WE have seen the nice side of Motherwell at times this season, but now it’s time for the nasty to come to the fore.

That was the cry of stand-in skipper Scott McDonald who has ordered faltering Well to wise up if they want to avoid being embroiled in another relegation battle.

Saturday’s 3-0 defeat away to Ross County saw Mark McGhee’s team sink to second bottom in the Ladbrokes Premiership, the same position they finished in last season.

Their latest loss – the ninth in 15 league games - left little to be positive about for McDonald and his team-mates given the Staggies rarely looked troubled during a poor 90 minutes.

And the Australian forward – who was standing in as captain with Keith Lasley, Stephen McManus and Stevie Hammell all out – has made his feelings clear on how they must improve.

“We are in games all the time but we are losing games on inches rather than miles so we need to get that right if we are to have any chance of staying out of trouble,” he said. “We need to smarten our ideas up and be a bit more difficult to beat.

“To get street wise you have to be a bit nastier. We need winners and you can’t teach people that, They have got to want it themselves – to get to that ball. Every inch is important,. We are in a fight again at the moment and it’s as simple as that. We are down there for those reasons – those bits and pieces.

“But I’m confident that if we can get that right we’ve got bags of ability in the squad.”

McDonald acknowledged that the scenario facing Motherwell is nowhere near the crisis that was gripping Fir Park during large parts of that season.

There has been few occasions this campaign where the team from Lanarkshire have been completely played off the park. Indeed, even on Saturday, it was lapses in concentration rather than wave upon wave of County attacks that eventually broke them down.

Motherwell also have another 18 games to play before the split, so their forward was understandably keen to dampen any notion that panic is about to set in.

McDonald said: “We’re there at the moment but there’s plenty of football to be played. We’d like to be higher up the league but there’s no real panic or worry.

“But there’s no question that there’s a lot of hard work to be done. It’s about consistency as well. That breeds confidence as well.”

He added: “It was probably tighter than the score-line suggests. But we have to do certain things a bit better and be more street wise. It’s as simple as that.

“We started well but the goal took a bit out of us. Then we came back out at the start of second half and were probably the better team. But there’s been too many days like that.

“Eveyrbody is working really hard in training and we’ll get back out there on Monday and start from scratch again. We’ve got to pick ourselves up and get on with it. There’s a long way to go this season. There’s a new manager and everything’s been positive up to now.

“There’s not much between the teams apart from three or four who have been hugely consistent and it’s up to us to be a lot stronger, especially away from home when you have to be resolute and difficult to beat.”