Motherwell boss Jens Berthel Askou was far from happy with aspects of his side’s play despite thumping Livingston 3-0 at Fir Park.
Goals from Elliot Watt and Emmanuel Longelo, either side of an Apostolos Stamatelopoulos penalty, saw the Lanarkshire side keep their grip on third place in the William Hill Scottish Premiership. The win also stretched their unbeaten run to eight league games.
Callum Ward had to make a breathtaking save to deny Livingston’s Mohamadou Susoho at 1-0, and Askou is looking for more.
The Dane said: “I’m very pleased and it has been a good time so far, but far from everything has been perfect. And there were plenty of mistakes today that if we hadn’t delivered these three moments of sharpness, then I would have been furious with all of the waste there was in this game.
“We need to get back on the pitch and work even harder, and with that knowledge that every time we win, draw, or get a good result, then the opposition will try to make it even harder for us, and that’s what we’re going to face now.”
Motherwell made seven changes from the side that drew 0-0 at Falkirk on Wednesday, with Askou adding: “There are things that speak against it – breaking the rhythm, do we have the relations? Do we break the flow and so on? But I think now we’ve been together for almost six months and I have mixed them up so many times in training, that it doesn’t cost the flow or the dynamic of what we do in training.
“I’ve seen it in friendlies as well, when we’ve played in international breaks and we have changed earlier in the season, maybe not as much as we have done now. It’s very rare that I have seen it cause a lot of problems for us, so I had a feeling that it might work.”
Livingston boss David Martindale had no problem with the result.
He said: “It felt like a 3-0 game for me. I felt in the first half, bar the goal, there were a couple of counters where we shoot ourselves in the foot, and we know they’re good at that.
“We created a couple of good chances ourselves, Tete Yengi had a good chance, Cristian Montano had one at the back post with the header, and Lewis Smith had one that went by the keeper’s right-hand post.
“We went in 1-0 down, tweaked it slightly, and I thought it was a wee bit more even at that point.
“In the second half we stretched their backline and managed to get a couple of penetrating runs in behind, and then we gave away a horrific goal, and the game becomes very hard at that point, 2-0 away from home.”
