Stephen O’Donnell admits the chance to play their way into a Hampden semi-final team to face Rangers can drive Motherwell’s players to victory against Dundee United tonight.
The Steelmen are set for a massive few days with the big Premiership match at Tannadice providing the opportunity to leapfrog the Terrors into fourth in the table, before a colossal clash at the National Stadium will see the club aim to land a place in their first final since 2018.
Motherwell go into the clash off the back of Sunday’s 3-0 league loss to Celtic, which inflicted back-to-back defeats on O’Donnell’s side.
But he feels the carrot of earning a place in the Hampden line-up can give them extra motivation to stop their losing streak.
The Wishaw ace, whose side narrowly lost 2-1 to the Gers at Hampden in the league in August when stadium works at Ibrox were on-going, said: “There’s competition amongst the squad to play in what will be a memorable day at Hampden.
“But we have to make sure we apply ourselves on Wednesday and stop our losing streak going into the semi-final.
“We saw what happened last season when we started quite well and then went on a bad spell [a 15-game winless run] and that turned the season, so we need to make sure that doesn’t happen, we put in a good performance against Dundee United and play for a place in the semi-final.
“If you start looking too far ahead, even if you are in the team right now, that is a dangerous way to look at it and it can bite you on the backside.
“It is small margins at this level and it can be like a game of chess at times, but we need to be able to come out on top in that and I’m sure we will on Wednesday night.”
The Steelmen booked their place in the semi-finals by knocking out United in the last eight in September with a 2-1 win.
And O’Donnell added: “It was a tough game when we played United in the cup and it will be another tough one.
“Some of the games we’ve won could have gone either way recently so we need to be on our game.”
Motherwell go into tonight’s match without United loanee Tony Watt and defender Liam Gordon, who was shown a straight red card late on against Celtic for a late tackle on Adam Idah and will now serve a two-game league ban. He will be free to face Rangers.