MJC

It’s going to be a rough ride for us as a club over the next year or so. I don’t mean that in a negative or pessimistic manner, I just think that’s reality and we need to be prepared for it. Big changes are coming our way.

Alexander was absolutely done with us long before he eventually left. I’ve said this many times had we not snatched the late draw at Livingston and scraped top six and then somehow Europe then he would have been gone at the end of that season, perhaps before. And what keeps being overlooked is that HE wanted to go. It was him that approached Burrows to instigate the “mutual consent” after the Sligo debacle, not the other way around. He wasn’t sacked and he wasn’t “hounded out” he left because he wanted to go. And I’d have Stuart Kettlewell as manager over Alexander any day of the week.

Heard a rumour that if Obika plays 37 minutes and wins two headers against Celtic he automatically gets a contract extension until May 2026. But don’t tell anybody.

Apparently Willie Collum is referee for this one. As if Sunday wasn’t going to be hard enough. He was the referee the last time Celtic were here was he not? And of course he rescued a point for them when he awarded McGregor’s dive in 2017.

Yeah fair enough if they’ve held their hands up and hopefully this doesn’t happen again. Tbh if I was Kettlewell I’d probably a bit pissed off with the way this was communicated, or not communicated as it were. I’m actually quite pleased that we’ve decided to go for stability here. I still have my doubts over the manager but I definitely don’t want to see us become the type of club that goes through two or three managers every two seasons or so. Kettlewell is our third manager in the last two years alone so if we were to part with him now or had done earlier then we would be well on the way to being that type of club. It would have done us no favours in the long run.

The club have now put out a statement on social media confirming that Stuart Kettlewell will be here until May 2025. Firstly from Kettlewell’s point of view that’s all well and good and we need to get behind him and hopefully the board do too. Secondly though, it raises the issue of poor communication from the club. As I said, why not just announce this last May when he kept us up? His stock with the support was high back then and this news would have been welcomed I think.

So why the cloak and dagger over it then? Had that been announced last year after he ensured our safety in the top flight then I don’t think there would have been a Motherwell fan out there who would have had a problem with that, but for some reason the club choose to keep it quiet.

I didn’t actually say that nobody in the footballing world will reconsider sending a player on loan because a young guy fae Sheffield wanted back down the road for personal reasons though did I? I said that our track record with loan signings this season might make clubs think twice about sending us players in the future. After all they don’t know the reasons why these loan deals didn’t work out or last as long as they were initially agreed for. But of course, then again they might not think that. That’s just my opinion which is what the forum is for. I’m not going to say anymore on this subject because we’re going round in circles now. You’ve read my views and that’s that. Have a nice evening.

Verbal pish? Well I’m hardly going to post physical pish on an internet forum am I? 🤷‍♂️ As I’ve already said I don’t know why the player returned home or what his personal reasons were. I don’t need to know and I don’t want to know, it’s none of my business. But what is my business is what happens with the club I support and invest a great deal of time, effort and money following. And our transfers this season have been dreadful and our loan deals have “generally not worked out” to put it as politely as I possibly can.

It certainly does, and it’s happened to us a good few times this season with loan deals. Two recalled half way through their ‘season long deals’ another one cancelled and then re-loaned and now this one. Regardless of the reasons behind all of the above it doesn’t put our transfer business and in particular our loan deals this season in a good light at all.

God I forgot about Spencer! Another ‘season long loan’ that didn’t last the season.

Which is why I said “no harm to the player” in a previous post. His personal business is just that, personal and therefore nobody else’s. For us as a club however it doesn’t look good when you see how our track record with loan signings has gone this season and it certainly doesn’t bode well for potential loan signing targets in the future, because they and their clubs might look at us and think twice about sending their player here.

Yes of course and no harm to the player, it’s clearly not worked out for whatever reason but for us as a club our loan deals this season have been a shambles, as has our entire transfer strategy in all honestly. It certainly doesn’t send out a positive message to any potential loan signing targets in the future.

Jili Buyabu has returned to his parent club for “personal reasons”. What the actual fuck is going on with our club and recruitment strategy?? This season alone we have our best player suddenly recalled in January then sent elsewhere on loan, we loan in Oli Shaw, cancel his loan then re-loan him and now this boy’s loan is cancelled less than a month in. Absolute clusterfuck.

Yes and a few of them have also won silverware, three times in the last ten year in St.Johnstone’s case. I would certainly prefer that.

You ignore it so well that you quote it. Looks like you need more practice.

