Motherwell's Barry Maguire ruled out for the rest of the season

Motherwell midfielder Barry Maguire has been ruled out of action for the rest of the season through injury.

The 23-year-old suffered a torn quad muscle during his side’s match against Hearts at the end of January. His attempts at recovery have been unsuccessful so far and he’ll now undergo surgery to fix the issue.

Manager Graham Alexander said Maguire won’t return before the end of the Premiership campaign but backed the midfielder to come back stronger from the setback.

“Barry is going to miss the rest of the season unfortunately,” Alexander said.

“He has had to have a small operation on the muscle in his quad.

“I feel for him because he does everything right day in, day out. He has been striving for a couple of seasons to nail down a spot in the first team and he had done that with his performances.

“But if there’s one thing I know about Baz, he will come back stronger and better and more focused on being a better player.”

Motherwell currently sit sixth in the table and are at home to Ross County on Wednesday night. The team haven’t won in the Premiership this year but have fought from being behind to claim points, including against Rangers on Sunday. Alexander is keen for the team to get in front but says it isn’t too important when the goals come.

“It’s something we have tried to instil day in, day out, since we came in but it’s down to the players to keep believing in themselves and each other,” he said. “We have players that can come off the bench and impact games.

“But it comes from the character and personality of the players to be able to come back.

“It is about the scoreline at the end of the game, not who scores first. The stats tell you that the first goal is quite important, but not game defining.

“Ideally we want to take the lead but it was good to see the players show that unity.

“The game is about 95 minutes. We talk about regardless of if we score, they score, we maintain what we have to do and focus on on everything we have talked about or worked on in the days prior to the game.

“Even at 2-0 the other day we didn’t want to go hell for leather, we still had to have real good defensive discipline to make sure we didn’t give anything else away, to give us chance of getting a goal that would change the momentum.

“But on the other side, we scored after three minutes against Ross County and played terribly after that, because we took our foot off the pedal.

“There is always a focus in our minds regardless of what the score is about what is needed for the rest of the game, and you have never won or lost until the final whistle.”