Sadly despite our lofty position in the table, the next weeks will be a stark reminder of our major failure in the cups this season. We should really be playing a semi final on Saturday and there is no question we should be playing a Scottish Cup tie the week after.
The upshot is that the manager has no chance of adding to the squad in the last few days of the transfer window and he'll be hoping that no late offer arrives for Hutchinson. One of McCall's targets when he joined Motherwell was to sell a player year, a recognition that our gate and media income had to be boosted by the development and sale of upcoming talent. The problem is that our squad is so thin that the loss of a talented prospect is likely to hinder our league challenge.
But we cannot fix mistakes which have already been made, we can only strive to salvage what we can from the campaign. The latest battling performance on Saturday suggests the players are doing everything they can to do just that.
Whether a result is positive or negative is often a question of perception. In conceding a last minute equaliser to Aberdeen on Saturday, Motherwell dropped two points but despite this blow it is hard to be too downbeat about the result.
Aberdeen have an excellent recent record at Fir Park and for the majority of the 90 minutes they were the stronger team. There is no question they did not deserve at least a draw, even if the manner of their goals was somewhat fortunate. However, after the gift presented to us at Pittodrie on Boxing Day, we can hardly complain about a goalkeeping error and a handball!