MJC

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.

Because what I or anyone else predicts on an internet chat room has absolutely no bearing on what will actually happen in a game.

I actually tend to think that we will be fine this season too. As I said earlier Kettlewell knows how to make us hard to beat and competitive so over the course of a season that might well work in our favour. There are obvious concerns about where our goals will come from but at the same time I don’t see us conceding that many either so we may well be comfortable in the league. Losing a Cup tie against St.Mirren or any top flight side is just something that happens to us as a club but I don’t think it will be an indicator of how our league season will go.

Yes.

I honestly don’t know who I am blaming. I don’t know if it’s one individual or a collective but the fact that we have lost nine out of our last eleven cup ties against top flight sides with various managers and players involved suggests to me that the issue lies deeper within the club. As a club we have a ‘losers mentality’ which is seen regularly through the “we’re skint, we’re punching way above our weight, welcome to our great wee club” sound bites. No matter what business you are in if the line from the top is always “we’re skint, we don’t expect anything, it’s just a privilege to be functioning atall” then that is going to feed down to the employees and also to the customers, or in our case the support. That’s just how I see it. I might well be completely wrong about it but that’s my take on it.

Exactly and that is the most worrying thing about it. To me that suggests a mentality issue at the club that runs deeper than whoever is in the dugout and on the field.

I know what you mean but I’m not even asking us to be winning trophies. Just for us to not lose just about every single Cup tie that we play against top flight sides. Granted, we have been unfortunate in that we have been repeatedly been paired with premiership sides particularly in the league cup but our record in these ties is simply not good enough.

Absolutely and that ties in with my point about how we as a club are always pleading poverty. Cup ties are crucial to clubs like us, yet we underperform and fail in them time and time again. I’ll say it again, since the season we reached both Cup finals we have won only TWO Cup ties out of the many we have played against fellow top flight sides. Fucking TWO!!! And only one of the losses in that time was against one of the Old Firm. So for a club that is forever banging on about lack of funds, small budgets etc. this repeated failure to win Cup ties which thus costs us revenue and finance cannot be anything other than a big concern. You would think anyway…

Yes but as always the disappointing result happens in a Cup tie.

I’m not necessarily disagreeing with anything you have said there and I too think it will be a long hard season. But going as far back to administration 20 years ago now all we have heard from the club is “we are skint, we have no money”. Even when we had Dempster as CEO and were regularly qualifying for Europe after high league finishes that’s all you got out of the club! The same was the case when Burrows was at the helm. Just constant poverty pleading.

And as usual it’s in a knockout cup tie against a fellow Premiership side. “Aw well” though. 😐

I’m only going by the comment from the poster I quoted. I had no idea about Arsenal inserting a clause in Biereth’s contract which limited his playing time due to him carrying an injury. If, and I repeat IF that is true then you’ve got to ask the question of why we have signed another forward player with injury issues.

Same old, same old with us in Cup ties. All we ever get is let down. For those saying “I’d rather lose in the league cup than in the league”, the League Cup is one of only two competitions that we have a realistic albeit outside chance of winning. So for us to continually perform so badly in cup competitions is absolutely pathetic and something that should be a great source of concern to the club. Looking at the bigger picture, there are obvious concerns over the squad depth and quality available and I think we need to bring in at least one more attacking option before the window shuts otherwise we will struggle for goals in the league this season.

So we have signed yet another crock then?

BBC sportsound is a disgrace of a national broadcaster. Can’t hide their obvious bias towards Celtic and Aberdeen.

Mika on for Bair.

Miller on.