Stuart Kettlewell felt his Motherwell players had answered their critics after Tony Watt’s late header sealed a narrow 1-0 William Hill Premiership win at St Mirren.
The visitors came into the match on the back of three-successive defeats but strengthened their hold on fifth with Watt’s first goal of the season, while St Mirren ended the match with 10 men.
Kettlewell praised his players for their endeavour and for pushing all the way to the fourth minute of second-half stoppage-time before claiming the winner to seal a hard-fought victory.
The Motherwell manager said: “We’ve taken a lot of flak over the last two weeks.
“We’ve taken a lot of criticism. This now doesn’t become tit-for-tat and an opportunity for me to badmouth people and to give folk stick because we win a game of football.
“But I feel we’ve been pretty consistent this year for the size of our club and the resources we’ve got.
“And I feel that the players get their just reward for a fully-concentrated performance.
“I actually feel – in a ridiculous way – we played better against Dundee through the week and lost the game 4-1.
“Today it was just about having that kind of mental strength and toughness to stay in the game. And you know what? I think the players really deserved it. That’s the way I see it.
“It’s a big win because it takes us two points off fourth position in the league.”
St Mirren manager Stephen Robinson was furious with the way his players defended the free-kick that created Watt’s goal, just minutes after Alex Gogic had been sent off for a second booking.
He said: “We did (deserve to lose) because we didn’t defend in the last minute the way we should have done.
“We didn’t have enough people stand up and die to stop the goal going in. It was a poor standard of game in my opinion. The weather obviously played a big part in that with the wind.
“We had a lot of half chances, we created a little bit but we didn’t take them. As the game goes on, Motherwell were relying on a set-play to maybe win the game. And we haven’t done the basics right at that last free-kick.
“We dropped too early, we didn’t stay with runners and our line was all over the place. It’s something I’m not happy with.
“The least that happens today is you take a point out of the game. So, it’s bitterly disappointing we haven’t done that.”
On Gogic’s red card, Robinson added: “He’s clipped his heels so it was one of the decisions the referee did get right today. We’re a man down but that’s not the reason we conceded the goal.
“We conceded the goal because we needed to be better organised in the last minutes of the game.
“People stand up, take responsibility and win the header and the game is over. Based on the other results it would have been a decent point but we didn’t do that.”
