MJC

A bit of a side issue, but why is Burrows always on the trackside during matches? I get that he can go where he wants but it just seems abnormal for a Chief Exec to be down there. Perhaps he will appoint himself as next manager when GA leaves, let’s face it he couldn’t do any worse.

Agree, but unfortunately he has bought himself a lot more time than he otherwise had have got had we not sneaked into the top six/ Europe last season. That papered over huge cracks.

If Robinson had overseen that performance and result you would have been (rightly) slaughtering him for it.

Sadly accurate.

What’s your point? As you yourself acknowledge we were humiliated by our own mistake. And that happened with about 70% of the game still to go yet we barely looked like getting back into it. I don’t see how tonight can be dressed up as anything other than a disaster.

Add that to the long list of absolute guff performances in Europe for us at Fir Park. I hate, HATE European football for us, especially at home. It is a constant anti-climax and an occasional humiliation, as tonight certainly was. Fair play to Sligo, they more than deserved their win on the night. From our point of view a season of misery looms.

I thought we’d make a pigs ear of this tonight and I still think we’ll turn this around but alarm bells are ringing loud and clear after that first half debacle. We are an awful team with nothing about us and this coming season is going to be an absolute clusterfuck.

Jesus Christ. If you didn’t laugh you’d cry!

Great news! Happy enough with that lineup, we should have enough to get the job done tonight.

Or alcohol. As with any addiction, yes something does need done to help with it but ultimately the person who has the addiction needs to be able to control it. And that is the most difficult part because that takes an enormous amount of strength to first of all recognise the problem, seek help and then begin to deal with it. With regards to gambling, online betting apps have got to be one of the worst things out there because of the ease in which someone can basically squander money by just going onto their phone.

Yeah football management is the type of job where you can fail badly yet still find yourself back in a job at a different club sooner or later. All it takes is a good spell at a particular club and/or good relations with the media and/or people within football. Mark McGhee being the classic example. A dreadful return right enough but as I was saying, if a manager has a good spell in a particular job then his stock shoots back up again. Robinson bought himself a huge amount of credit by getting to two cup finals in the same season with us in 2017/18, something he dined out on for the remainder of his time with us. He also managed to get us a 3rd place ‘finish’ in 2019/2020. On paper at least that is a pretty impressive return at a club of our stature so it’s natural that he was linked with bigger jobs. Of course that doesn’t tell the whole story as anyone who watched us in that time could probably tell you. Our league form in 17/18 was pretty dismal and the following season we were even worse to watch for the most part. 19/20 saw more dire displays yet we managed to scrape wins together at the same time as Aberdeen, Hibs etc cut their own throats before the season was effectively abandoned in mid-March and we ‘finished 3rd’ by default.

He was odds on to get the Hearts job whilst still with us in late 2019 and then the Northern Ireland job in summer 2020. His stock has fallen drastically since then.

I see Robinson and his Motherwell old boys lost 2-0 at Airdrie last night in the League Cup and were roundly booed off the park by their travelling fans for it.

I think we’ll win as well. Both tomorrow night and next week and progress to the next round. However it won’t be plain sailing and it certainly won’t be easy on the eye. 2-1 tomorrow with Sligo scoring first.

They were options for us, which we’ve not got anymore. Meanwhile we haven’t really strengthened the squad. I’m sorry but to me that suggests that we are weaker.

We’ve lost Woolery and Roberts. Neither of whom were regular starters, I know, but were options for us. We’ve also lost O’Hara who falls into the same category although McGinn may give us another option. We needed to strengthen our squad from what we ended last season with and that hasn’t happened. Indeed we have lost two attacking options and replaced them with Josh Morris (who is unknown and deserves every chance to prove himself) and may yet lose van Veen as well. I’m not saying that the squad has been substantially weakened, but it has been weakened to an extent and considering how poor we were last season, that can’t be a good thing.

If we lose van Veen now then it will be a hammer blow.

I don’t think any Motherwell fan would realistically expect ‘Brazil 1970’ or anything remotely like that. However as you say yourself the squad is weaker than last season. And last season we were awful. No flukey top six/Europa qualification can disguise that. We played next to zero football throughout and got by from Aug - Dec because we had Tony Watt who could get goals to bail us out. From Boxing Day ‘21 until the end of the season we won three league matches and didn’t win a league match in 2022 until April. In that time we were eye-bleedingly dismal to watch and we can thank our lucky stars that the rest of the dross in the league managed to cut their own throats enough times to keep us out of trouble. So if, as you acknowledge, the team is now weaker than we were at the end of last season then it’s perfectly reasonable for Motherwell fans to have concerns ahead of the new season.

It wasn’t great viewing, granted, and there are valid concerns about the upcoming season. Anyone saying otherwise is kidding themselves on, in my opinion. However today was a good workout and we managed to get the win. If you want positives, that’s your positives from today.

They all count though!

Our away strip is cracking to be fair.

Nothing wrong with that. Teams that are successful need that ruthless element. I appreciate that some Well fans of an older age than myself had different experiences with Hearts, but I’ve always found their fans in the main, fairly okay. Tynecastle is a great stadium for watching football and Gorgie Road has a certain charm about it with its old tenements. Their club song is a belter as well.

Certainly sounds promising right enough.

Josh Morris, as described by the club website; “The 30-year-old attacker, who operates on either side of a front three or deeper in midfield, has penned a two-year deal with the club.“ We are actually becoming a parody of ourselves now. That said, welcome to the club Josh Morris. You have my full support.

I’ve never liked Aberdeen. A club based in a horrible city and their fans are some of the most obnoxious bampots you could have the misfortune to encounter. Have a real dislike of Dundee Utd as well. I don’t actually mind Hearts too much. I don’t like them but kind of respect them. I still cringe when I think of the ridiculous ‘FHW’ patter on here back in the day.