Stephen O’Donnell knows his Motherwell future will soon become a discussion point – but for now, he’s focusing on a return to form.
Despite picking up two 3-0 wins a couple of weeks ago thanks to Kilmarnock and St Mirren forfeiting their postponed fixtures against the Fir Park side, Motherwell now haven’t won a Premiership tie in 90 minutes since October.
Speaking after the 1-0 defeat to St Mirren, O’Donnell says he and his teammates have some work to do to turn around their poor run of results: “Obviously it’s an internal thing and it’s hard to really put your finger on it. We have bags of quality and even in spells during the game when we click, we look a very good side.
“To have any ambition of staying in the top six and trying to get third or fourth we need to be better at both ends of the pitch. We will come back in and work hard and hopefully put this right.”
The Steelmen are on a tough run of form, winning one of their last five games. O’Donnell says that the way the team are losing games isn’t a cause for concern: “If you watched the Hibs game last week, we have been beat 3-0 and it looks convincing and it looks bad.
“But we were more than comfortable in the game until the first goal and if we take one of our chances as a different game. The rub of the green isn’t going for us and we need to work hard through that.
“At some point it’s going to turn. If we were sitting here and we had no shots at goal or we had conceded lots of goals, we are racking our brains saying ‘we are just not good enough.’ You don’t want to lose these games but there are certainly positives to take and we need to go away and work hard.”
O’Donnell will also have one eye focused on his own situation as his deal at Fir Park. His contract runs out in January and he has admitted conversations have been had. But the Scotland international keeping his cards close to his chest: “It has been mentioned briefly [a contract extension] but again there are far bigger issues.
“We need to get the results back and when the results change we can sit and talk and have conversations about more positive things. I think we need to focus on getting back to winning ways come Saturday.”
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