Lasley scorns talk of slump at Motherwell and insists victories are just round corner

Published on 26/10/2012 00:54

MOTHERWELL captain Keith Lasley is determined to show that talk of a slump is overblown when Hibernian visit Fir Park tonight.

Just over a month ago, Motherwell were seconds away from moving four points clear at the top of the Clydesdale Bank Premier League but lost a two-goal lead against Aberdeen and have now fallen to sixth.

They also failed to hit their early-season heights against Rangers in a 2-0 Scottish Communities League Cup defeat. But Well’s only two league defeats have come against in-form Celtic and in a 1-0 loss to Hearts at Tynecastle and Lasley believes they are not far away from winning displays.

The midfielder said: “It’s been a disappointing month if you look right back to the Aberdeen game, which we should have closed out.

“The two games against the Old Firm we never really performed to the standards we expect.

“At Hearts last week I thought we were a little unfortunate not to take a point.

“The Rangers game was the most disappointing one. But I don’t think it’s a case of being very poor every game.

“We played well most of the game against Aberdeen and, unfortunately, never held on.

“It’s not as if we have been really struggling and getting thumped every week.

“There is no talk in the dressing-room of being miles away from where we want 
to be.

“It’s been shown this is a dog-eat-dog league and it’s who is at it on the day that usually wins.”

Motherwell suffered two similar periods last season but quickly bounced back to hold on to third spot despite having one of the smallest squads in the league, and Lasley would take pride in proving the doubters wrong again.

“I think people have been waiting for our bubble to burst for a wee while now,” the 33-year-old said.

“The last few years we have probably managed to get a level of consistency that has surprised a lot of people. We just keep working hard. We had a couple of blips last season where it seemed to be a concentrated period of two or three poor results but we managed to bounce back and that’s what we are looking to do again.

“It’s not as if we have been playing that badly, it’s just a case of trying to get that win and it’s amazing, if you get a win it can put you right back on track and all of a sudden you are looking to the next game with real confidence.

“So Friday is a chance to get back in front of our home fans and hopefully get a win that can get us going again and hopefully start off a run of results.”