KEITH LASLEY has apologised to the Motherwell supporters for Wednesday’s disastrous second-half collapse against Inverness that has increased anxiety around Fir Park that they will become entrenched in another fight for survival.
The Motherwell captain knows the performance – described by manager Mark McGhee as the worst in his second spell as manager – was not acceptable but believes they are more than capable of restoring form and faith when they face Ross County tomorrow.
Motherwell were taken apart by Richie Foran's Highlanders who romped to a 3-0 win to move up to sixth with goals from Carl Tremarco, Lonsana Doumbouya and Liam Polworth.
And Lasley admitted: “It’s hold your hands up time. It wasn’t good enough. But we’ve got another game in a couple of days and we’ve got to get ourselves right over these couple of days. We can’t feel sorry for ourselves. It’s on to the next one.
“It was a difficult night on Wednesday – a difficult half – but we just need to get on with it.
“I don’t know if it was anything to do with spirit. Football is such that things can change so quickly. If we win on Saturday, then the spirit or whatever it is will be back.
“When you lose games you analyse them to see what went wrong but we will see what we can do better – and I’m sure there will be plenty.
“We need to come up with a way of playing and have 11 bodies that are determined to make things right on Saturday.”
Motherwell were booed off by their suffering supporters on Wednesday night and Lasley accepts they had every right to do so
He said: “When you lose 3-0 it’s understandable that he crowd will not be best pleased.
“As players it’s part of our job to try to entertain them and we never did that on Wednesday night.
“We have to handle that. We get plenty of praise when things are going well as they have done here over the years.
“So we will take it on the chin and I’m sure the fans will be back again on Saturday to support us.
“We weren’t good enough for 45 minutes of football. We don’t need to analyse too much because we know individually we were not at our best – not even near what it would take against a good Inverness side.
“We apologise to the fans and assure them we will be working tirelessly to come up with a way to turn things round.”
Inverness, meanwhile, have delivered a tremendous recovery after a miserable start when they lost their opening three Premiership matches – including a 5-1 trouncing by Hearts – and were dumped out of the Betfred Cup by Alloa.
Midfielder Iain Vigurs, who spent two seasons at Fir Park, said: “We were never concerned we’d get detached.
“It was an indifferent start from us. We were in a transitional period but we’re now getting to grips with the new players who have come in and a new gaffer.
“It was a sticky period but we’ve got a lot of boys who have been here the past three or four years – good strong characters.
“We knew we’d come back from it. We’re all pushing in the same direction now and tonight we have set a standard that we have to maintain.
“We’re thrilled with the second half performance. It sets us up nicely for the game against Hearts. The team back then to what it is now is night and day.
“We’ll be wanting to rectify what they did to us down at Tynecastle this Saturday.”
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