Former Motherwell defender Brian Martin says the club were justified in sacking Ian Baraclough, and he has questioned the outgoing manager's tactics.

Martin keeps tabs on Motherwell where he remains a huge fans’ favourite after a successful spell playing there in the mid-nineties.

Whilst he admired Baraclough’s eye for a player during his tenure, he believes that he never found a formation that played to their strengths.

He also blasted his decision to sign a whole host of strikers only to play just one of them up-front at any given time.

“I saw Motherwell a lot towards the end of last season and I watched them against Hamilton last Saturday, and I thought some of his tactical decisions were questionable,” he said.

“He was wrong to take Lionel Ainsworth off in that game, he was their most dangerous player, and people started to question why he was doing things like that.

“You wanted to see guys like Keith Lasley and Liam Grimshaw sitting in front of the defence get the ball wide to Marvin Johnson and Ainsworth, but it never really came to fruition.

“That’s got to come from the bench. The manager has got to demand that the ball gets to the most dangerous players.

“It wasn’t happening and I couldn’t see him instructing his players from the side-lines, which you have to do. I don’t think he was doing that.

“I like some of the players he brought to the club, there’s a good squad there, but he just didn’t find the right formation to get the best out of them.

“When I looked at the team against Hamilton I was quite optimistic, but then it was hard to see what the formation did for getting the ball into dangerous areas.

“I don’t like teams that go with one up front, particularly when he’s signed lots of strikers.

“Scott McDonald is a guy that loves to have people playing around him and loves to feed off scraps, but they weren’t getting the ball in the box and they weren’t getting forward enough.

“McDonald has been playing too deep, you want to get him in the box where he can hurt teams.

“The team should be built around getting supply to those centre-forwards, and I don’t think the way he had set them up achieved that nearly often enough.”

As a fellow former Fir Park stalwart at centre-half, Martin believes that interim manager Stephen Craigan is the right man to steady the ship

He said: “Stephen Craigan has experience of playing in the Premier League which is a huge plus. He knows what to expect and can tell the players what to expect when they come up against certain teams or situations.

“I think you’ve got to have a bit of insight into Scottish football.

“He would be well-placed to get the defence sorted, and one of the main things he has to do is establish a regular defence.

“You cannot have a different defence week-in, week-out because a defence needs to play together and be a solid unit.

“Under Ian Baraclough the defence was getting chopped and changed a lot.

“Craggo was a defender and he will knows what is required in the position.

“There’s a good bunch of guys there and I think there’s enough experience to sort out the defence and the formation as a whole between them.”