McGhee Impressed His Motherwell Men Make Mark In The Right Box In Second Half

Motherwell manager Mark McGhee held his own half-time referendum in the Motherwell dressing room, and was pleased his yes/no question was answered positively by his players.

The visiting side had been on top for large swathes of the first half, but trailed to Adam Rooney's header at the interval. McGhee asked his men if they could bounce back and compete with a team he rates as Premiership title challengers.

Substitutes Lionel Ainsworth and Scott McDonald combined for the equaliser and his side could easily have won the game were it not for the outstanding efforts of Aberdeen goalkeeper Dan Ward.

McGhee said: The question I asked at half-time was whether they had the character and desire to come back against Aberdeen and take something from the game. I actually wrote on the board Yes and No, and let's see what the answer is when we come in. That was the team talk.

When we came in at the end of the game, it was a yes. They answered a lot of questions for me today. We play Kilmanock next week, and we have to see the same sort of desire for that.''

McGhee felt hard done by to have fallen behind in the first instance, commenting: I was delighted with the performance, but disappointed with the nature of their goal. We didn't feel it was a free-kick, and in actual fact Adam Rooney was offside. It was a double whammy.''

Asked of Ward's string of saves in injury time, he added Without a great save at our end we could have gone away without any points, so it works both ways. We had opportunities to win the game, but our goalkeeper has made an excellent save as well.''

Aberdeen boss Derek McInnes felt his side could have taken all three points but was pleased to see a performance which bore more similarity to the performances

Aberdeen have shown themselves capable of this term. However, he felt his side could and should have seen off Motherwell's challenge.

He said Once we got the goal, I thought we created a few chances in the second half. There was a lot of pace and decisiveness about our play, and a lot of familiarity about the performance. We looked more like ourselves than we have in recent weeks.

That said, in any game you have to get the second goal, and we reminded the players at half-time that we needed to go for the second goal. I think there was an over-eagerness from Motherwell to get the equaliser and that gave us opportunities to pick them off - but we didn't.''

Dons defender Mark Reynolds did have the ball in the net during the second half, but saw his effort ruled out by the offside flag, and McInnes added: We felt Mark's goal should have stood. We've watched it again, and for me he's onside.

We lost a poor goal which is something we've seen over the last few weeks. We still have a job to do in terms of meeting our responsibilities, and it was far too cheap a goal to lose.''