Rangers 2 - 0 Motherwell

By Paul Marshall
March 20 2003

Motherwell missed out on the chance to come off bottom spot after losing to Rangers 2 - 0 at Ibrox. We still sit bottom one point behind Dundee United but we have a game in hand although that's against Celtic.

Warm up


Motherwell boss Terry Butcher made two changes to the side that lost to Aberdeen in our last match, out went Shaun Fagan and Stephen Pearson who was suspended. Both were replaced by Dirk Lehmann and stand in captain Derek Adams who had an excellent match in the midfield.




Kick Off


Both sides had chances early on with the best of them falling to Motherwell's Dirk Lehmann, James McFadden opened up the Rangers defence to send in the German but his shot from close range was saved by Rangers keeper Stefan Klos.



Barry Ferguson opened the scoring on 18 minutes, the midfielder got his chance after David Partridge had brought down Michael Mols at the edge of the box. The Scotland international slotted the free kick into the far corner with ease leaving Dubourduea with no chance in the Motherwell goal.



The Cuddle which infuriated the home fans


Motherwell held on till half time and if we could just hold on for another 30 minutes after the break we could have sneaked out of Ibrox with something. But a Peter Lovenkrands goal 50 seconds after the re start killed off Motherwell's chances and the match. It was all one way traffic after the goal, Rangers really should have won by a bigger margin but failed to take their chances.




A rare Motherwell corner




Full time


Pride of Lanarkshire star man - Derek Adams and Dubourduea were the best players for us not putting a foot wrong.





Rangers Klos, Muscat, Malcolm, Moore, Ross, Ricksen, Ferguson, de Boer (Konterman 58), Lovenkrands (McCann 66), Thompson, Mols (Arveladze 60).




Motherwell Dubourdeau, Corrigan, Vaughan, Partridge, Hammell, Ramsey (Cowan 29), Adams, Lasley, Lehmann (Craig 75), Clarkson (Offiong 65), McFadden.


Referee Hugh Dallas

Attendance 49,240

Now the Rangers game is over we can now look forward to continuing our Scottish Cup adventure away to Stranraer on Saturday.