Motherwell 3-0 St Johnstone: McCall quietly reinforces his pedigree with Motherwell's dismissal of goal-shy Saints

FOR a club of modest means, Motherwell continue to rack up some very impressive results. A weekend after they made sure of a place in the SPL's top six, they crushed St Johnstone to reach their first Scottish Cup final in 20 years, and so are just one game away from a fourth successive European campaign.

Indeed, on the evidence of Saturday's semi-final, they are the best pound-for-pound squad, in financial terms, in Scotland. Dundee United might stake a claim to that title given their higher place in the league, but in head to heads Stuart McCall's team have the edge, with their four victories this season including an emphatic win, also 3-0, in the quarter-final of the cup.

When any club loses their manager in mid-season, as Motherwell did when Craig Brown moved on to Aberdeen, there is always a worry that they may lose their momentum. Instead, McCall has given them added impetus, and moulded a team who combine hard work with more than a little style.

At times they were made to look good by a flat St Johnstone side, but the scoreline, far from flattering them, if anything failed to reflect their domination of the match. Indeed, only during a lively opening spell, in which Motherwell goalkeeper Darren Randolph needed to look alert to palm a Danny Invincibile header over his crossbar, did the Perth team enjoy anything approaching parity. If that incident hinted at an open contest, it was misleading, as from the instant Motherwell took the lead two minutes later it became clear there could be only one winner.

The goal was a simple affair: a cross from the right by Tom Hateley, and a back-post header straight into the net by Stephen Craigan, the centre-half's first goal in five years. The only embellishments were the errors by St Johnstone which allowed Motherwell to take a straightforward lead. First Peter Enckelman flapped at the cross, got his positioning wrong, and failed to cut it out; and then the defence compounded the goalkeeper's mistake by leaving Craigan unmarked.

If they were guilty of indecision and disorganisation then, they displayed the same vices even more glaringly less than ten minutes later, when Jamie Murphy doubled his team's lead. The 21-year-old, voted the player of the round for his quarter-final performance against holders Dundee United, took up possession on the right and made progress infield.

With Steven Anderson and Michael Duberry succeeding only in getting in each other's way, not a single defender put in a tackle or even a block on Murphy, leaving him free to score with a right-foot shot from 20 yards into the left corner of goal.

From then until half-time play was dominated by Motherwell. With half an hour played Keith Lasley came close to extending his team's lead with a shot in the box which went narrowly wide of Enckelman's goal, and moments later Murphy again came close. On this occasion, too, he ran through the St Johnstone defence virtually unchallenged, only to shoot wide.

If those near-misses were a warning to St Johnstone that further damage was imminent unless they made a drastic improvement, it was a warning they did not heed. Six minutes before the break John Sutton made it three, playing an aerial one-two with Francis Jeffers then firing in dipping shot from 30 yards which Enckelman could not keep out.

It could have been even worse for Saints on the verge of half-time when Sutton had another chance after yet more defensive indecision, but this time the Motherwell striker was off target. It was obvious that to get back into the match the Perth team would need to pull off a remarkable transformation in the second half, but it was not so clear why the introduction of Jordan Robertson for Collin Samuel was regarded as a potential catalyst for that transformation. Even accepting that Samuel had been ineffectual, a straight striker-for-striker swap was never going to do enough on its own: when teams score as infrequently as St Johnstone have been doing of late, they tend to have more deep-rooted problems than just the odd misfiring striker. In the event, Robertson's only significant intervention in the game was a foul on Shaun Hutchinson for which he was booked.

A Danny Grainger free-kick was saved by Randolph ten minutes after the restart, and the keeper then tipped over a Davidson chip as St Johnstone enjoyed their best spell of the game. But they could not turn that transient pressure into even the single goal which would be required to sow the seeds of doubt in Motherwell's minds, and by the hour mark a lot of their fight had gone.

The same applied to the leaders as well, as the match took on a very similar pattern to Celtic's recent league win over Hibernian, when they were unfortunate to be only 3-0 up at half-time but faded after the break and ended up 3-1 victors. Hibs' goal that night came from a penalty, and in Saturday's second half that looked like being St Johnstone's best hope of scoring. The couple of appeals they did have, however, were rightly brushed aside by referee Iain Brines, and the nearest they came to breaking their duck was a Davidson header nine minutes from time which came back off the crossbar with Randolph beaten.

MAN OF THE MATCH

Stuart McCall: Takes team into final

Jamie Muphy (Motherwell)

The wide midfielder took his goal well, could have had at least one more, and was the key creative influence in a first-rate performance by his side.