After a 2-0 defeat at Rugby Park Motherwell can now concentrate on avoiding the play-offs rather than reaching the top six.
It was another hugely disappointing afternoon for the Motherwell fans who occupied the upper tier of the away stand. They expected the worst when the loss of an early goal was followed by an undeserved dismissal. At no time did Motherwell look like testing Kieren O’Hara in the Kilmarnock goal.
Michael Wimmer preferred Kai Andrews to Harry Paton and Kofi Balmer held his place as Liam Gordon was injured last week.
After a cagey initial spell Kilmarnock opened the scoring. Andy Halliday lost possession and that led to a shot that Ellery Balcombe parried off to the post. A failure to clear offered Fraser Murray the goal.
Motherwell’s problems deepened following a clearance by Balmer in front of the dugouts. His natural follow through caught Murray and Andrew Dallas in the VAR room prompted Matthew MacDermid to review the incident. A red card was produced and Balmer walked. It was a very harsh decision. It will probably be overturned next week but that will be of little consolation to the team that had to face 65 minutes with a man disadvantage.
The contest ended six minutes into the second half when Joe Wirght took advantage of the lack of height in Motherwell’s defence to loop a header back across the ‘keeper from a corner.
Jair Tavares replaced Andrews as the first replacement before Tawanda Maswanhise and Will Dickson came on for the last twenty minutes. Meanwhile Don Thompson had a red card reduced to yellow after another episode with VAR.
Readers may note the lack of any reference to Motherell scoring chances. We had none.
Derek McInnes had the luxury of untroubled rotations from his bench as his players coasted to an easy three points. Seven additional minutes came and went before the relief of the final whistle brought the suffering to an end.
Kilmarnock 2 Motherwell 0
Attendance
Team: Balcombe, O’Donnell, Balmer, Casey, Thompson (Maswanhise 70), Halliday, Sparrow, Slattery (Koutroumbis 76), Miller, Andrews (Tavares 53), Armstrong (Dickson 70)
Saturday 5 April 2025