Stuart Kettlewell says Motherwell have to get back to basics on Saturday to avenge a Scottish Cup exit at St Johnstone last weekend.

The Fir Park club head back to Perth for another crack at Simo Valakari’s Saints side, who sent Motherwell crashing out of the Scottish Cup fourth round.

Kettlewell makes no bones about the fact that it was a poor performance and result – and reckons they’ve been below-par for their last three games – but they’re working hard to rectify that for the Premiership clash.

He said: “We need to play better, for a start. We need to start the game better. We’ve not started the game well, particularly, in the last three for us.

“That’s never an instruction from a manager to players, or from team-mate to team-mate – we always want to start games well.

“By and large when we do, we’re really competitive, we’ve found ourselves picking up plenty of points, finding wins and good results.

“We have to start the game better, we have to play with more confidence, defend better as a team, and attack better as a team.

“I know that sounds really simple, but it’s something we’ve been working really hard on since Saturday.

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“We were all disappointed by the result and the performance, there’s no hiding from that, and we’re not trying to kid anybody on that we played well enough on Saturday.

“That’s not to pacify any of our supporters or anybody else – we know that before anybody else.”

Kettlewell added: “We put an awful lot into this, and when you do that you need to have that honesty, that lack of ego to understand where you’ve gone wrong and how you make that better.

“Rest assured, we’ve spent a lot of time in a video room, getting players to understand that they are better than what they showed – they know that themselves – and to try and get us to connect and click with how we want to play and what we want to bring to a game.

“We have another chance to do that on Saturday. That will never get us back in the cup, but you’ve got an opportunity seven days later, against the same opponent, at the same venue, to try and in some small way make up for what was a bad day for us.”

When asked if it’s a positive that Motherwell have another crack at St Johnstone so quickly, Kettlewell said: “It’s only a positive if you approach it right at the time that it counts.

“We’ve genuinely had a really good week, I’m seeing players that look far more confident, who have been able to shake off the disappointment at the weekend, and that’s great, that’s what we’re working towards.

“But we have to be able to show that emotional intelligence, come 3pm on Saturday.

“You need to be able to deliver at the time when it counts.”