Motherwell capitulate at Rugby Park

Despite taking the lead early on Motherwell finished the game a well beaten side, although a disputed penalty proved to be a major turning point in the game.

Steven Hammell had to pull out on Friday after pulling a hamstring at training on Friday, then Francis Jeffers had to pull out after picking up an injury in the warm up. Jamie Murphy was promoted from the bench to take his place, and then in only the ninth minute Steven Saunders had to be replaced by Ross Forbes.

Despite these set backs we took the lead in 15 minutes, Humphrey outpaced Clancy and Eremenko to pick out Sutton at the front post to flick past the keeper.  Five minutes later it could have been two when Sutton flicked on a Jennings cross only to see the ball hit the outside of the post and bounce clear.

Then we had a series of bizarre refereeing decisions from Mike Tumilty, Jennings was booked for an innocuous tackle as was Ross Forbes while Clancy went unpunished for cleaning out Humphrey.

Killie got back in the game on the 24^th minute when we failed to deal with a corner effectively, not for the first time, and allowed Eremenko time to pickout Pascali to head past Randolph.

The ref then topped his first half performance with a soft penalty award, there appeared to be no danger as the ball was hooked into the box as Gunning and Pascali challenged for the ball but somehow the ref saw the challenge as a penalty.

Hammill stepped up to take it and drilled a low kick into the bottom right hand corner despite Randolph guessing the right way. You know it’s a soft award when the opposition say it is one of those that you sometimes don’t get!!

The next goal was always going to be crucial and it was Killie who scored six minutes after the re-start. Eremenko whipped a corner to the front post where Kelly was on hand to head past Randolph.

From then on we appeared to “capitulate” as the manager said after the game, and in truth the defeat could have been much heavier if it hadn’t been for the outstanding efforts of Darren Randolph.

This game showed how thin our squad is with three out we have no depth to cover, and with Jennings out for three games and Saunders and Hammell with injuries I would think our Cup and top six hopes are now hanging by a thread.