MJC

Poor, poor stuff so far. We came more into it as the half wore on but we’re lucky not to be behind. Even if we do qualify we will go no further than the last sixteen with this team.

Let’s be clear about this. Anything, ANYTHING less than us being in the draw for the last sixteen after today’s game will be completely and utterly unacceptable and would be a major black mark against the manager and the players. I think the seeded spot is beyond us but we cannot go out of the League Cup at the group stage.

That and ‘trolling’. You know people have no argument or constructive contribution to make to a discussion once they start accusing someone telling it like it is or how they don’t want to hear it of being a troll or knicker twisting/wetting. Concerns about the squad are perfectly valid right now. We have a crucial Cup game tomorrow and the league season begins a week today yet we have lost our two best players from last season, one of which we knew six months ago would be leaving, and failed to replace either. Once again we are riddled with injuries leaving our already shallow pool of players decimated even more. If that makes me a troll or a knicker wetter for thinking and saying that in some peoples eyes then there’s nothing I can do about that, but I prefer to see it as saying things as I see them as opposed to nodding my head like a donkey and and warbling on like a parrot.

We’re almost a parody of ourselves with the amount of injuries we have at any one time.

Not looking good so far. Thistle already 1-0 up and our record in ‘must win games’ doesn’t inspire any optimism.

Lee McCulloch must have been on decent money with us too, especially as we knocked back a reported bid of £1M from Hearts in late 99. It’s scary looking back at the money we were throwing about at that time and in reality we got very little in return for it.

Possibly I don’t know but that’s beside the point. I just didn’t rate him as a player and his fondness of a night out and his ability to get the womenfolk of Motherwell falling at his feet bought him a lot of leeway.

I’ll throw another name in here. Richie Foran. An absolute wage thief and a lazy imposter of a player who got away with it because he liked a bevvy and could pull the birds down the Mega Bar back in the day. Some Boi eh?

Well that’s up to you, but personally I can’t view anyone who openly disrespects the club like Boyd has with anything other than contempt. You know, like walking around Hampden pointing to his Celtic badge and thumping his chest towards Motherwell fans before a Scottish Cup Final almost twenty years to the day that he captained us to victory in. Or the snide comments he made to Tam Cowan at a supporters event about how much he’d won since he left us or the disdain he’s shown our club and fans over the years. That annoys me, maybe it shouldn’t but it does. If it doesn’t annoy you then that’s up to you, as I said, but given that you’ve said on here before that you value your support of Scotland above Motherwell and suggested that anyone who doesn’t share that view is ‘parochial’ then….ach i don’t want to go down the ‘who’s the better supporter’ argument. So all I’m going to say now is…………….weisht.

‘The Don’ as he was known was seen as a far less high profile and less fashionable player during that period compared to ‘big names’ like Goram and Spencer but he had twice the workrate of Spencer and was a big part of the team that almost reached Europe in 1999/2000.

Wouldn’t go so far as to say I hated him but I never liked John Spencer and never got the hype for him when he was here. He was a money grabbing chancer who did nothing to justify his large salary. The same goes for Andy Goram. Also not a player but Mark McGhee. Great first season in his first spell but an arrogant self important weapon of a man who thought nothing of publicly disrespecting the club and the fans. ”this is why and please don’t misinterpret me here I am managing Motherwell today and not Liverpool”. Right you are ya side moothed puffed up trumpet.

It’s not simply that he was a Celtic fan that Boyd is so hated, but I suspect you know that anyway. Tommy Coyne, Stevie Kirk, Faddy, Brian Martin, Owen Coyle, Phil O’Donnell to name but a few were all Celtic fans and that fact was relatively well known but none of them are being put forward for ‘former players that you wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire’ so I think we can put any suggestions that the only reason Boyd’s name is being mentioned is simply down to him ‘being a Celtic fan’ firmly to bed. Boyd has repeated shown himself to be an obnoxious arsehole who has frequently disrespected our club and our fans over the years despite where he started his career. Anyone who saw his behaviour before the 2011 Scottish Cup Final will know what I’m talking about. The fact that he is also a Celtic fan on top of his odious behaviour does heighten my dislike for him as he represents the worst type of Celtic person for me and I make no apology for that. He has all the detestable Celtic attitubutes… arrogant, obnoxious, condescending constantly stirring shit and stoking up bad feeling and paranoia whenever he’s given a platform to open his mouth and can’t/wont see anything from a non Celtic perspective. I’ve said this before on here, whenever I’m unfortunate enough to have to watch our away games against them on Celtic TV I actually find Peter Grant (another well known Celtic fan and a player I couldn’t stand back in the day) ten times more tolerable than Boyd.

We were the better side I’m not disputing that but we could easily have conceded more and did not look comfortable defending our lead, we never do especially under Kettlewell’s management. There were positives for us as you say and the biggest one of the lot is that we won the game which is the main thing in these games but performance wise we need to see an improvement if we aren’t to see a re-run of last season.

We’ve not lost to Partick Thistle at home since January 1996. If we want to be in the last sixteen then that needs to remain the case and we also need to win. It will be tough and I expect it to be a struggle. 1-1 and the shootout could go either way.

What he said was correct, Clyde could easily have scored a few more and we were far from comfortable. Just because a post or a particular posters view doesn’t sit right with the way you want to see things doesn’t make it pish.

Sadly true and that’s why this is going to be another long, difficult season.

None of the issues from last season have been addressed* we offer little to nothing in an attacking sense, our ball use is terrible and we can’t defend. *I am aware it’s July and the season hasn’t started ‘properly’ yet

Shambles 1-1

Think we’ll get beat.

Our new away kit isn’t too different to last seasons Dundee home kit apart from the position of the ‘club’ tartan and the dark blue tone as opposed to the steel grey. Both kits are of course made by Macron.

That’s a smart kit.

That’s a very good point that steelboy makes that we never look comfortable when ahead in games. It seems that our set up under SK is designed to stop the opposition playing and then throw everything forward when that fails and we need to chase the game. Fair enough that did work for us several times last season with the amount of last gasp equalisers we got but going forward that’s not a sustainable approach because we can’t afford to go behind in games with the mindset of “it’s okay we’ll just throw the kitchen sink at the opposition and hope we score” because that won’t keep working for us as our luck will run out and teams will get wise to this. I like Stuart Kettlewell, despite his faults, and I do think that he has been good for us during his time in charge but he needs to adapt our approach to games going forward or things will take another big downturn this season and we might not be able to get out of it this time. We absolutely cannot go on another run of 15 league games without a win again.

To be honest being seeded for the last 16 in this competition hasn’t given us much in the way of benefit in previous years. We were seeded last year and got paired with St.Mirren away. In the past we’ve been seeded and got Hearts, Ross County and Dundee. If we did manage to get out of this group then we won’t be going any further than the last 16 regardless of who we get, you can set your watch by that.

I’m calling this right now…. We’re not qualifying for the last 16. Cue the usual “Ach who cares it’s the league cup” ”I’d rather us play shite in the league cup” ”it’s all about the league” However, the League Cup is one of our best chances of getting a cup run and maybe even lifting silverware again, so we can’t just afford to write it off.

Shoddy stuff. penalty shootout loss incoming.