Motherwell endure 'nightmare' October - 'nobody is going to help us out'

Motherwell goalkeeper Liam Kelly provided a simple one-word answer when asked to reflect upon his team’s fortunes in October - “Nightmare”.

Motherwell goalkeeper Liam Kelly makes a save to deny Rangers' Joe Aribo during Sunday's Premiership match at Fir Park. (Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)

His grim assessment was understandable as he delivered it following a Halloween horror show for the Fir Park club as they lost 6-1 at home to Rangers on Sunday.

After a promising start to the season, the wheels are threatening to come off for Graham Alexander’s side.

Having picked up just one point from their five league games in October, conceding 14 goals in the process, Motherwell have slipped out of the Premiership top six for the first time since August.

Motherwell goalkeeper Liam Kelly is beaten by Fashion Sakala as the Rangers striker completes his hat-trick in Sunday's Premiership match at Fir Park. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

With a trip to face Aberdeen at Pittodrie next weekend, Kelly recognises that the slump has to be addressed quickly if the Steelmen are to avoid the prospect of being dragged into a relegation battle.

“That points total from October isn’t good enough,” said the 25-year-old. “We need to stay positive. Nobody is going to help us out, we have to help ourselves and we need to stick together as a team.

“We have got Aberdeen before the international break then Hearts after the break. They are really difficult games. We can only help ourselves and we need to stick together as a group and hopefully we can turn it around.

“I think we need to get better. We need to improve, myself included. I am no different to anyone else. I need to get better. We all need to get better because every game is difficult in this league.

“It is a difficult league, results can go either way and there is not anybody cut adrift at the bottom. It is a really close league so we need to improve, we need to get better and give a better account of ourselves than that.”

Kelly, who hopes to retain his place in the Scotland squad for the World Cup qualifiers against Moldova and Denmark this month, was left bruised by the experience of such a drubbing by a rampant Rangers.

“It is so hard to take for me as a goalkeeper to lose six goals,” he added. “I can only focus on myself. It was not good enough. I would like to have affected the goals more but I don’t know if I could have done anything differently to stop them.

“We were in the game before half-time and then lost two quickfire goals and never really recovered. We were still in the game, got a man sent off and then it was game over.

“We need to try and stay in the game longer. We just got beat 6-1 so we can’t really say anything. It is easy to come out and talk and say this or that but it is not good enough. That is the bottom line. We need to try and improve.

“There are no positives at all to take from it. We have shown we can play against Rangers before and the two games previously I have played against them, we have drawn 1-1 in both.

“I am well aware that when Rangers are at their best, they are very difficult to stop. I get that - but from our point of view it just wasn’t good enough.”

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