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Presumably with Ronseal wood stain.

Don’t quite understand the comments on Wilson - from my view he had a solid game and had some good interchanges with Williams in attacking sense. Noticeable that manager kept him on the pitch for the whole game and trusted him in central role when Longelo came on. he might not be starter ahead of Longelo / Williams but nothing I saw gave me the fear.

I'm not sure why Ewan Wilson is being picked on tonight, I wasn't too impressed with him under Kettlewell, and I presume JBA didn't fancy him either, but he got forward well tonight and linked up with Williams on several occasions, and when he moved to centre half when Longello came on he looked comfortable playing the ball out. He will be third choice behind Longello and Williams on the left, and may fall further down the pecking order depending on signings, but he looked ok tonight.

I emailed the club after the Genk game to complain about the new pod seats, i subsequently received a phone call this afternoon from Brian Caldwell who explained the difficult choices the club faced in the pod to get the stand compliant for the HB game. He explained that for a host of reasons mainly the limitations of the pod in its current form it was a straight choice of either not using the seats in their old form, for the Euro games, with the resulting loss of revenue and relocation of ST holders that involved, undertaking extensive remodelling of the pod seat profile and reducing seat numbers to get new flip seats or go with the seats we have fitted now. So it seems that what we got was the only viable option open to the club, given the timescales and limitations involved. I think that the "new seats" will be with us for a while, but from what i was told i suspect that replacing the pod on the current footprint may be the preferred option, as i say thats my opinion, so i could be wrong. Having said all that it was nice to have some personal feedback on a complaint raised from the CEO, thats a good way to run a business so long may it continue.

I thought he was Austrian? 🤪🤪

Probably get my nose bitten off as you aren't allowed to criticise them but I hear bois are doing a walk tomorrow to stadium which will be great and well supported.....however....can you leave the flares at home? I know we have plenty cash but we cant keep paying out fines for flare displays. Get that drum and vocal chords in full flow. Thats best way to support us. COYW

Its a pre season friendly get a grip

Agree with above. Randomly my season ticket seat was next to him. Got to know him well over the years. He would have loved the fitbaw this season. RIP my friend

I take it back what I said that just was the only positive for me to come from the tournament…. That news today was a positive

Whit, they’re eating your dinner? I know we don’t pay a lot but ffs I’d have thought it would be enough for them to feed themselves.

Invest in pampers

I can understand MJCs concerns. To use an analogy - after you’ve tasted caviar and champagne, going back to soggy toast and cold tea would be let down. However, that’s a hazard all clubs of our size face. We had a progressive thinking manager (Bobby Ancell) and a fantastic young team in the early 1960’s (Ancell Babes) but again due to the draw of bigger clubs and bigger wages, it was broken-up. The most high profile players who left being, Ian St John to Liverpool, Pat Quinn to Blackpool and Bobby Roberts to Leicester City. Shortly thereafter Bobby Ancell left and that ushered in the Bobby Howitt era which for me looking back now was probably one of the poorest in our history. I didn’t think so at the time but barring our exploits in the Texaco Cup it was a pretty poor time made worse by seeing clubs of a similar size to us getting a chance to play European football - Dunfermline and Kilmarnock to name two. I just hope history doesn’t repeat itself but we need to give the new manager time to put his own stamp on things. COYW.

Must have watched that secret training video I shared with them.

Winner of most colours in a sentence isssssssss. 🤪🤪

I'm not one for public sentimentality and anniversaries are for those we forget, he is sadly missed.

3-0 Stenny..........I am stealing MJC's thunder 🤣🤣

I can, it's my hoose.

Exactly, sadly there always seems to be one player that gets singled out. Remember the terrible stick SOD was getting a few seasons back. I think as fans we make an effort to give Ewan plenty encouragement. The lad is wearing the claret and amber jersey and trying his best and personally I thought he done just fine last night

Regardless of position on whether to stay or go, this is the most exciting part for me. I truly never thought Id ever see Motherwell Football Club do anything, other than exist hand to mouth. The turnaround in 2 years is extraordinary.

They could beat us 4 - 0 and I still wouldn't be embarrassed. You need to try and separate other people playing football from your own self-esteem.

... his big team got pumped last night

A good way to improve fitness is to play games.

I see the block e contingent are determined to get the club fined again with more idiotic pyro nonsense.

I remember as a kid being quite excited that we signed him and it was for quite a bit as far as I remember. I also remember getting a football card of him from a packet of chewing gum and being elated. He was wearing the Motherwell admiral kit with the 2 claret stripes down the front. Rest in Peace Mike.

