MJC

Welcome to the club Brodie Spencer.

He coined the term “Brave as a lion” for Phil O’Donnell I believe. I’m not a fan of McCoist as a pundit or a commentator but those were iconic words to describe PO’D scoring that goal in the 91 final.

Faddy as a commentator/pundit is absolutely awful. Talk about “stating the obvious” on just about everything.

I think it’s pretty telling that a poster like David, who is usually very balanced, reasonable and tends to be “glass half full” when it comes to our team and our chances, is saying that he thinks the current squad is poor, on paper at least. This most definitely is a poor squad, on the face of it, and only time will tell if Kettlewell’s ability to make us hard to beat will continue to work in our favour.

Did we ever benefit from Craigan doing his open the East Stand gate to take a throw in thing? I remember him opening the gate two weeks on the trot but don’t remember if we ever actually scored after it?

Are we using the same shirts for both the home and away kits this season? Pretty poor if we are. The away top would actually be perfect with white shorts.

Well as I've already said on the other thread I think we will win on Saturday. And if we do then we will be on seven points out of nine which would make for a good start to the league season. But I'm still concerned about the quality and depth within the squad.

No chance of winning the Scottish Cup. We’ll probably draw St.Mirren again in the 4th Round or some other top flight side and that’ll be that. You never know though, we might get lucky and draw a lower league side, like Dundee Utd and Moult will score against us while his fanboys in the East Stand blow him kisses and throw their knickers at him.

Kettlewell did a very good job in stabilising us last season and deserves his chance to prove himself but he certainly hasn’t covered himself in glory as far as his recruitment has gone this summer. We knew KvV was leaving at the end of last season and preparations to get in an adequate replacement(s) should have been made. Obviously it was going to be nigh on impossible for us to find another 29 goal a season striker but for us to be approaching the end of the window with a crocked and aging Obika, 6ft 4ins Wilkinson who looks like he’s never headed a football in his life, Bair who scored once for St.Johnstone last season, Efford who is himself injured and now a loanee who will probably not play for us again(obviously not his or the managers fault to be fair) is absolutely dismal. We could well be forced to throw in a 17 year old Mark Ferrie in the hope that he can offer us something up front. Not good at all.

I sincerely hope Dunne gets it right from the East Stand when St.Mirren come to Fir Park next month.

I’ll be hypocritical about this if I want thank you very much. We, us, Robinson and Bowman were roundly and loudly condemned by the media for that incident. You had Rangers greetin to all and sundry and Brendan Rodgers giving head shaking sermons about how his Golden Bhoys would need protection in the final. There’s no condemnation over this and we have lost a key player for a huge chunk of the season. Quite simply, FUCK St.Mirren, Robinson and Dunne. A shower of cunts.

That was classic Robinson team hatchet-man tactics. Hope Hibs pump them in the next round and they hit a bad slump in the league.

Biereth out for at least three months! An absolute disaster for us and unless we recruit at least one more forward in the next week we are in big trouble.

It’s when we attempt short corners especially at the end of a game we are trying to see out that grinds me. We ALWAYS play it short then immediately give it away and the opposition are in our half within 30 seconds. We’ve actually not conceded that many goals from that scenario but it’s still absolutely infuriating to watch.

Probably not. As you said there is no scrutiny or expectation on our managers or players from either the media or from within the club. Results like Kilmarnock have just got there are just ones that we simply would not get.

Yeah I know. 32 years ago. And Killie have knocked Celtic out of the Cup, a result which makes yesterday all the more annoying for us. Obviously Rangers will now be the bookies favourites for the League Cup now but they are unconvincing and I wouldn’t be surprised to see one of Hearts, Aberdeen, Killie or St.Mirren winning it which would be sickening.

It absolutely is down to mentality. Kilmarnock are currently leading 1-0 against Celtic with ten minutes to go and if they pull that off then not only will they have done an Old Firm double off in the space of a few weeks but they will do something else that we could only dream of by knocking Celtic out of a Cup. Our attitudes to Cup ties over the years has been disgraceful and managers chopping and changing teams for cup games is something we’ve seen all too often.

Not atall lol. I think in a game like this with home advantage we can be reasonably confident of taking the points. Kilmarnock are a hard side to play against but being at home should help us as as long as we get in front I think we’ll get the job done.

Like I said last night I don’t know who, if any one person, is actually to blame for our mindset as a club. However I do believe that we have a losers mentality which runs right from the boardroom to the support and as steelboy says a lot of managers and players pick up on that. Terry Butcher for example, the architect of “we’re punching way above our weight” was never done talking down our chances and harping on about us being a small club and skint when he was with us. When he went to ICT I never once heard him say similar about them. Stuart McCall and Mark McGhee also firmly bought into the “we’re only a wee club” mentality too. The only manager we’ve had in recent times who actually went against that attitude was Robinson when he first took over, but even he gradually came round to the Motherwell way of speaking and thinking. Speaking of Robinson, him and Baraclough are the only two Motherwell managers in the last twenty years to oversee victories over Rangers. Both of them at the time of those games were ‘outsiders’ to the Scottish game. In that same time several managers who have had a much better knowledge of the game up here than those two did couldn’t manage to guide us to wins in that fixture. So I think the question does need to be asked. Why do we continually fail in Cup ties when other clubs our size can (semi) regularly reach the latter stages and occasionally win it? Just like the question of why have several clubs our size managed to beat Rangers in the league in the last twenty years while we haven’t managed it? The answer to both questions, in my opinion, is because we have the wrong mentality as a club.

Has Steven Fletcher been signed by anyone yet? If so then I really think we should be looking at giving him a contract. He might be 36 years old with a big greasy transplanted man-bun but he would be a better option than the majority of our current forward players.

I think we’ll bounce back here too and 2-0 sounds about right. That would put us on seven points from a possible nine which is a very decent start to the campaign.

Looking at our Cup stats more closely. Since we beat St.Johnstone in the 2011 SCSF and NOT counting the season we reached both finals, we have played top flight opposition in 21 knockout ties and won only twice. Even if you add in our ties from 17/18 it is played 30 and won only 7. That is an absolutely appalling statistic and even more so when you take into account that we ourselves have been a top flight side in all of those fixtures.

It’ll be a long time before we get to Hampden again, if ever. We just don’t have the luck with Cup draws or the character and mentality to win them.

Re: Mugabi, how many times do people need to see that he just can’t be relied on? His concentration and positional sense are non existent.

If Biereth is injured then it is an absolute hammer blow for us. We need to get another attacking option in regardless as we cannot afford to be relying on Bair, Wilkinson and Efford to get us goals.