A trip to Rugby Park Saturday will complete a busy week on the road for Motherwell. With losses to Aberdeen and Hearts already suffered a return from Kilmarnock is needed to avoid a wipeout.
Stephen Robinson can afford little time to ponder Wednesday’s Betfred Cup exit as he looks to prepare his side for Saturday’s match. He backed his players saying that “if we keep producing performances like that we will turn our form around”. He picked our Main, Bowman and Donnelly for special praise but bemoaned the repeated individual errors that have cost us in recent games.
Chris Porter has an attempt at Rugby Park ten years ago
Kilmarnock have won two of their last six outings but those victories were the impressive scalps of Aberdeen and Celtic. Barring injury we can expect to see an unchanged eleven take to the artificial surface.
Steve Clarke has won huge respect of his work at Rugby Park and we know that only a Motherwell team playing at its best will take anything from the game. The high paced showing in the early stages of the game at Tynecastle delivered glimpses of the form that served us well last season. Unfortunately we were unable to sustain that level in the second half.
The manager admitted that his striking pair were not fully fit and it is hard to belief that their exertions will not hinder them three days later. Neverthe less both of the front men scored - surely a confidence booster. Sammon will rejoin the squad to add some fresh legs.
We are at the beginning of a run of games against what might be considered our direct competitors (Kilmarnock, Livingstone, St Johnstone, St Mirren and Dundee). If we can avoid defeat at Rugby Park many will consider that we have made a reasonable start to this crunch series. We might settle for a 1-1 share.