"We ticked the boxes without being perfect" - Motherwell boss Graham Alexander assesses 1-0 win at Queen's Park

Steven Lawless’s sole strike on 14 minutes was the difference between ’Well and the Spiders, as he turned his man and fired into the corner after set-up play between Barry Maguire and Tony Watt.

’Well gaffer Graham Alexander said post match that he was delighted with the result, telling the club website: “We’ve not picked up any injuries and we’ve got 90 minutes into a considerable amount of players who need that.

"The first half we took the lead. After that we sort of came off it and I thought they had the majority of the play and some good chances.

"We had too many turnovers in possession, we weren’t patient enough with the ball.

"We spoke to the players at half-time and I thought we were much better after the break.

"The lads moved the ball much better, found the pockets of space, found the space in behind, we had one or two opportunities to score.

"As a night’s work for the boxes we had to tick we ticked them all but without being perfect.

"Queen’s Park were good, fair play to them. They’ve got players used to playing at a higher level and you could see that.

"I think they’ve been back five and a half weeks so they’re probably ahead of us in terms of that togetherness and understanding of how to play.

"It was a real good test for us.”

Alexander revealed that the build-up to the game hadn’t been ideal for ’Well with some players having missed chunks of pre-season training due to illness.

"We brought in some new players and are getting to understand what we want from them,” he added.

"We’ve worked them hard in the training knowing that they’re going into the games fatigued. But we know that come the season starting and months into it, we’ll have a real fit group of players, resilient and who know how we want to play.

"We know there’s room for improvement and there’s lots of work to do.”