James McPake lavished praise on his Dundee players after they beat Motherwell 1-0 in the Premier Sports Cup at Dens Park.

Just a week ago, the Dark Blues suffered a devastating 6-0 defeat in the Scottish Premiership at Celtic Park.

However, McPake’s men bounced back strongly against the Steelmen to edge through to the quarter-finals of the cup thanks to a late Lee Ashcroft goal.

McPake said: “I think we had a few tests today. First one was how do you bounce back from a really heavy defeat?

“Right from the off we were in their faces and were going after them. We were on the front foot, getting after the ball.

“The next test is are you going to go in front or go behind? If you go behind, do you crumble? We never got to see that.

“But to go in front, the test then is can you hold on to it which showed real character and bravery to keep playing.

“I think it was the 15th corner we scored from which again showed our positivity. When you rewind back less than a week ago, we lost six at Celtic.

“So when you talk about character and you talk about resilience, we have people who will stand up and be counted.

“I saw that in the dressing room today and that’s what pleased me the most because for the last seven minutes they threw everything at us.

“But looking at it we were never really under pressure. We are in the quarter-finals and we will see who we get.”

Motherwell had chances to take the lead before Ashcroft’s 78th-minute winner, most notably when Connor Shields hit the crossbar in the first half.

The travelling fans made their displeasure known at full-time but Steelmen boss Graham Alexander urged the supporters to stick behind his new-look team.

He said: “We are out of the cup and we didn’t play to the levels we expect and work for.

“We were pretty good in the first half without taking the opportunities we got but we lost our way a bit and fell to a set-piece. Losing the game to that is really disappointing.

“We want to win games every single week but we know the support gets disappointed when we get beat.

“I wouldn’t expect anything different but it won’t change the way I approach training for next week’s game.

“The players need that backing, I need that backing, we need that support together, it is not just one way.”