Motherwell manager Graham Alexander isn’t interested in a semi-final if it’s just going to be a day out – he wants to win the Scottish Cup.
The Fir Park club travel to Hibs tomorrow in Scottish Cup quarter-final action, looking to book their place in the semi-final of a domestic cup for the first time since 2018. Motherwell have secured their Scottish Premiership safety ahead of this match with a Lanarkshire derby win over Hamilton on Wednesday.
Now they are looking to reach Hampden, but Alexander isn’t interested in the occasion: “For me, the players have risen to these occasions – certainly in my time – and tomorrow is another challenge and another opportunity to do it again. I feel that the players are in a good position, in a good place, mentally, and we have to go there and show what we can do.
“For me, I’ve had experiences of these types of games, as in play-offs and so forth, and getting to the venue is not the ultimate aim, for me, as a player or a manager. Winning the game is the ultimate aim, so getting to a semi-final, playing at Hampden and not winning, I don’t get what we get out of that, personally.
“I think it’s about winning a game of football, and the target for every club that’s still in the competition is to win the competition, it’s not to have a game at Hampden. That’s how I would approach it and that is our aim, our aim is to go to Hibs and try to win a really hard, competitive game of football, regardless of where the next game is.”
Last time out, Motherwell won at Easter Road for the first time since 2013 via a 2-0 scoreline back in February. But they will be without Tony Watt and Jordan Roberts this time, the latter out for the season.
Motherwell changed to 3-5-2 against Hamilton in order to adapt, Alexander praising Roberts after signing for the club on loan from Hearts in January: “There will be different players playing. Tony Watt and Jordan Roberts played that day and we haven’t got them at the moment.
“Jordan won’t be back for us, his injury has taken him out for the foreseeable. I don’t know the full extent of his injury, it isn’t a major one but he is certainly going to miss the rest of the season unfortunately. I am really gutted for the lad because he is a brilliant man, he did an exceptional job for us in his short period here and we are going to miss him because he’s a top guy.
“We had to look at our previous results against Hamilton, we have let ourselves down against teams below us and took heavy slaps and couldn’t afford that to happen again. We had a couple of players missing and felt we had to do something different to win that game, which we did.
“The players adapted to it really well in a short period of time because we didn’t work on it too much, but I trust my players. I trust them to be intelligent enough to understand what we want from them. We keep it quite simple and clear for them and they took it on board and won the game.
“Saturday will be the same, we have to look at how we can beat Hibs and if we have to change something we will. Players have to be adaptable because you might change the shape after half an hour or at half-time. What we have found in the last couple of months is different ways to win games of football and that’s a great skill to have as a group of players.”
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