Signing Nadir Ciftci from Celtic would be '˜extremely difficult'

Motherwell manager Stephen Robinson admitted it would be difficult to bring Nadir Ciftci back to Fir Park after the striker ended his season with a double in a 3-0 win against Hamilton.

Nadir Ciftci netted twice as Motherwell defeated Hamilton. Picture: SNS

The on-loan Celtic forward opened the scoring on the rebound before producing a brilliant piece of individual skill to pave the way for his second in the 70th minute.

The forward came close to a hat-trick when he thundered a 30-yard strike against the bar after Tom Aldred had netted his first Motherwell goal.

Ciftci - who cannot face Celtic next week in the William Hill Scottish Cup final - still has a year left on his Parkhead contract, but is not in Brendan Rodgers’ plans.

However, Robinson is not hopeful of sorting another deal.

“When Nadir plays like that he is unplayable,” said Robinson, whose team sealed seventh place in the Ladbrokes Premiership.

“He is a special talent. He’s not fit. If he got fit and we got him fit then he could do that week in, week out.

“But he’s a super boy. People told me not to sign him, people tried to put me off him as a character, and I can refute that completely. He has been great around the club.”

When asked about the prospect of re-signing him, Robinson said: “We can maybe look at it, but the financial gap with what we could pay him would maybe make that extremely difficult.

“But he’s a boy I have so much time for and a lot of respect for. With Nadir’s quality, we were able to rest the two boys up front (Ryan Bowman and Curtis Main) who had little niggles.

“A lot of our changes were based on people carrying niggles rather than wholesale changes.”

Robinson made eight changes, with only Aldred, the fit-again Richard Tait and Liam Grimshaw likely to start against Celtic, but they dominated from start to finish against a Hamilton side who ultimately avoided a relegation play-off on goal difference.

The visitors were lacklustre and never threatened Well goalkeeper Russell Griffiths as they suffered a ninth defeat in 10 matches.

And the performance reinforced manager Martin Canning’s belief that major changes are required over the summer.

“If you watched that and what’s happened over the last wee bit, there is a lot of work to do over the summer if we are going to be competitive next season,” he said.

“That was poor, too many players didn’t play well enough. We’ve got a lot of injuries and gave a lot of boys an opportunity to go out and play, but I still expected more that what I saw.

“We were very soft, we were second to most things and it was disappointing. But what it does do is make it clear in everyone’s mind what we have to go and do now.

“It was an opportunity for boys to show they want to be at Hamilton Accies and play in the Premiership. And, for me too many were not quite at that level.”