McGhee relishing Euro test

McGhee: Relishing challenge

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Motherwell manager Mark McGhee has spoken of the growing excitement as the club get set to embark on their first European odyssey in 13 years.

The club travel to Nancy to begin their Uefa Cup campaign on Thursday with 'nothing to fear' says the Fir Park boss.

Instead there is 'excitement and impatience' with around 3,000 fans expected to travel to France to cheer the team on.

McGhee believes his side must avoid defeat in the away leg of this first-round tie to have a chance of reaching the group phase.

But he feels their opponents, who sit 14th in Ligue 1, are a 'fairly basic team'.

He said: "I think they are a fairly basic 4-4-1-1 or 4-4-2.

Width

"They have a big centre-forward with a skilful centre-forward playing off him. They play with a bit of width but not out-and-out wingers.

"They have a back four with one full-back who likes to get forward and another who is like a midfielder.

"One centre-half is 6ft 5in and looks as if he can play, the other one is straightforward and aggressive.

"They are a fairly basic team who get the ball out from the back to the centre-forward and play off him.

"I summed up the strength and weaknesses earlier and if I can say something brief then, it's that we have nothing to fear."

But McGhee knows there can be no repeat of Saturday's first-half show against Celtic when his side shipped four goals on the way to a 4-2 defeat.

Play well

"We have got to expect them to play well and if they do play well then we will have to play well if we want to beat them," said McGhee, who has a fitness concern over Stephen Hughes but will take him to France

"We need the same as we produced in the second half of the Celtic game and the Hibs game and Dundee United game before that.

"Not losing would be a good result. I think anything else possibly won't be good enough. I think we have got to go there and not lose."

McGhee, a member of Aberdeen's triumphant European Cup Winners' Cup team in 1983, added: "There is excitement and impatience. We want to get on the plane and get over there. We want to see the place, we want to train, we want the game and we want to see if we are good enough."

But he brushed off suggestions that their journey would be an inconvenience given their 49-seater plane will land in Southend on the way to Metz-Nancy airport.

"We are only going to northern France," he said.

"It's not as if we are going to Kazakhstan and stopping off at Tehran. It's two-and-a-half hours on a plane with a bit of refuelling."