Motherwell boss Graham Alexander has urged fans to keep believing as they head into tomorrow night’s Europa Conference League qualifier at Sligo Rovers with a 1-0 deficit.
Ex-Hearts striker Aidan Keena’s goal currently separates the sides as the Steelmen head to the Showground for the second leg of their second qualifying round tie.
But Alexander insists he saw more than enough about his side to know they can go to Ireland and win.
“Sometimes you don’t get what you deserve,” said Alexander.
“I don’t think we got what we deserved, but we’re realists – they scored one more than us, and they go into the second leg with a lead.
“That’s football, isn’t it. That’s the way it is, we can’t change that.
“All we want to do is win games and you can’t say the team didn’t try their best to win that game.
“The game is about scoring goals, scoring more than your opponent, and we didn’t do that.”
Keena struck 27 minutes in, latching onto Bevis Mugabi’s short headed passback before lobbing the ball over stranded Liam Kelly, to give them an advantage to take back to Ireland.
Alexander said: “I think they’re a good team. I thought we were the better team, but we’ve seen how they play.
“It puts a different slant on the game, with them going into a home game with a 1-0 lead.
“We don’t know how they will approach it, but they approached it after they got the 1-0 lead like an away team would.
“We didn’t have that final bit of quality in the box to equalise and then go on, but we certainly created enough possession and moved the ball well enough.
“In a tie like this, sometimes a 1-0 lead is difficult to turn around in a singe game.
“My message to fans is to keep believing.”
Alexander says that while last Thursday’s game was Motherwell’s first competitive game compared to a Sligo Rovers team who are deep into their season, he still thought his side should have had enough about them to win.
He said: “I thought there was a little bit of slowness about our play before they scored – I thought we took too many touches, I thought they sat off us a little bit and we fell into the trap of taking too many touches.
“But we are getting up to speed.
“We understand where we can improve. We understand we did a lot of good things, but the game is about winning, and we didn’t.”
Follow Lanarkshire Live Sport on Twitter via @LanLiveSport, like us on Facebook or find us on Instagram for the latest sports news, pictures and video.