I’m happy if I see us play decent entertaining football every week. OF course, finishing higher up the league, winning a cup would be more than welcome but when I started watching Motherwell as a wee boy it wasn't because I thought they might win the league or the cup and it’s still the same today. They are my home town team and I still get excited at the chance to watch them every week, even although that’s via streaming now. I think there may be a lot of people just like me who have found their way back to Fir Park, not because of trophies but because, once again, Motherwell are Playing football that is a joy to watch. I just hope that we can continue trend.

MJC on the other hand is a glass bone dry kinda guy 🤣

As much as I liked Ward, £800k for a keeper who isn’t that great a keeper in his final year of contract….. when we got him for nothing…… is a decent bit of business.

He'll be off to Ross County then.

I don't think I'd be looking at isolated transfer fees without looking at the underlying data sets. Kieran Bowie wasn’t bought purely because of goals scored over a few seasons. Clubs don’t price attacking players on raw goal output alone, otherwise half the market would make zero sense. They look at things like age curve, contract position, physical profile, league-adjusted output, projected development trajectory, injury history, resale potential and expected value over the life of the contract. That’s why younger players consistently command premiums over better current players. If you look across Europe over the last 5 years or so, players aged between 18-22 routinely transfer for significantly more than players 25+ with better immediate output. That isn’t my opinion, that’s just how recruitment models work nowadays. Same with the Raskin comparison. He plays for Rangers, is younger, has European exposure almost every season, and is sitting in a completely different transfer ecosystem. The Old Firm market is not the Motherwell market. I know we don't like that, but it's the truth. If we strip emotion out of it and look at Just objectively, here’s the career profile a buying club is probably looking at: 26 years old Spent years moving between Danish first and second division football Spell in Austrian second tier One very strong season in Scotland 3 World Cup goals, which absolutely helps visibility Now compare that to what I believe recruitment departments call “transferable asset value”. At 26, a club buying Elijah probably gets 3–4 peak years. At 18 like Lennon Miller, a club potentially gets 10+ years plus a second sale. That future value gets priced in. I think where I disagree is this idea that “performance merits a £Xm valuation”. Football doesn’t work like that. If it did, loads of players would be worth far more than they eventually end up moving for. Recruitment departments are increasingly data-led these days. They model future value, they don't tend to reward past performance all that much. Personally, I think Just has been phenomenal for us. But if I was sitting in a recruitment department trying to build a valuation model, I’m not getting anywhere near £10m (or even £6 million) based on one excellent Scottish Premiership season and three World Cup goals in a group-stage exit. And that’s not talking him down. That’s just how the market tends to price these things in my opinion.

I think you are underselling the player on almost every level. I am not an expert on transfer fees but I would imagine that finished articles sell for more than their younger selves. Would Ronaldo's first couple of transfers be anywhere near his transfer fee to Juventus? Three goals in a WC is three goals. As somebody joked earlier, he scored two more than the entire Scotland team combined and they played lowly Haiti. How many Scotland players in history have scored 3 goals at a WC? You can't underplay that sort of achievement. Just was fantastic last season and had more of an impact than Miller did at any time in his Motherwell career. EJ is worth £10 million. Compare with Engels at Celtic. Just had a better season and look at the money Celtic have turned down for Engels Unfortunately Motherwell will never get £10 million for him because he plays for Motherwell but there are worse players that have commanded more. Look at the valuation of Fernandez at Rangers. Was there not talk of £18+ million for him? We need to be talking our players up not talking them down.

If I didn't already know I was too old to be wearing the new shirt, the music on the release video would have reminded me. I'm off to have a lie down and listen to some Jesus and Mary Chain.

Welsh was an established pro who wanted minutes to get away from Celtic, and we benefited from that. Rice is different. He chose Rangers over a pro deal at Motherwell, spent four years on the fringes, and stalled his own development. We shouldn’t be the club rebuilding a player’s career for a direct rival.

You mean Ange?

Setting aside how uncomfortable and cramped the seats are, the health and safety implications are a major issue.. Seriously, until you have actually been in the seat and attempted to let someone limbo past as the rear of the seat collapses under you, it is difficult to appreciate how much of a mistake they have made....no matter how many good intentions came into play. Heaven forbid, but the thought of needing a quick Stand evacuation is frightening. And that is a factor the issuing of a Safety Licence must take intro account. I've been to most grounds in Scotland and I'm struggling to come with one that is worse than what we have been landed with. Next time you are back home I'll happily let you try it out.

