Stuart Kettlewell insists Motherwell remain confident despite recent losing run

Motherwell manager Stuart Kettlewell believes their positivity remains intact following a run of three consecutive defeats.

Kettlewell has suffered as many defeats in the current run as he had in his first six months in the role.

But the results do not tell the whole picture. Motherwell have lost by one goal to each of the top three in the cinch Premiership and have created enough real chances to take more from each game, with Matt O’Riley’s winner for Celtic seven minutes into stoppage time at Fir Park proving a particularly sore outcome.

The task does not get much less difficult on Saturday when Motherwell travel to face a Livingston side whose recent defeat by Celtic was their first at home in 11 matches, but Kettlewell feels his team are in confident mood.

Kettlewell said: “It was obvious disappointment for me on Saturday and for the players and the football club in general, but I think it’s pretty rare that you see so many plaudits for how we have played over the last three games, which I think is an indication for where we are.

“I think we had been getting our just rewards in terms of our performances, points on the board, since I came in and we now find ourselves in a wee spell where we are still playing well, but not getting points.

“Of course we want to rectify that, but I have been consistent with what I have said from the very start, this is a hard league to make sure you pick up points.

“It’s especially hard when you play against the best teams in the country, but in terms of where we are with our performance, how the players are approaching it and where they are with their individual performance levels, I think they are in a real good place.

“There’s disappointment but I can genuinely tell you come Monday morning when the guys were back in here, it was a real positive place to be, the mood was good.

“We still referenced the what ifs and we analyse and recap on the game, but once we do that it’s just that marker to park everything and start to look at our next game, which is going to be really tough playing at Livingston.

“They don’t give up anything cheaply, that’s been part of their make-up and their identity for quite some time now, and we have to embrace that and realise that’s exactly what that game is going to look like and it probably filters into the category of two pretty evenly-matched teams.

“We have to make sure those fine margins, conceding in the last minute, conceding to a cross, whatever it might be, we just sharpen up those one or two aspects that haven’t been quite right over those three games.”