Stuart Kettlewell has told his Motherwell side to come out fighting when they host Aberdeen on Sunday, and says they owe it to themselves and their fans to put in a top performance.
Kettlewell was left fuming on Thursday as a Musa Drammeh strike in seven minutes was enough to earn Hearts a 1-0 win at Tynecastle, after an uncharacteristically poor Motherwell display.
Kettlewell is keen that his side shows a reaction to that, but expects Aberdeen to be absolutely flying, despite their run of poor form.
Kettlewell said: “In the last six games, we’ve had two wins, two draws, two defeats, and your two defeats are away to Celtic and Hearts.
“Now, in normal circumstances you look at that and think there’s absolutely no shame in that string of results – and there’s absolutely not – including a very good point against Rangers, where you would expect us to come out in a very similar vein a couple of days later, but we simply didn’t.
“My demand now goes to the players, and everybody here at the football club, that we show a reaction on Sunday.
“I think we owe that to ourselves and our supporters to show a reaction to what was a bad day for us.
“Let’s not try and dress this up, that Craig Gordon kept Hearts in the game in the last wee bit. Yes, we created two chances, and it’s two fantastic saves from him, but we didn’t deserve anything out of that game.
“We came up short of what I expect from Motherwell on Thursday. As always, I’m a fighter, I’m somebody who will flash my teeth if I don’t feel that we’re meeting those standards. I’m someone who will continually go back to the plan that I feel that we work from every single day.
“Sometimes people think you’re throwing the players out there, but I stand shoulder to shoulder with my players all the time.
“We lost a game, we had a bad performance, and what I insist is that we come out fighting, and we come out with a reaction to get people on our side, to get team-mates who are standing beside you back on board, and realise our strengths and what we’re capable of ourselves, and pitch that out there.
“I’m not asking people to do things they’re not capable of, so let’s get back to that.”
Having gone an incredible 16 games without defeat at the start of this season, which ended spectacularly in a 6-0 Premier Sports Cup semi-final defeat to Celtic on November 2, the Dons have won just once since then.
A 4-1 win at home to Dundee on November 9 was followed by a run of nine games without a win, including four straight defeats.
Kettlewell said: “You say ‘the situation they find themselves in’ because we’re so knee-jerk in this country and we all start banging the drum about a bad run of form.
“I think pretty much every team, to his point with the exception of Celtic, has had a bad string of games, a bad run of form.
“Aberdeen, I’m sure, will maybe look at that and say the results have been below the standard that they’ve set.
“For the first chunk of the season they found themselves flying high at the top of the league, for many people’s money they were the form horse, which they absolutely were not so long ago, and that’s what I judge them on, not on the last couple of games.
“I’m not a knee-jerk person, somebody who is going to sit there and say that we’re onto a winner because Aberdeen have lost a few games and maybe not picked up the same points.
“I expect to play against the best version, as I always do. I have too much respect for clubs like Aberdeen and what they’ve done, to this point, to think otherwise.”