Well done to Captain Sparrow and his young crew. Off to the North Atlantic next week for the next battle. Hopefully get through that with no astro turf injuries.

The constraints of the current Fir Park site are plain to see. But with the principle of development for a football stadium already established there, nobody will ever convince me there isn’t a viable proposal that responds to those constraints in a creative yet pragmatic way. Whether that’s a complete demolition and redevelopment or a phased approach of continually replacing and upgrading the stadium bit by bit, I’d take either of those over relocating to an identikit plastic shithole on a soulless brownfield site on the edge of town. Every realistic option at Fir Park has to be exhausted, and sensible compromises made where necessary, before we consider something as drastic as leaving our home for Ravenscraig.

The independent report into the OF pitch invasion is pretty damning for the SFA. It basically says that they are not using their powers consistently and I think there is an implication that they are far too lenient on the Old Firm in particular. In this particular situation, the two tier policing of Motherwell and Derek McIness could not be more blatant. McInnes comments were said in anger on live television in the immediate aftermath of a highly volatile ending to the match at FP. His comments were heard by millions. They were inflammatory and clearly called into question the integrity of the officials. Watt posts on social media to a considerably smaller audience, a comment that may question the competence of the decision but not the integrity of it and his punishment is worse. You cannot get a more direct and obvious comparison. The SFA have had time to consider this response and will know themselves the discrepancies in this decision making so you have to come to the conclusion that they simply don't care.

The glaring answer for a club our size is to employ the same advantage that other clubs of similar or smaller standing use in countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Faroe Islands, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan and others. Summer football. Start our league between late February and early April, then finish between late September and early November. It's actually pretty interesting when you look at the teams from those summer leagues who have essentially turned that advantage they have into part of their business model. There's about 3 million Euros to be made by qualifying for the group stage of the competition we're in just now, I believe. Add on TV rights, higher attendances and prize money for performances, and you're talking about a decent chunk of change. The much-discussed Bodø/Glimt have gotten it down to a fine art. Even before they were well-known as the club they are now, they were able to regularly make a decent fist of it in Europe because in qualifiers they would catch the August/September to May teams cold. Those wins resulted in financial windfalls that they then used intelligently, of course. Rinse and repeat. It's why we see teams like them, Molde, Malmö, Djurgårdens, and even the likes of Shamrock Rovers do reasonably well in Europe. Clubs our size are never ready for these games, and we have to try to find a way through with a patched together team that involves players who might be eyeballing a move away from the club, who've just signed for the club, and a bunch of kids. Throw in the new manager effect and it can go wrong really quickly. But we'll never go down that route. Because it makes too much sense.

By the sound of some folks experience of the “new” seats in the POD stand, maybe the club should put a first aid kit under every one of them.

That was a hangover from the previous season though, not from a standing start, and had been building from about March. He should really have been dealt with as soon season as the previous season had ended rather than prolong the agony. As shite as Ricki Lamie was the worst thing he ever did was score that goal v Livi or Alexander would never have made it to the Sligo game.

I’m not complaining, but it’s Interesting that after all the hype about Rangers and Celtic wanting to sign Elliott, Just and Maswanise, they’re both prepared to dole out transfer fees on players from abroad of the level that was suggested they may need to pay us for these players. Not prepared to pay Scottish clubs proper transfer fees for their players but hoping they will jump at the first number THEY decide they WANT to pay. They don’t want other clubs to become financially independent and/or stronger. 😡

Hoping our new manager is one of them! 😍😍😍

Less James Joyce. More Yootha Joyce.

FFS, is this a pensioners forum ??? 🤣

It's our first game of season......... Ay ay....calm down calm down

Think I’m in the minority…. I think it’s fine. Don’t like the tiger etc but what can you do… it’s us what it is. certainly won’t be taking the moral high ground on who sponsors us.

I'm in favour of white shorts, they are our traditional short colour. Also the best strip design we've had in my lifetime had white shorts. However the overall design looks way too busy. Sponsors and logos plastered everywhere and just way too much going on. It's kinda like they said 'How can we make a 'tradition Motherwell kit' and give it loads of design features to make it modern and unique and then just kept sticking them on long past the point that it made sense. It's still better than two seasons ago but that's about the most positive thing I can say.

If you're looking for traditional, the hoop comes with white shorts.

I see our resident arrogant know-it-all has made a reappearance.

I'm older and that went right over my head. Just like that Brazil cross when they scored did for Gunn.