Mark McGhee feels frustrated as lack of energy costs Motherwell against Saints

Motherwell manager Mark McGhee will examine why his team lacked a spark against St Johnstone after falling to a 2-1 defeat in their first Ladbrokes Premiership home game.

Motherwell took half an hour to get going but then took the lead two minutes after the break when Chris Cadden tapped home Richard Tait's deflected cutback.

But Scott McDonald missed a decent chance before Danny Swanson levelled in the 56th minute when he cut inside and fired through Craig Samson's legs after Motherwell failed to get back in shape quickly at a Saints throw-in.

The winner came with 15 minutes left when Steven MacLean nodded home after Samson had spilled Chris Kane's strike, and Motherwell never really looked like coming back.

McGhee was without the injured Steven Hammell, Carl McHugh and Louis Moult, while the half-fit Jacob Blyth and James McFadden were on the bench, and he admitted the midweek thrashing at Celtic Park might have affected his players.

St Johnstone were by far the better team,'' he said.We just lacked energy, we seemed a bit flat all over the pitch.

At 1-0 we could easily have gone 2-0 up and it would have been ridiculous from a St Johnstone point of view. I think that summed up our day, he fact we weren't able to go 2-0 when we had such a good chance.

But we have had three testing games in a week, at Kilmarnock and Celtic and now this one. So we just have to work out why we were as lacking in energy as we were and recover in time for next week.''

When asked about the effects of the Celtic Park loss, McGhee said: Not so much a hangover in terms of the fact we lost the game 5-0 but a hangover from the fact we had a physically tough game and only had two days to recover.

St Johnstone had a tough game as well but they had a positive result and that can leave you feeling slightly different. Definitely to some degree our performance was affected by what happened on Wednesday night but it wasn't the major factor.''

Saints showed no ill effects from their Betfred Cup victory over Hearts and Swanson again hit the heights following his midweek double.

The former Dundee United midfielder has changed his diet and been doing extra training and manager Tommy Wright has seen the difference.

Probably the main difference this year, he's a lot fitter and he's not getting any niggly wee injuries, which is important,'' the Saints boss said.

And he's doing a shift as well defensively. He has to, we can't afford to have him playing high and wide all the time. He's always involved in the game and I think that helps him.

But there's never any doubting his quality in the last third. He is right up there with some of the most gifted players in the country at the moment.''