There is a difference between what I think will happen and what I hope will happen. I always hope for a Motherwell win but given our dismal record in these fixtures then I can’t help but think that we will do nothing other than our usual and lose. Selective reading and quoting at its finest. No one has said that “all they are interested in is beating the uglies” or that that’s anyone’s “sole ambition” to win games against either OF club. But you just go on making things up to suit your ‘agenda’ eh? And of course no doubt you’ll be getting strong powerful ‘vibes’ that Rangers are the “big team some people support” and all that regurgitated nonsense.

As pessimistic as I am about Sunday and any game against the Old Firm nowadays, I desperately hope that we can defy the odds and finally get a win against them. It would be especially satisfying to finally get a win against Celtic and that sanctimonious shark faced prick Rodgers and hopefully drive another nail into their title challenge.

I don’t think it’s one specific person or group of people informing numerous managers of that, it’s just something that has become rife throughout the club during the past twenty odd years. Terry Butcher was the one who started the “we’re punching above our weight” and Alan Burrows parroted that on here in this forums early years and the latter obviously went on to have a huge influence within the club, but I don’t think it’s simply down to him. It’s no coincidence that that mentality has grown arms and legs with the rise of social media which allowed the support as a whole to start buying into it when they hear a lot of the sound bites coming out of the club about how skint we are, how we’re punching above our weight etc. As a fan owned club it’s to be expected that that mindset then becomes rife within the boardroom as well as the stands. That numerous managers and players buy into it is to be expected. In any business if employees are told over and over again by their superiors that exceeding expectations doesn’t matter and that as long as they reach their bare minimum target every year then that isn’t going to motivate or push them to go that extra mile.

No, but I seriously doubt that he would have grasped the “we’re only a wee club, games against Rangers don’t matter because we can’t compete with their budget” outlook by that point in his tenure with us. Stuart McCall as I said totally bought into that mentality when he was here, as demonstrated perfectly when we went to Ibrox as top flight league leaders and they were struggling to beat Peterhead in the lowest league. All you got from him was subservient nonsense about how they had a twelfth man with their support and how we weren’t favourites. And we duly bent over and lost 2-0 without laying a glove on them.

Well firstly that was six and a half years ago now, and we haven’t managed to record a win against either of the OF since then. And secondly, having Robinson as manager who had only just recently taken over was a factor IMO, because he was at that time an ‘outsider’ to us, Scottish football and our place in the game. Pretty much the same as Baraclough in the 2015 playoffs. Of course both of those results count, but they were a long time ago and few and far between and, crucially imo, we had managers who hadn’t been with us long and weren’t with us long enough to buy into the “we’re punching above our weight” mentality by the time those games came around. Put it this way, Mark McGhee or Stuart McCall would not have overseen wins in those games.

The gap in quality between us and Celtic is significantly bigger than the one between us and Hearts. And we aren’t as cowed by Hearts as we are by Celtic. Its pretty clear to me.

Celtic and Rangers will win the vast majority of games against us because they have too much quality. That is a fact. That fact also applies to every other non OF side. However we’ve seen Kilmarnock beating Rangers once and Celtic twice this season. We saw St.Mirren beating Celtic last season and St.Johnstone beating Rangers in the same campaign. Livingston beat Celtic a few years back, Dundee Utd beat Rangers. Ross County knocked Celtic out of the League Cup in 20/21 and St.Johnstone did the same to Rangers in the same season. My point being that while other sides of similar stature to ourselves are able to take advantage of that time when they play one of the OF and they aren’t at their best, we’re never able to do the same. And please don’t anyone try and raise me “but we beat Celtic with Jamie Dolan in goal almost 30 years ago” or “have you forgotten us beating Rangers on Boxing Day when we were in admin and they were top of the league” because our record against both of them in the last 10-15 and more years speaks for itself and it doesn’t look good for us.

Not necessarily, but it could certainly help. It’s not even close to being the same thing.

The odds are always going to be stacked against us when we play Celtic, or Rangers. But I would suggest that we stop simply shrugging these games off beforehand and merrily accepting that they will beat us and that there is nothing we can do about it because “we’re only a wee team and we’re punching waaaaay” above our weight. As has been said above, for us to get anything out of these games the first thing we need is for them to not play to their full strength. But even then we need to believe that we can take advantage of them being out of sorts and for far too long now we fall short in that regard. The September game at FP against Celtic was the prime example. They were well below par but we showed nothing in the way of belief, they score late on, we equalise in stoppage time and still contrive to lose the game. And afterwards we get Motherwell fans trying to console themselves that we were “unlucky”. We need to stop playing the name and start playing the actual team in front of us.