at Hampden in April. That's a good season for us. And tbh seasons petering out in drab fashion is generally what we want to happen.

[sieb1886]

On the footballing side of things Killie were no better than us. On the tactics side of things ... they bossed it. Was a chuckle to watch Steve Clarke leaning on the advertising hoardings, yawning, and occasionally whisper some words of wisdom to his backroom staff who then bawled the Guvnor's orders out to the players. Class act Clarke IMO.
Fork knows what's gone wrong with Cadden, but he seems lost these days - I was actually glad he got hooked and Grimmy came on. And that's saying something !