Ian Baraclough was not about to make any excuses after watching his 10-man Motherwell side get comprehensively beaten 4-1 by Dundee at Dens Park. Dundee were helped by early goals from Alex Harris and Greg Stewart in the third and eighth minute before John Sutton pulled one back for the visitors, only for Gary Irvine to restore the home team's two-goal advantage. Motherwell's Henrik Ojamaa was sent-off for an elbow on Kevin Thomson just before half-time and they lost a further goal in 71 minutes when Marc O'Brien turned the ball into his own net.
The Motherwell manager said: "We talk from the start of the week and building up to match day about having a good start, getting a foothold in the game, making it difficult for your opponents, being on the front foot - and after eight minutes you're 2-0 down. But it's not acceptable that mistakes keep happening. It's no coincidence that we are where we are and it's not just in my time since I've come here. It's been happening for a good part of the season as well. I've just said to the players there you've got to be responsible for not only your own game, but for other people's as well and you have stay as a group together and demand the best from each other. It's an easy thing to say you'd like to change a load (of players), but the fact is we haven't got big pots of money to go and overhaul and the players that are in the dressing room at the moment are the ones that have got to dig themselves out."
Dundee manager Paul Hartley was full of praise for his players after watching them record their first league win since November. He said: "I'm really pleased for the players. There were some good goals from the boys. We've got a 14-point gap over the two teams at the bottom and we want to make that gap as big as possible. It's a good lead for us and then we just have to look at the other teams above us like St Johnstone who we're four points behind. We got off to a really positive start. We said that to the players beforehand, that we had to take the game to Motherwell. I thought we done that and young Alex Harris played a big part in our result today. We scored some good goals and, to be honest, I was disappointed that we didn't score more goals. We had enough of the ball especially in the second-half to do so but we've got to be happy with the result at the end of the day."