MOTHERWELL FC: ENTERTAINMENT IS FOUND IN THE LACK OF DEFENSIVE ABILITY

As Josh Magennis got the final touch on Andy Considine's blooter in to the ground, deep in to injury time at Pittodrie on Sunday, 3 pairs of hands were thrown headwards in disbelief. Those hands had been clenched in to jubilant fists only 10 minutes earlier as Nicky Law looked to have secured a well earned win for The Steelmen, which would propel Stuart McCall's side three points clear of Hibs and four ahead of Celtic, ahead of next Saturday's match versus the current Champions.

"Motherwell have snatched a third to take all three points back to Lanarkshire!" I boomed down the MFCTV mic as Law and co celebrated in front of a dissenting home crowd, some of whom had fixed their gaze on Graham, Flow and I in the gantry. Many in front of us began to leave, as we gave it big licks for two minutes, exclaiming it was no less than we deserved.

Then Niall McGinn scored from a free header, and that cockiness, smugness and stupidity that I was exuding took a hefty knock. Us three, plus the hearty band of travelling fans who had trekked up to the Granite City had gone from confident winners, to the squeakiest of squeaky bummed panic merchants in 120 seconds.

It was inevitable that when Jamie Langfield lofted his free kick towards the Well box that something bad was going to go down, and for the second time this season, a late late leveller has left Motherwell feeling that they have lost all three points when it has really been two.

I don't buy in to the "play Motherwell to break a duck/lift a curse/turn your season around" patter anymore, but it did have some resonance yesterday, particularly given the Dons as the opposition. Just shy of 13 years ago, Ebbe Skovdhal's dismal Dons travelled to Fir Park on a Wednesday night, having failed to win any of their SPL games ahead of the clash. Not only did they get the win that night, but Robbie Winters claimed a hat trick, as did Well's John Spencer. 

The irony of such a high scoring game was that the two goalies that night, Goram and Leighton, were two of the modern great at International level, meaning that the defending must have been very suspect indeed.

As it was yesterday. With the Aberdeen fans been bereft of net bulging action at home this season, it was a stick on that this game would follow suit, but thanks to some woeful marking and positioning, they were treated to a veritable goal fest.Each of the six goals scored were highly preventable, with the defending for the three Well goals by The Dons' defence probably the worse.

Three set pieces gifted Motherwell three goals, which Craig Brown was quick to lament after the game. Having kept out all visitors in recent weeks he was dismayed at the lack of prevention used by his experienced defence. Considine, Reynolds and Anderson have done and should have done much better when Higdon poked home, when Hutchinson got his sizeable dome to Hateley's corner and Law bundled the third in after Cummins and Murphy tried to force the ball past Langfield.

Not that I am complaining. I was loving the ineptitude of their backline. Not so much ours though.

Motherwell were the better team throughout, and could have been forgiven for switching off to allow Gavin Rae to score from Hayes' cross so early on, had they held out for the 3-1 win. The quality of Fraser's cross for the second can't be argued, but with Hutchinson getting caught under the ball, similar to Cummins last week against Dundee, it gave McGinn the easiest of headers to place in to the net.

If only the defence could have clenched themselves as tight as the gluteals of every Motherwell fan going in to injury time, then this blog may have been a celebration of staying top of the league, regardless of the outcome of the game against Celtic on Saturday. But that's fitba. You win some, you lose some, you draw some from the jaws of victory in a game you deserve to have won. It happens.

With Ibrox to come on Wednesday, a similarly attack minded performance will go a long way to getting to the next round of the League Cup. I'm not going to go in to all the permutations of how and why we can beat this incarnation of rangers, despite us having not won their this decade, nay, this century. By and large we have ground out results this season and been deserving of a win in others, and but for misfortune, we could have held on for just a few seconds more against Aberdeen and St Mirren to be more than one point ahead at the top of the SPL.

Perhaps on Wednesday, it's our time to lift a hoodoo.

Up The Well!