MOTHERWELL manager Stephen Robinson has faith that striker Curtis Main will be back in among the goals soon after a disappointing return so far this season.

The Steelmen’s number nine arrived last January and netted eight times in the second half of the campaign as he helped Motherwell to the Scottish Cup final.

Despite netting four times so far this campaign overall, three of those have come in the Betfred Cup, and he has just one goal to his name in 10 appearances in the league.

But Robinson is certain that if his team can keep providing the former Portsmouth man with chances, then he will soon get up and running again.

“We continually worked on things with Curtis and the other four strikers that we’ve got, including the two young boys,” said Robinson.

“He just needs to go on a run. He came here last year and hit the ground running and as strikers you have that.

“You get those periods where you don’t score goals and things don’t go your way and then it just turns very quickly. He has to keep doing the right things, getting in the right areas and we have to keep creating the chances.

“I’ve got four strikers who I believe can go and score goals and we know we’re winning games with the two boys up front, so we’ll see where we go on Sunday with that.”

The Fir Park boss is likely to persevere with his preferred front pairing of Main and Ryan Bowman as they take on Rangers at Ibrox this weekend, despite the pair having just the two league goals between them.

He admits though that the mix in attacking areas isn’t quite right just yet.

“Bowman was out for the first seven games, so we haven’t had that long on it,” he said.

“People say to me (Conor) Sammon and Main can’t work – I think they’ve only played two games together. I don’t think Danny (Johnson) and Bowman have played any games together.

“We’re still finding the right combinations. The two boys I’ve went with so far, their all-round play is excellent and they’re a handful to play.

“The two of them are aware that we want more goals from them as we do with all our strikers, but they’re doing a lot of good stuff which sometimes goes unnoticed and the rest of the team benefit from.

“We’re just looking for them to have a bit of luck and turn them chances into goals.”

At the other end of the pitch, the signs are a great deal more promising for Motherwell of late, with the two consecutive clean sheets picked up against St Mirren and Dundee helping towards two crucial victories.

And after a bumpy start to the season with personnel changes and injuries, Robinson feels his defence are getting back to their miserly best.

“Everything we did last year was built on 20 clean sheets,” he said. “We lost a lot of our defenders – Charles Dunne through injury for a large majority of the season, Cedric Kipre we lost to Wigan. Two big losses and the way we played was based around the two of them at times.

“The whole back three was unsettled. We looked at things and changed it slightly. People make a big thing about systems but it’s more about the personnel and how they’re playing in that system.

“Rather than conceding four or five goals it’s been individual errors that we’ve been punished for. The more we keep that out of our defending the more chance we have of keeping clean sheets.

“You start the game with a point and the aim is to finish it with the minimum of that every single time. That’s what we did last season and we’re getting back to building on that again.”