We were delighted to get to the safety of the dressing room at half time only one goal down. Rangers dominated from the off and went ahead in five minutes when Miller's 18 yard effort beat Ruddy and went in off the bar. Shaun Hutchison had returned to his defensive duties on a freezing afternoon and Meechan was benched.
The back line was shuffled at the start with Reynolds at left back and Hammell taking an unusual midfield role. He looked distinctly uncomfortable and hesitant in the forward position and had frequent looks over his shoulder presumably to check that his replacement was on duty. Hammell was caught in possession two minutes after we had lost the opener and only a great double stop on the goal line from Saunders prevented further loss.
Another loss at Ibrox
Papac should have made better of a free header from eight yards and we looked very shaky. Only 15 minutes had elapsed but Gannon decided that an alteration was needed. Reynolds moved to the centre of a three man defence and things began to steady.
Motherwell began to probe forward following the usual studious build up and on the half hour we had a couple of corners! Jennings followed them with a good drive which forced McGregor to turn the deflected effort beyond the post for a corner. Ruddy's legs prevented a concession in first half added time but Jimbo was able to have a team talk with us still in the game.
The second half improvement failed to appear. Instead we were torn apart and managed to lose a further five goals before the referee blew to stop further punishment. Boyd and Miller had scored before a strong Hutchison header from a Hateley corner gave the small Motherwell support cause to cheer for the only time in the game.
Meechan had replaced Hammell then McHugh made way for O'Brien and finally Humphrey came on for Murphy as Gannon tried to recover some control. But two from Lafferty and another from Boyd completed the rout.
We can only hope that some lessons are learned from the debacle and that the next run of games against lest testing opposition might see us back on track.