Stuart Kettlewell says Motherwell will not get carried away with impressive form

Stuart Kettlewell told his Motherwell players not to let themselves get carried away with their impressive run of form after they made it six wins from seven matches in all competitions by defeating 10-man Hibernian 2-1 at Easter Road.

Andy Halliday scored an 80th-minute winner after Apostolos Stamatelopoulos’ first goal since joining Well in the summer was swiftly cancelled out by Hibs winger Junior Hoilett.

As a result of their strong form in the early part of the season, Well go into the international break fourth in the William Hill Premiership and with a Premier Sports Cup semi-final against Rangers to look forward to early next month.

“It is a good run of form we’re on but we’re certainly not patting each other on the back and over-celebrating and getting carried away,” said Kettlewell.

“We wanted to start the league campaign really well, which I think we’ve done to this point, and we wanted to go a run in the cup which we’ve done.

“But I need to stress it again that next week we’ll go back to work and we’ll make sure that we’re trying to prepare for what comes next because if you sit there feeling really comfortable with yourself and really happy about yourself and patting each other on the back, then I tend to think that bad things start to come round the corner.

“So we’ll keep our motivation and we’ll keep our desire to try and pick up three points wherever we are, home or away and then we’ve got a semi-final to look forward to, but there’s plenty of football to be played before we get to that.”

Motherwell’s first goal came after Josh Campbell was too slow too track Stamatelopoulos from a cleverly-worked free-kick, while the winner came after Hyeok-kyu Kwon completely switched off while marking Halliday as Kofi Balmer launched a long throw to the edge of the six-yard box.

Hibs boss David Gray – who was annoyed with Nectar Triantis for getting sent off for a second bookable offence at 1-1 – lamented his team’s “unprofessional” defending from set-plays.

“I think nearly every shot they had in the second half – four or five in the second half – all came as a result of a set-piece, which in some situations is unprofessional if it’s just not doing your job, whether it be not tracking your man or not showing that desire to make sure your opponent doesn’t get in front of you,” he said.

“These are big moments in the game. At least 40 per cent of Motherwell’s goals have come from set-pieces. We’ve been in the game long enough to know that set-pieces are huge at every level, but very much so in Scottish football.

“Motherwell carry a huge threat with that. We worked on it all week, we’re aware of the challenges they pose with it, but we didn’t defend them well enough.”