COUNTY EASE WORRIES AS STEELMEN SUFFER

LOUIS MOULT last night branded the Zak Jules blunder which kept Motherwell deep in relegation trouble as ‘stupid’ and admitted the defender accepted his mistake in the dressing room after a costly 1-0 loss to Ross County at Fir Park.

Jules had only just been introduced as a substitute for Steven Hammell when, with 18 minutes left, he stopped a ball that was rolling out for a goal kick and played a pass to Carl McHugh that resulted in the Steelmen losing possession and conceding the winner to Christopher Routis.

With Inverness Caley Thistle beating Hamilton earlier in the day, Motherwell remain in the relegation play-off spot, but are now only four points clear of Inverness at the foot of the top-flight table.

Moult insists Jules will not be singled out by his team-mates, but fears the battle for survival will now go to the wire with a Lanarkshire derby against fellow strugglers at the Superseal Stadium next up.

‘Stupid mistake again, really,’ said Moult. ‘If we’d cut that out, we’d probably have got a point. It is a difficult one to take.

‘Zak has held his hands up and said: “It’s my bad”.

‘We are not going to shout at him. He knows he should clear the ball or let it go out, but he is a young lad and he will learn from that.

‘Everyone makes mistakes and we have to stick together.

‘It is probably going to go down to the last day of the season now, with next week against Hamilton going to be a massive, massive game.

‘We need to go there and win. Simple as. We believe we can do it. Well, I do anyway. I think we all do.’

Motherwell boss Stephen Robinson was protective towards 20-year-old Jules, on loan from Reading, after the match and admitted there are other issues that have to be addressed within his squad.

‘I think a draw was the least we deserved from the game,’ said the Northern Irishman.

‘We had 33 crosses into the box, so it’s hard to take when an individual error like that costs us the game.

‘I’m not going to hang the young boy out to dry.

‘Hammy picked up strange injury on Thursday and we tried to keep it quiet. He burst a vein in his leg and his knee was the size of a balloon when he came off the park.

‘We’d nobody else to put on. That’s where the squad is.

‘I won’t say what I said to Zak. We’re frustrated because the ball was running out for a goal kick and the young boy made a decision. But if you have 33 crosses into the box and don’t score there’s got to be something else wrong.

‘I can’t ask for any more from the players. There’s nobody hiding away, there’s nobody not running, Sometimes, they lack quality in certain areas, we know that.’