“It was an awful performance.

“And a total contrast to how we’ve been of late.

“I’ve been very pleased with how we’ve been performing in terms of getting results and have shown real resilience and kept plenty clean sheets.

“I thought today we were well beaten all over the pitch.

“Two of the three goals were calamitous with the first from our corner kick to ten seconds later picking the ball out our own net. It’s something you can’t anticipate and it was so disappointing.

“The second goal is a set play and we’re a bit light as you can see. Without Devlin there we lack a bit of size sometimes, but we saw Johnson wanting to get on the end of it a bit more than us wanting to keep the ball out the net.

“We had a couple of little flurries in the first half, but it counts for nothing when you’re losing the game.

“We looked for a response at half time, but the subs didn’t really do anything of note to change the game and the third goal was every bit as disappointing. We cleared the first header, didn’t deal with the next one and there’s a ricochet that falls to the man who sticks it away. It was no more than Motherwell deserved.

“From our own point of view, it wasn’t something we’d expect to drop to from our performance and we’ve got a lot of work to do ahead of the cup final.

“I know we’re capable of better and I know we can produce better.

“We’re in a cup final for a reason and that’s because we’re a good team, but we weren’t a good team today.

“We’ve got work to do and we need more responsibility, a better level of performance individually and need to be less gracious in giving more opportunities and not to be self-inflicting.

“Steve (Robinson) and his team took a sore one against Rangers a couple of weeks ago and he got a response today, so I’ll be looking for something similar from my own team next week.

“My players are honest with themselves and on the back of that performance it was nowhere near the required level for us to come here and compete and get a result.

“Next week will require a greater level of performance and the game itself will demand that.

“Normally the bigger the game the bigger the performance and hopefully it brings the best out of my players.”