McGhee still rues not beating under strength Accies

Louis Moult’s injury time header rescued a 1-1 draw for Motherwell but manager McGhee reckons his side missed a trick by not getting the full three points.

“Accies were without Darian MacKinnon and Dougie Imrie,” McGhee said.

“They are a couple of their more important players.

“We played them without their strongest team and didn’t beat them so we missed an opportunity.”

McGhee said that Motherwell had played well in a lot of games this season yet ended up with no points.

But the 2-1 win at Inverness Caley and the dramatic draw at Accies had provided a real tonic.

“We got a great result at Inverness and it would have been a real setback if we had then lost the Accies game,” McGhee said.

“We went down to 10 men after just half an hour and found it difficult.

“All things said, it was still a great result for us against our local rivals which keeps us four points ahead of them.

“The draw was really, really important and thoroughly deserved.”

McGhee dismissed any notion that Motherwell had been fortunate that Accies hadn’t take one of many scoring chances when 1-0 up.

“It was a bit of luck for Accies that we didn’t put our chances away earlier on,” he added.

“It is swings and roundabouts. We had the opportunity to build a right good lead before they even scored. Later on we took off a left back, pushed everybody forward and chased back when we had to.

“I think we would have won the game if we’d kept 11 men on.”

After a free Saturday last weekend following a week off, Motherwell again have no fixture this Saturday but they will return to action in a William Hill Scottish Cup fourth round tie against Rangers at Ibrox on Saturday, January 21.