Stuart McCall was not about to offer excuses for his Motherwell players after they were beaten 2-0 by Inverness at Fir Park on Saturday. Caley were on top almost from start to finish, wasting a number of chances to add to Greg Tansey's first-half goal before sub Aaron Doran settled things a minute from the end of normal time. McCall was scathing in his comments about Motherwell's general performance.
He said: "To sum it up, it's quite simple - we were rotten. I thought they were very good. Basic stuff today we couldn't do, we couldn't pass from A to B. We've got a lot of work to do next week. Again, we couldn't name the side today until just before the game, but that's no excuse, we were really poor in all departments today and I don't think we mustered an attempt at goal if I'm honest. There were two good goals from them today, no doubt about it, (Greg) Tansey and (Aaron) Doran with two quality finishes. Certainly they deserved it massively and we've under-performed. We've not been up at it. You look at big John Sutton up there, he's not got anything to feed on, we've not created anything from wide areas, and all over the park they moved the ball better, controlled it better, passed it better and we were poor. I said at half-time that at least it could only get better because we were woeful on the ball in the first half and I don't think we were much better second half if I'm honest. That's probably one of the poorest performances we've had, certainly here."
Inverness manager John Hughes had a different view from his side of things and was delighted about the way his side, who moved to the top of the table, went about their business. He said: "The first half performance was very good, very slick. Ball retention, total domination, moving the ball around, but we didn't score. Then we got our wee break just before half-time and it settled us down. No two halves are ever the same - but we were wise to that. We knew Motherwell would change shape, they put (Henrik) Ojamaa up top, so we had to be a bit more compact and play on the counter-attack. We can do that because we work at it, it doesn't just happen, but it took us right to the last minute to get that second goal. The pleasing things; first half performance was very, very good, we were pleasing on the eye, and we kept a clean sheet. I can't speak highly enough of these boys, they've had a great buy-in to our philosophy."