THERE won’t be many outwith the 13,000 Motherwell supporters travelling to Hampden on Saturday who will give them any hope of defeating Celtic and lifting the Scottish Cup, and a fair few of them will probably have their doubts too.
But one place where there isn’t a single doubt that their name is on the trophy is within the Fir Park changing room.
I sat down with Motherwell striker Curtis Main for an interview for the BBC this week, and the one thing that struck me – apart from the fact he is a total unit – is that he is utterly convinced his team are going to lift the trophy. There is not one scintilla of doubt, and no thought of losing in his mind.
Read more: Stephen Robinson: My whole career has been about upsetting the odds
When I asked him if he thought Celtic’s centre-backs would be up for a scrap, his response was that they better be. I love that, and by the end of the interview I was almost convinced myself that Motherwell were going to win.
They will need every ounce of self-belief they can muster against Brendan Rodgers’s side, and I think that their key strength will be that they are going into the game with no inferiority complex.
They are not willing to even contemplate a scenario where they don’t win the final, and that can be an incredibly powerful thing. Their spirit and their togetherness has been the key to their success this season, and the fact they are huge underdogs absolutely suits them. I think they would almost prefer it was Celtic they were playing rather than a team of similar standing, because it gives them a cause to show everybody who is doubting them what they are made of, and will fire them up to prove people wrong.
It’s almost become a cliché over the season about how tenacious and how physical Motherwell are, but they are completely unapologetic about that. As they should be. That is where their strength lies and they are right to use it.
Yes, they play a direct style and they want to get the ball forward early and press teams, but there’s nothing wrong with that. They have scored some good goals as well, it isn’t all about scrapping and scraping out results.
They have got into other team’s heads, and I have no time for anyone who moans about their approach. Man up, and get on with it.
If it was any other manager going into this game other than Stephen Robinson, they might be thinking how tactically they can alter their gameplan in order to catch Celtic by surprise, but I don’t see them deviating from what they have been doing. They will look to disrupt Celtic’s rhythm, and a key area may be midfield.
They will have to stop the likes of Scott Brown and Olivier Ntcham, who I have been really impressed by in the past six months, from getting on the ball and dictating the game, and there will be a huge onus on Carl McHugh, Liam Grimshaw and Allan Campbell to win that battle.
The other thing going in Motherwell’s favour is that they are going into the final in decent form, particularly in a defensive sense. They have just broken their record for clean sheets over a season, with the win over Hamilton their 20th of the campaign.
On the flip side of that, Celtic go in after failing to score in back-to-back domestic games since 2009, and there’s no doubt there have been games where they have toiled to get really firing in an attacking sense.
In the last 10 games, for example, they have failed to score in four of them.
Having said all that, if the best Celtic turn up, then they are going to win the game. In the big moments throughout the last two seasons they have managed to do that, and with a back-to-back treble at stake, you would fancy them to be able to flick that switch once more.
The two draws that Motherwell had against Celtic this season were both at Fir Park. Trying to contain them on the Hampden pitch for 90 minutes is a different story. Look at last year’s final, Aberdeen gave as good as they got, punch for punch, for 60 minutes. But Celtic have the likes of Tom Rogic on the pitch, and they just couldn’t keep that level up to stay with them.
No matter who you are, you are going to tire, and that’s when Celtic can look to their bench and call upon the likes of Leigh Griffiths, Patrick Roberts and whoever else. On a pitch the size of Hampden on a hot day, it’s asking so much to go toe-to-toe with Celtic.
The champions aren’t going into the final firing on all cylinders like they were last season. They were on their incredible run without a defeat at this point last year, and despite their domestic dominance once again, they have far from been invincible this campaign.
That will only serve to further fuel the belief of the Motherwell players. But for all that I think they will make a right good go of it, and the game will be tight, Celtic’s greater quality should see them prevail.
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