Robinson says squad is stronger than last season as Motherwell get up and running

Motherwell manager Stephen Robinson is confident history can repeat itself and his side’s victory at Livingston can kickstart their season.

The Lanarkshire side bounced back from two opening Ladbrokes Premiership defeats with a 1-0 triumph in the Tony Macaroni Arena to move into the quarter-finals of the Betfred Cup.

Former Gateshead striker Danny Johnson finished well 23 minutes into his first start for the club and Motherwell went on to exert more control of the tie after a frantic first quarter when both teams hit the bar and forced a series of saves.

Motherwell sold Cedric Kipre 24 hours before the Premiership season kicked off and were without Craig Tanner, Charles Dunne, Ryan Bowman, Liam Donnelly, Liam Grimshaw and Chris Cadden through injury on Saturday, but Robinson, pictured, feels his squad is now stronger than the pool that took the team to two cup finals last season.

Those runs and a comfortable midtable finish came after they lost their first two league games before winning at Ross County in the cup.

“As I have said, there was never any panic from me,” he said. “If you look at our injury list, last year we couldn’t have coped with that. We wouldn’t have won this game.

“But what we have done is strengthened. We were able to bring Aaron Taylor-sinclair and Conor Sammon off the bench. We were able to rest Allan Campbell who has had one week off in the summer and who looked a bit jaded.we wouldn’t have been able to do that last season. So I genuinely believe that has stood us in good stead for this game and moving forward.

“Of course it can kick-start our season. We have lost two games, that’s it, same as last season, and we are in the next round of the cup.”

Livingston manager Kenny Miller praised his goalkeeper, Liam Kelly, after his former Rangers team-mate made some excellent stops before and after Johnson’s goal.

“I have known Liam a long, long time; he is an outstanding young goalie, both comfortable in terms of taking the ball and passing it out, and his shot-stopping,” Miller said.

“His positioning is very good as well. He might make routine saves but you can see it’s very good positioning. He works very hard on that with Tony Caig every day.

“He was outstanding, in particular the one where he manages to claw it out the goal from two or three yards out. That was an outstanding save.

“But we are trying to improve on that so Liam doesn’t have to make saves.

“It was another good day for Liam but there were a lot of positive performances. I couldn’t ask for a better group to come and work with. They have come from League 1 14 months ago, won the title and then got promotion when everyone wrote them off.

“Everyone has already written us off again but I think we will be more than competitive this year and we will get better, and we will learn.”