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Dundee manager Steven Pressley hailed his players for rising to the “frightening” challenge and inflicting a rare defeat on Motherwell.
Pressley’s side became the first team to score two William Hill Premiership goals against Motherwell since October when Finlay Robertson finished off an incisive 84th-minute move.
Motherwell recorded familiar statistics of two-thirds possession, 21 shots at goal, nine of them on target.
But they found goalkeeper Jon McCracken on form and ended up chasing the game after Tony Yogane scored his first professional goal with a back-post finish following some slack marking.
Callum Slattery levelled from a 30-yard free-kick but Dundee always looked dangerous on the break in the second half and sealed a 2-1 win six minutes later.
“It’s one of the things that I think is so refreshing about having a team like Motherwell in our league just now, you’re always learning,” said Pressley, whose side moved 10 points clear of the bottom two.
“They’re asking us all to be better The players responded amazingly well to that.
“Scoring two goals was a big thing for us, because I showed the players some of their statistics, and I was frightened showing them, they were that good.
“The amount of clean sheets they’ve had, the amount of goals they’ve scored, the amount of possession they’ve had, the amount of opportunities they’ve created, it just was never-ending.
“I want us to realise what we’re playing, and I use it also to motivate the players, because they feel they can affect every game.”
Pressley added: “We worked hard to be a little bit more aggressive in our pressure, but Motherwell adapt to situations and they ask so many questions of you.
“Our players had to adapt, understand situations and take ownership and responsibility, and they did that to amazing effect.”
Motherwell manager Jens Berthel Askou admitted they lacked the required sharpness and quality in the final third after failing to cut a 10-point gap on leaders Hearts with their game in hand.
Askou said: “After a lively start we gained control of the game and we had enough moments in the first half to score a goal. And then they caught us off guard.
“We tried to speed up the game and got good pressure, had a lot of crosses in the box. Obviously it becomes an open game at a point where we really need to chase, and after the equaliser we tried to chase even more.
“And they show that it’s a good team that we’ve played against, who have hurt the best teams in this league on transitions.
“They are well coached, well organised, they work extremely hard for each other, they have quality up front and they defend the box with their life.
“So it was difficult for us to break through and create the openings that we chased and chased throughout the game.
“So it became a lot of crosses and we could have wished for some more quality crosses. Even though we tried our best, our best wasn’t quite good enough. They were sharp when they had their moments and we weren’t.”
