WishyWell

I hope that the investigation looked closely at O'Reilly. The Ref's performance was by far the most bizarre of anyone on the pitch on the day, with some really unusually mystefying decisions throughout the game. If Jennings really had wanted to get sent off, he would normally have to have done a great deal lot more than he did to make sure he achieved it.

And on Yahoo News: http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/06102011/58/spl-motherwell-man-arrested-betting-probe.html

Fair point. He is a tad quicker than big Higdon

See, I always thought the same, and up till last week I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you. Then I watched a training exercise at fir Park last week when my boy's coach was working with the wide midfielders and strikers on hitting the by-line and firing over crosses. When my son put his first cross over and the goalie caught it unchallenged, I was berating him under my breath for not looking up and picking out one of the two strikers. But then the coach stopped them and explained how it was the strikers' responsibilities to make the runs to the front and back posts, and the winger's/midfielder's respoponsibility to whip the cross over to there. As soon as the guy goes down the line, the strikers should be busting a gut to get to where they should be and if the ball comes over to no one, the crossing player is entitled to scream at the striker for not being there. As this came from one of the club's greatest striking legends, I was reminded once again how little I know about how the game actually works!

Aw, hey, that's a bit below the belt. Really, you try your best and you just get shot down in flames...

To the tune of 'Oh my Darling Clementine'... Omar Daley, Omar Daley, Omar Daley on the wing, There's no mistakin' He's Jamaican 'Cause he's our smokin' reggae king. Struggled with the last line so feel free to change it to something better...

Currently training with Wolves, with a view to signing by the end of the week.

It came from one of his mates, who also was released by us. Of course, it is possible that he was winding his mate up...

Just heard that Steven Meechan has just signed for Nottingham Forrest, on £5000 a week. Not bad going after being released by us, going to work at KwikFit Insurance and then trying his luck at (I think) Kettering!

On the official site: ‘Well capture French youngster Wednesday, August 24, 2011 var addthis_product = 'wpp-255';var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};Gordon Young has moved to strengthen his Under 19s squad with the capture of talented French youngster Hermann Mboa Mekongo. Mboa Mekongo, a holding midfield player, has been on trial at the club for several weeks and has impressed in friendly and bounce matches, prompting Young to chase his signature. The eighteen-year old, who was born in Paris, was schooled at several French clubs but was most recently in the youth ranks of fallen giants Racing Club de France. During his Youth Development schooling, he has also spent time with Ligue 1 club Valenciennes FC and the famed INF Clairefontaine, with its notable former students such as Nicolas Anelka, Abou Diaby, Sébastien Bassong, Louis Saha and Thierry Henry. Speaking to motherwellfc.co.uk, Head of Youth Development Gordon Young said, “We were given the opportunity to have a look at Hermann and he has held his own. Because of his background, we have registered him as an amateur player but he will still very much form part of our Under 19s squad.” Hermann will most likely form part of the Under 19s squad that will take on St Johnstone at Bathgate this coming Friday – kick-off 1pm.

That is correct. He went last weekend.

He'd like to move his family back north but was willing to commute to any English club that were northern enough to let him do so, although the Ugly Sisters in Glasgow did both have him up for talks over the summer. The fact that his injury hasn't fully cleared up is why he hasn't signed with anyone.

Five of our under-17s were in the eight-man squad that won the Gold Medal in the Boys' Football competition at the International Children’s Games last weekend. Mark McRoberts, Danny McNulty, Scott Stevenson, David Ferguson and Dominic Thomas joined Dylan McGuigan, Josh Taplin and Daryl Bulloch from Hamilton Accies (all aged 15) to form the Lanarkshire boys’ team. During the six games they played, the team scored an astonishing 69 goals, conceding just two, and racking up scorelines of 10-0, 26-0, 5-0, 17-1, 7-0 and 4-1 against, respectively, Ravne na koroskem (Slovenia), Sialkot (Pakistan) and Medias (Romania), Tralee (Ireland) in the quarter-finals, Sentilj-Ruse (Slovenia) in the semis and Sparta (Greece) in the final. In doing so, they retained the title won in Bahrain by last year's boys' team, which also contained five 'Well pro-youth players. Congratulations boys!

...or the replacement for Sutton.

