It is a part of every manager’s job to talk up his side and to see the best in any situation. At times that leads to contradictions such as we see this week. Ahead of the game we had, “If we want to have any aspirations of finishing 10th or better then we need to put three points on the board.”
Motherwell failed to deliver the win but it seems that the aspiration is still alive as the quote following the draw with Ross County illustrates, "We are not resigned to playing an extra two games by any means. It's still there for us."
Those contrasting comments only serve to frustrate fans who have seen their team take only one point from the last three games against our erstwhile rivals for the play-off place. We were well beaten by Partick Thistle and Hamilton and Saturday’s draw meant the gap to the County remains at six points. No wonder the 500 in the away section cheered their team off the park.
Courtesy of MFC TV
We engineered a fine opening goal then conceded a sloppy one to set up a do or die second half. Despite dominating possession we made few scoring chances. A couple of hopeful strikes from Grant and a well saved effort from Pearson were scant reward for the balance of play. Long did well to keep us in the game at the other end.
The manager was right to praise the commitment and effort from his players, the truth is that we were not good enough to win the game. Since the start of 2015 our results have been poor (W4 D3 L10), in the 2014 side of the campaign our form was similar (W5 D2 L11). The old maxim is that the table doesn’t lie. We cannot complain if the expected play-off arrives.
There remains a diminishing hope and that will be extinguished if we don’t beat Kilmarnock on Friday – indeed the window for St Mirren to overtake us would remain open.