Jay

Mind the clubcall? That was quality. I mind being a kid and getting all excited when I was allowed to phone up. I knew the number off by heart - it was something like 0845 12 15 53! Fine times.

I've got 3 £5 briefs for this anaw if anyone wants them.

I never bet on international football mate, the odds very rarely make it worthwhile with regards to an accumulator.

I certainly won't lose too much sleep if my coupon comes in.

Tempted by Rangers 4+ goals at 3/1.

Oh aye, fair enough, it's not a debate. I know 'Well fans who don't have the slightest interest in the national team and I know Scotland fans who don't have the slightest interest in club football, and then there's a load in between. No one has to justify why they favour one over the other, if they even do.

Cheers mate. In all honesty though, I love the hard time the Tartan Army gets on here from a few folk at times, most of it is a load of nonsense. If folk wearing kilts is your idea of a group of wankers regardless of who they actually are or how they behave, then fair enough. But I can say without question that I have come across a higher percentage of complete arseholes in the Motherwell support than I have the Scotland support. TA Elite can pick and choose their games pal.

The annual subject returns - and my stance isn't any different than normal. Scotland by an absolute country mile.

Think of the asthma sufferers.

We were talking about the exact same thing on Wednesday night. Think we reached the conclusion that he's actually an absolutely shite amateur player from Essex called something like Terry Smith who decided he fancied a crack at the big time so grew his hair, hit the sunbeds, and gave himself a daft foreign name, then just sat back and waited for the first SPL team to swoop.

If anyone thinks a judgement can be made about any football manager in a month, then they're an idiot. Motherwell fans aren't content unless there is something or someone to moan about.

I'm not impressed, but I'm not unimpressed either. So far I've seen us struggle to score goals thanks to Brown nicking our only goalscoring forward, but two encouraging performances this week that almost saw us beat the champions in a semi-final and saw us losing a game to Killie when we really should have won. On the transfer front he gets plus points from me for getting rid of Gow. He's brought in Steve Jones who looks like a good signing (based on Wednesday night), and the lad Gunning looked like he could be a very composed and decent player (albeit based on the short time he was on the park). He's now brought in a striker who I haven't seen play in about 5 or 6 years, so I'm not going to comment until I see him play. But yeah, overall I'm neither impressed or unimpressed. I'll give him til the summer before making any sort of judgement. Unfortunately Motherwell fans collectively make judgements about players and managers very, very early on - sometimes before they're even in the door.

I've missed most of the chat on this, where are we collectively as Motherwell fans now? As far as I can gather we've now moved on from "McCall must go cos he didnae bring in a striker" to "McCall must go cos he didnae bring in a striker we like". Is that about the jist of things?

Jeffers by a considerable distance for me. Don't get me wrong, I don't rate Jeffers. But at least you get experience and perhaps a small chance he might actually be better than we expect. Casagolda is just fucking dreadful though.

Myself, Panda, Clark, Grievesie, the Jack twins and a few others are on the 8.07am. Anyone else on the early start?

Panda phoned Stranraer and was told there's no inspection planned. The chat amongst Stranraer fans on the net seems to be that it'll go ahead as well. In fact, the only doubt I've actually seen is on here! It's apparently raining heavily in spells, but the wind is doing the job of sweeping it off the park. Given there's not even an inspection planned at this stage and the forecast is for it to be generally dry tomorrow, I reckon we're looking good for it to be on. Anyway, if it does get called off it'll be after the 8.07 has left Central, so day out anyway!

Steve Jones.

Cannae argue with that. Plenty of folk on here come across as though they'd actually rather sign shite for sheer sake of it, rather than sign no one. The January transfer window is a load of shite for clubs like Motherwell. It's for clubs like Chelsea and Liverpool to splash out big transfer fees on players. For teams like us, the summer is the main deal. The news that we didn't sign anyone before the deadline must have been met with a sharp increase in prescriptions for beta blockers in Motherwell.

Jim Gannon was, and I assume still is, a c**t.

As I said in the semi-final thread, top marks. We ended up standing with the lads throughout the game and the atmosphere in that section of Hampden was cracking. As usual though, the stewards and police got their kicks out of wading in for no apparent reason.

Happy with yesterday, played well and getting to go mental at Motherwell equaliser in a semi-final at Hampden can't be sniffed at! Thought we deserved to at least take it to extra time, but ach well. Can't fault the effort of the lads and thought we surpassed all expectations (which wasn't difficult)! Also, a quick mention to the group of lads who are always behind the atmosphere at 'Well games. We purposely upped sticks and moved in with them, mainly because Marcos (one half of the Motherwell Armada) decided we were! But aye, they get a hard press on here at times, but if it wasn't for them then the Motherwell end would have been a fucking morgue for about 89 minutes yesterday. Anyway, after yesterday I feel a good bit more confident about the rest of the season than I did on Friday.

Ach well, officially semi-final day. Looking forward to it, though I still fully expect a humping! Kick off at Joe's flat at 8.30am with the usual suspects, the Motherwell Armada (those who went to Inverness may remember Alex, and probably will remember Marcos!) arrive about 9am, Daniels around lunch-time, then the bus to Hampden. Good day in prospect and who knows - we might just sneak it...

Coming back from two down to take the game to a replay was great stuff, not seen the highlights in ages.