I accept Al B's explanation on the handball rule. Having sat beside an ex-ref for 5 years at work, i had it drummed into me that handball is the only offence in the game where intent governs whether it is a foul or not - intent can determine the level of punishment in other cases, eg a yellow or straight red for a mistimed or wild challenge respectively, but as far as deciding whether something is a foul or not a foul, only with handball is intent a factor. However, what I can't get my head round is that there was no advantage gained. Surely, unless the hadball doesn't alter the flight of the ball to any great extent, then there is some advantage or disadvantage there to some extent, as the ball then won't go where it was originally going. In the case of the Celtic player, the ball would have run a distance behind him, meaning that, even if no Motherwell player was near him, he would still have to go back and play it, by which time any number of scenarios would have taken place, eg Humphrey bearing down on him, Sutton cutting off the keeper, etc. Instead, the ball dropped much closer to him = advantage. I can't see any other consequence that there should have been than a second yellow, and then the game changes. Imagine, Mulgrew to centre-half. With the extra man advantage, we can still crowd the centre-midfield while allowing Hammell to be switched for Jeffers much earlier, giving us two up top for far longer. We'll never know how it would have gone and we may well still have lost, but it sure wouldn't have panned out exactly the way it did. It would have been nice to find out.

Home from the game too late for Fir Park so went straight to Phileas Foggs to get guttered and sing songs all night till chucking out time. even ended up serving behind the bar upstairs for a while just for the fun of it and was giving free drinks to anyone who said they were a 'Well fan. We meant to go to Zanzi's but can't remember if we did or not - i only remember that once we had nowhere else to go we got a carry out and ended up at a friend's rehearsal studios in Orbiston Street where we drank ourselves unconscious and woke up in time to go and see the open-top bus and chase from one bit of the route to the other to catch it as often as we could. Then back to the pub as we were a bit dehydrated from all that exercise...

Got mine yesterday. Brilliant - thank you!

I'd also be interested in one of Sunday's game - and Skippy Sunday if it's available. It would get pride of place beside the pic from the Record with my boys and their pals behind the goals as Sutton is blasting in his penalty!

Going to Murray Park 1st thing with the undwer-13s (who beat Celtic Boys' Club - not Pro-Youth, but still big strong boys - 9-4 last night). Looking forward to watching us gub Rangers twice in a couple of hours!!!

Very sad news. Hope you're bearing up as much as you can be. Hopefully he'll be smiling down tomorrow when we knock in our sixth!

Sad news indeed. My heart goes out to the family.

x2

The House of Commons? And where did John Reid forge his career?

I could talk all day on this point. It certainly is true in the case of many teams - the Old Firm, Hamilton, Hearts, St Mirren, Kilmarnock, Dundee Utd being the worst - who fill their teams with a large number of huge physical boys from the age of 9 onwards and steamroller the smaller teams like ourselves. Not only do they bully our boys out of playing their passing game through their physical advantage, but they by and large are coached to win games based on their size - eg last season our under-12s lost 7 goals against Celtic and another 7 against Hamilton in successive games, with all but one in each game coming from identical corners: the ball dropped into the goalmouth while 5 or 6 enormous boys all rushed into that one spot. What tends to happen is that the teams like Motherwell get beaten regularly at the younger end of the agegroups by these bigger teams, but then, around u15 level, our boys start growing and start to match them physically, at which point our superior footballing ability comes into play while the opposition have nothing more to offer, and we start winning games. I remember Chris McCart saying once when he was with us that it is the easiest thing in the world to build a winning team at under-11s: just fill it with big athletic boys. But a youth system is about developing boys as footballers, not about results, something these other clubs don't seem to get. Maybe they think that if they win a lot of games, the good players will come to them, but I haven't seen much evidence of it. The provincial clubs that had the big boys then start to fall back, althought the Old Firm get round this by picking off the better players from the other clubs and abroad. It think it was Rangers u15 last season that were dropped almost en masse and they brought in a whole new squad. Hamilton, as we saw last weekend, just keep the same footballing philosophy through to their first team! There are two big problems with this, though, one for Scottish football as a whole and one for us. First, most of the ball-players are lost to the Pro-Youth system as there are only a few clubs picking them up in any great numbers, and so there is not a great pool of creative players feeding through to the senior ranks; and for Motherwell, it is hard for young players aged 11, 12, 13, and many of their parents, to look long term and not get depressed at the boys losing so often, sometimes quite heavily. The advantage for Motherwell is that, while the others are taking the big boys, we are left to choose from the more talented boys from Lanarkshire and this end of Glasgow. However, it is infuriating when they are coached to pass and move all week and then come up against a team on the Sunday with a core of 5'10" built-like-an-ox 12-year-olds who close them down and stop them playing they way they have been taught... and the way that all the country's youngsters should be taught. At least we are doing it the right way! Yikes - I nearly did talk all day on it! Apologies for going on a bit, but it drives me nuts.

The Under-13s are playing up there on Sunday, so several of us parents are taking our boys up on Saturday so we can go to the "Big Team's" game and then stay overnight. Can't wait!