IF Motherwell manager Stephen Robinson has his way, Fir Park may soon be known as Scottish football’s own rehabilitation centre for players that have lost their way.
Robinson recognises that all things being well, there would have been little prospect of Motherwell attracting players like January signings Nadir Ciftci and Curtis Main given the clubs both men can boast on their CV.
That these players now find themselves at Motherwell via teams like Celtic, Middlesbrough and Portsmouth, with no disrespect to the Lanarkshire club, means that something has gone a little awry.
Enter Robinson. The Northern Irishman is certain that the staff he has at the club, and the atmosphere they have fostered at Fir Park, makes it the perfect destination to set these undoubted talents onto the straight and narrow.
If he can get the best out of the forwards and they produce the goods for Motherwell, reigniting their own careers along the way, then everyone’s a winner.
He senses that Main, newly-arrived defender Tom Aldred and Ciftci in particular, are ready to grasp the chance they have been given to get back on track. And they all could be thrown into today’s Scottish Cup clash with local rivals Hamilton.
“We don’t get Nadir Ciftci if he’s at the top of his game,” said Robinson. “We don’t get a £1.5million player.
“We get a boy who’s maybe not progressed on as much as he should have done for someone of his ability.
“It’s up to me to bring that confidence back, get his fitness levels up and give him a platform to excel again.
“He’s shown us glimpses of absolute brilliance in training at times. But he does need to get fitter.
“That’s not to say I won’t start him, throw him on for 60 minutes. He’s getting better and better each day and bought into what we’re trying to do here.”
The Motherwell players, according to Robinson, are champing at the bit to make amends not only for their wretched run prior to the winter break, but the defeat in the Lanarkshire derby at the end of December.
He said: “It’s a nice, easy quiet game to get things going again, eh? It’s going to be feisty. We owe the fans a little bit and we’ll come back out firing.”
Hamilton manager Martin Canning agreed that today’s game could be a tousy affair, but he is concerned his men maybe picking up an unfair reputation.
Post-match handbags have now broken out after their recent matches against Ross County, Hearts and Motherwell, but Canning insists that his men have actually shown admirable restraint in the face of provocation.
He said: “Obviously it can’t be helped if it’s moments like the Hearts game when we did nothing wrong and ended up in a mass confrontation. Same again in the Motherwell game, when we’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.
“I think on both occasions our players have handled themselves really well. When Darian MacKinnon got wrestled to the ground we could have reacted worse than we did and same goes for what happened to Dougie [Imrie] at Motherwell.
“The only game where we didn’t do ourselves any favours was against Ross County when one player, Ioannis [Skondras], took it too far. But even then, if you look back on that occasion, it was actually started by a Ross County player.”
Chris Cadden will be given every chance to start for Motherwell, but Elliott Frear will be out, while Ellis Plummer will miss the rest of the season after fracturing his leg during the training camp in Tenerife.
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