Motherwell may be trailing German side Frieburg 3-1 before Thursday's Conference League play-off second leg but manager Alfred Johansson says his side still "need to stay true" to themselves as much as possible.

"The message has been that this week we're going to try to do our thing," said the Swede.

"I mean, when we do our thing, that's when we are the best. But I would say that the main thing is that we need to stay true to ourselves as much as possible.

"The mindset is, when we play a game of football, we want to try to do our best to perform with our style of play at top of mind. So, that's what we're here to do, try to do as good as we can."

Johansson also insists he and his squad have learned from last Thursday's defeat at Fir Park and will try to improve on some aspects of their play.

"Sometimes I think maybe people tend to put more emphasis on the result than what we do ourselves," he said. "So, obviously we want to do well, we want to do great results, but we know what we can control is our performances and our behaviours on the pitch.

"It's mainly that we actually can do quite well and that we should reach out for that as much as possible and don't try to be protective in periods or whatever is the case, or sit deep."

While Motherwell had a weekend off from competitive action, their opponents put in a convincing display in the German Cup, beating Fortuna Dusseldorf 5-1.

However, Johansson is not overly concerned by that and believes opting not to play was "needed after a very thick period of trainings and games and travels", adding: "Let's see how good it was."

Motherwell look to be facing an uphill task at the Europa Park Stadium and while Johansson could take some hope from Celtic's Champions League play-off opponents LASK and their achievement in overturning a heavy deficit, it appears he's not one for that.

"Well, I mean, it's one million of these stories from the history of football that you can use if you want to seek inspiration, absolutely," he added.

"But I think we're better off focusing on what we have to do.

"All of our players and the staff, we believe that we have a lot of quality and we believe that we have the capacity to do well and that is where our focus are."

Regan Charles-Cook, Stephen O'Donnell, Tom Sparrow, Apostolos Stamatelopoulos and Dylan Williams have travelled with Motherwell and are in contention, though manager Johansson says all have to be "managed".