MJC

Livingston v Dundee Utd now off as well. At least Utd can’t now gain any ground on us today but we really could be do with Hearts and St.Johnstone beating Killie & Ross County to keep both of them below us.

I agree we basically need a whole new team as this current lot would struggle to be mid table in the Championship if we were in that league right now. However that’s unrealistic to expect that in January so we need to address our weakest area, which is up front. It’s very fine margins in this league and whether we are involved in the relegation battle or actually relegated or not will likely come down to us picking up wins at the right times. For that to happen we need better attacking options.

You can definitely see KvV is hugely frustrated most weeks at the lack of support and service he gets and this absolutely must be addressed in January as a priority. There are other areas of the team that need improved but if we can start scoring more goals that may well be enough to keep us from the drop this season. Stevie Hammell needs to be as fully supported as he possibly can be in getting the funds to get recruits in during the window.

Yes I see what you mean and I’ve got a lot of patience for Stevie Hammell and would love nothing more than to see him succeed as Motherwell Manager. But we have a poor squad and our forward options outwith Kevin van Veen are hopeless. Because they either have limited ability or have limited match fitness, with Moult fitting into the latter category. I doubt there is a Motherwell fan out there who wouldn’t want to see Moult come good for us, but we can’t afford to keep looking backwards, as we do all too often as a club when it comes to ‘cult heroes’. We did it with McFadden when it was obvious that he was way past it and had little to nothing more to offer and he even managed to get into the position of player/Asst Manager. We need to look forward as a club and rather than re-sign the McFaddens, the Moults we should be looking to try and sign players who can offer us the same as those players did when they were at their prime, rather than trying to get a tune out of them when they are well past their best.

Was he though? You might be right about that and he genuinely was but is it not also possible that the fact that he played for us before and was/still is a cult hero amongst the support was a big factor in his re-joining? I’ve said this before but had we signed Leigh Griffiths - who I believe was also available at the time we did the loan deal with Moult - and he had contributed what Moult has so far then he would have been given far less leeway with the support.

But still taking up a place on our treatment table and taking our focus off bringing in another striker.

We signed him hoping he would be the answer to our goalscoring issue. Given his injury record we knew it was a gamble but given his previous record with us and that we knew he had ability it was worth taking the gamble at the time. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked out because he hasn’t been able to gain any sort of fitness and as such has been able to start just one match, score one goal(a penalty) and is yet again back down the road being assessed for an injury issue. He is done, I’m sorry to say that because he is one of my favourite all time Motherwell players but he is. I wouldn’t want to see Tommy Coyne, Dougie Arnott or Wullie Pettigrew on our books right now as registered full time players either, regardless of how good they were for us previously. We are facing a potential* relegation battle. *Potential being that it is not guaranteed but given our form, poor squad and rookie manager then it is a possibility, not a certainty as you are implying that I was saying.

So we continue to pin our hopes on his somehow regaining match fitness again after five years when we’re facing a potential relegation battle? Surely it would be better to just accept that this gamble hasn’t paid off and instead look to bring in a forward or two who actually has ability(which Moult has but the majority of our forwards don’t) and the required fitness(which Moult doesn’t have) to improve our striking options in the second half of the season?

Getting back to the ‘onfield’ matters, SH’s comments about Moult’s situation should be sounding alarm bells loud and clear to anyone who hasn’t yet heard them regarding his fitness. He’s back at Burton having another ‘niggle’ assessed and going by Hammell’s words and tone he doesn’t sound optimistic about his chances of getting him back fit any time soon. Terminate his loan now.

I see that. But I still don’t know of any other club who has had such a variety of call offs for such a variety of reasons. We’ve had ice, water, fire, exploding generators, power cuts, broken structures, lightning strikes over the years. I appreciate that some of them can’t be helped but it’s some catalogue of issues with the ground. All we need is subsidence and an earth quake to complete the set.

Ellis? edit: spiderpig beat me to it.

I suppose one way of looking at it is we might have actually managed to recruit some decent players by the time the game gets played. On the other hand it is concerning to hear the club describe the damage to the stadium as extensive which will now mean that more money will have to be spent on repairs which could well hamper any budget we may have had in January.

Only Motherwell. Only Fir Park. There cannot be another top flight professional football club in the country that has had as many home matches postponed due to issues with the stadium. And there surely can’t be another one with such a variety of reasons. If it’s not the pitch that’s waterlogged or frozen it’s burst pipes and flooding. If it’s not that then it’s structural damage after a bit of high winds, or floodlight pylons catching fire, or power cuts or tannoys not working due to lightning strikes. No doubt next Friday will be off too meaning we will now have a major backlog in January or February.

I hadn’t even noticed that until you mentioned it.

He should be half way down the M6 en route back to Burton Albion. Guy was a great player for us in his first spell but he is done now and we can’t afford to be sentimental.

Another excellent move by the MFC community trust. You’d be hard pushed to find another club that does so much for it’s local community these days.

We can’t read too much, if anything into yesterday if we’re being honest. That said looking at the squad we have, with our rookie manager and the way we have played for much of this season then I have grave concerns for our chances in the second half of the season. We may or may not be relegated, it’s impossible to predict that just now, but I don’t think we’ll be too far off 11th or 12th come seasons end.

He’s been injured for five years. As it should be if he can’t get fit enough to make an impact.

Hard to call this one. Needless to say we really need to be winning games like this and the Killie game on the 23rd. That said though I can see it being a frustrating draw. 1-1

I suppose if we’d opted for a proper Motherwell FC home kit for this season this would have been a perfect opportunity to introduce a mostly Claret 3rd kit, but it is what it is I suppose.

Eliphas Shivute is the first thing that springs to mind having seen that kit. Great message behind the release though it has to be said.

Was a great moment at the time but it did us more harm than good in the long run. Had we lost that we would have been rid of Alexander come the end of the season, a new manager would then have had the chance to build his own squad and we would have been spared the dreadful ‘European tour’ and the Sligo disaster.

Genuinely one of the worst players ever to pull on our jersey, regardless of how good he was or what he achieved elsewhere. He offered absolutely nothing for us and like Karl Ready, Andy Dow and Eric Black he is just one of those names that instantly reminds me of our final plunge into administration.

I was there too, a ‘relative’ youngster back then! The thing that sticks out was that the tannoy was even worse than the old East Stand tannoy at Fir Park and it was hard to hear the announcement about the game being abandoned. I remember the guy in front of us turning round an asking my dad “did he just say that the game’s been abandoned there”? and then word spread more from folk who had actually heard the announcement and the ones who had radios. There was a lot of shouting/bother with the police if I remember correctly. Something else that sticks out from this game was the whole away end chanting “No fucking merger” in response to midweek reports that John Boyle was planning to buy Airdrie and merge them with us to create ‘Lanarkshire United’. Thankfully that never came to fruition.

Correct it was January 2000 and the entire tie was absolutely mental. As you say abandoned at half time due to high winds howling in right off the North sea when we were 1-0 up. We then made a pigs ear of the re-arranged game in midweek and drew 1-1 and the Fir Park replay was then postponed at least twice due to water-logging and we ended up playing it on the same weekend that the (then) 4th Round ties were meant to be played. For the ‘Romance of the Cup’ and as January Scottish Cup away days go this tie is absolutely perfect. It is though a potentially very tricky one so hopefully we are up to it on the day.