Motherwell midfielder Chris Cadden confident of avoiding relegation play-offs
Motherwell midfielder Chris Cadden was able to enjoy last season's relegation play-offs from the stand - but he has no intention of experiencing them for real this year.
The teenager savoured two emphatic wins for his hometown team at Ibrox and Fir Park as Motherwell beat Rangers 6-1 on aggregate to avoid the drop from the Ladbrokes Premiership.
Cadden was fresh from helping Albion Rovers win the League Two title on a loan spell and the celebrations continued for him right through to the end of May.
But this season he appreciates the Premiership play-offs will be a bigger challenge for the team that finishes in 11th spot, and he is determined to ensure Motherwell pull away in the coming weeks.
Ahead of the visit of Partick Thistle, Cadden said: "I was out on loan at Rovers at the time but I'd finished so I was in the stand watching them.
"I think this time it's different because look at the teams in the Championship now, Hibs, Rangers, Falkirk, Queen of the South. They are better than the Rangers team last year.
"If you look at Hibs last Tuesday, they are beating Hearts who are flying in the Premiership.
"So we just want to stay out of the play-offs, because whoever is in the play-offs will be in for a real, tough game."
The 19-year-old is confident ninth-placed Motherwell will pull clear despite a run of one win in eight league games in 2016.
Last-minute goals have cost them dear in four of those matches, as well as seeing them dumped out of the William Hill Scottish Cup by Inverness, and Cadden knows the victory is all that matters against Thistle.
"We have just got to get three points," he said. "We are down there in a dogfight. The bottom six is so tight.
"Performances have been good but we've not been getting results, but the mindset now is we need to get results. We need to get three points and get away from the relegation spots. It's so tight that a couple of wins can get you away from it.
"I think we will be okay because you look at the squad, we have experience and youth. We've got really good players and I don't think we should be anywhere near relegation, and I don't think we will be at the end of the season."
Partick Thistle boss Alan Archibald is hoping to capitalise if Motherwell's recent record of conceding late goals leads to nervousness in the Fir Park ranks on Saturday.
Since the turn of the year the Steelmen have conceded six last-gasp goals, five of which have changed the outcome of the match, including a goal in stoppage time which gave the Jags a 1-0 Ladbrokes Premiership win earlier in the month at Firhill and a stoppage-time goal at St Johnstone last week which turned a draw into a defeat.
Archibald said: "I have been there. Motherwell did it to us a couple of times. In our first season up we went through maybe eight or nine games like that as well.
"It doesn't matter what you do as a coach, something just happens and they end up slipping deeper. The more cautious you are about it, the deeper you get and you maybe lose a goal.
"If it is something we can use towards the game, hopefully we can. But I have been in that position and I don't envy them."
Thistle, sitting in eighth place on the back of a 2-0 home win over St Johnstone on Tuesday night, have the tightest defence away from home in the league having lost only 11 goals on their travels, although they have played up to three fewer games than some of the other sides.
That statistic gives Archibald confidence as he looks at three away games on the bounce.
The trip to St Johnstone in midweek comes before they face third-placed Hearts at Tynecastle next week.
The former Thistle defender, however, is also aware that his side are the lowest scorers in the league with 24 goals in 24 games.
He said: "We are trying to get that balance right. Last season we had a good goalscoring record, it was one of the best in the bottom six.
"But it has gone the other way. We know we need to improve. We are probably the worst scorers in the league.
"That is why we brought a couple of players in at the end of the window, Antonio German and Aidan Nesbitt, to try and boost what we have already got because we need goals, we need goals to stay up in this league.
"We can't always rely on the back four keeping clean sheets."
Source: PAR
