O’Donnell urged to show some loyalty and stay at Fir Park

IT was one of those sliding doors moments Stephen O’Donnell will remember not just at the end of this year, but for the rest of his life.

After choosing not to re-sign with Kilmarnock at the end of last season, the full-back found himself without a club until Motherwell came calling.

Agreeing to sign on until January in order to be match fit and available for selection by Scotland boss Steve Clarke, his Fir Park performances resulted in a call-up for the now historic sequence of matches that saw the national team qualify for a major finals for the first time since 1998.

So while Motherwell and Scotland have done well out of the arrangement, so too has O’Donnell (below). It was a point not lost on manager Stephen Robinson, who believes es it’s it s time for the 28-year- old to repay pay the favour and sign a new deal at Fir Park.

‘The reason Stephen is playing for Scotland is because he signed for us,’ said Robinson. ‘He didn’t have a club. He probably owes s Motherwell a lot t because we gave him m that platform.

‘It’s nice to have another ther international player on n the books, people who need ed to play football to get into that European Championship squad. We’ve made it clear what we want from all our players out of contract who have been offered contracts. Unfortunately, in this day and age, they are in control of it.’

O’Donnell’s club and Scotland team-mate Declan Gallagher will become a free agent in the summer, as will Scotland Under-21 midfielder Allan Campbell and playmaker Liam Polworth.

‘The boys we want to keep have been offered contracts,’ added Robinson. ‘ We haven’t the money to go any further and people have the right to speak to other clubs in January.

‘ Ultimately, i t’s down to the players, although I’ll wait until the final game of the season for Campbell if I have to. I want people here who are 100-per-cent focused. If that changes, we’ll deal with it.

‘There are other people we’re speaking to and I’m hoping to get a couple in. When you see new faces in the building, it suddenly lifts everyone’ s game. If that means a bit of wheeling and dealing, that’s what we’ll do.’ A trip to Ibrox today to face Rangers is one Robinson is approaching with caution. Particularly when his team haven’t won in the league since late October.

‘The one thing I’ve le l earned over our p previous meetings is th that you have to be ha hard to beat, and we hav haven’t been when we’ve gone to Ibrox and Celtic P Park,’ he said. ‘We’ve tried tr to go toe to toe with them and, ultimately, if you attempt that against the best Rangers side I’ve seen in my time here then, inevitably, they’ll beat you.

‘So we have to stay in the game, be more defensive minded and then hope things drop our way on the day. We’ve got to do the ugly things and maybe that’s what we haven’t done.

‘They will have a lot of possession. We have to accept that and try not to out-compete them because that’s when it becomes open. You can still win when you’re not dominating the ball and we have to do the ugly things.’