Steelmen head for bottom six, all guns blazing
Motherwell manager Stuart Kettlewell paid tribute to his players for fighting until the last few seconds of their tilt at the top six.
The Steelmen will play the rest of their games against sides in the bottom half of the table after a draw against Hibs wasn’t enough to take them above seventh spot.
They did their best by hitting a late equaliser then almost snatching a win.
Kettlewell reckons his men should be praised for still being in with a shout of the top six in their last game before the split.
He said: “We left it late in the season overall.
“I can’t do anything but credit the players because we went through such a challenging time when most people would have written us off and thought we’d have been more towards the bottom place in the table.
“Since the turn of the year, we’ve shown brilliant personality and picked up a lot of good points.
“Last season we had a good charge at the top six and, at this time, we had the same scenario where the chat was about us being the best of the rest.
“It’s hard when you have teams like Hibs and Aberdeen in the bottom six, with their resources and players they have.
“But it has to be our target to finish seventh and we certainly won’t accept people coming in with the attitude where they think they can kick back and take it easy.
“We have five games to play, and I can assure people that we will go into them with all guns blazing.
“We will show every ounce of desire and application for this club.”
Kettlewell, like many within Fir Park, thought a winner was about to come in the last few seconds, though that wouldn’t have taken his team into the top six as Dundee got a point at Pittodrie.
He said: “It’s something we’ve been renowned for this season – playing until the very last whistle.
“We would rather be ahead in the game, but we had a late rally and had four strikers on the pitch.
“It was all-out attack, with the players trying to get the ball into their
box and see if something fell for us.
“If I’m being brutally honest, there was no real flow to the game. The conditions were challenging.
“We know how to deal with that in this country, but it got to a point where we really had to throw caution to the wind.
“We tried to put Hibs under pressure. They dealt with it pretty well because we flung a couple of good crosses into their box.
“Then Shane Blaney came up with that moment of brilliance.
“We had one more chance through Oli Shaw and my gut instinct was that he had hit the back of the net.”