milo

That would’ve meant strengthening the starting 11.....

The mainstream media don’t care so it’s not even on their radar and the in house guys are unlikely to throw Robinson any hard balls but I’d love to hear where the decision to ignore the glaring deficiencies in the starting 11 and sign players purely for the bench care from. Why this was ever signed off as an approved strategy is incredible.

He’s an abomination of a signing and the shitey cherry on top of a terrible summer of recruitment.

Totally agree. Great start as well.....

Well that sucks.

A couple of folk over on P&B saying Carson (unsurprisingly), Main and Rose are out for this game? Based on the games v Dundee and Hearts I’d say Cadden needs benched also. Aberdeen away is traditionally a very tough fixture, save for a huge glorious unbeaten run under McCall, and whilst Aberdeen appear to not be firing on all cylinders yet, a point here would be most welcome. As a poster above said, the next few games v Aberdeen, Killie, Livingston and St Johnstone will be a good indication of how this season is going to I think.

Indeed. Astounding. And yet not even remotely surprising.

I’m flitting between thinking we were actually unlucky yesterday to not get a point and thinking we were pretty toothless. Either way, there was very little between the teams overall and we did match Hearts throughout. McHugh’s passback cost us big style. Literally a hospital ball! Which was harsh on him as he was probably our best player. He sold the jerseys there though. Although going a goal down is obviously not ideal, especially in the circumstances where it was arguably against the run of play, it’s an occupation hazard in football and I’m surprised it would appear to continually affect us so badly. Cadden needs benched, not moved inside. He’s been poor in every game I’ve seen him in and Robinson has obviously recognised that also as he’s subbed him fairly early. Main now has 2 goals in 19 (one of which was a penalty) and if he doesn’t score in the next couple of games then we need to look for a better option up front. Balance in midfield isn’t working and as others have said, despite Robinson strengthening “12 to 19” its interesting we’re relying on 2 of last seasons players, Bowman and Frear, to change it. Neither of which did it yesterday. Taking Johnson off was a massive mistake. If a player isn’t fit after a full pre-season and 8/9 competitive games then I don’t know what’s going on. I thought our passing was ropy throughout aswell as the lack of movement off the ball when we were in possession meaning it resulted in a long hopeful punt which Hearts comfortably dealt with. That’s 2 home games v Accies and Hearts where we haven’t looked like scoring and/or created next to nothing. The next 2 games are unlikely to be anything other than home wins so real pressure to get something from the Livingston and St Johnstone games. We could be about 13 points behind Livingston by the time we play them and on 1 win in 7. That form can’t be replicated across the season. We signed enough players in the summer so there is scope for changing things. If we don’t then guys like Grimshaw, Gorrin, Taylor-Sinclair, Donnelly etc are literally picking up wages for nothing. I still maintain the recruitment in the summer was all wrong. We had a decent platform to build on with a few tweaks here and there but what we essentially have is the same team as last season minus 2 of our best players. There’s no pace in the team and our build up play is predictable and laborious with the final ball and decision making if we do get into the final third brutal. Finally Madden. An absolute joke of a ref whom never had a grasp throughout and even seemed to give decisions at the end cos the crowd were shouting at him! That’s the second time I’ve seen him laugh at the East Stand, which is fine as he’s was getting it tight, but would tell the Copeland Road to “sit down?” Or single out a particular supporter, in this case a wee boy by pointing at him? Those wee guys shouldn’t have been throwing paper on the pitch but still. You could be forgiven for thinking Naismith was the ref however!!!

Indeed. Never really thought much of Naismith before other than he’s a very good player but the cup game v Hearts last year changed all that! Not only is international football absolute shite, but now a nothing diddy game has potentially cost us our best midfielder which will be hugely influential in how this game now goes.

Thoroughly deserved that. It would’ve been a travesty if we hadn’t won as we controlled so much of the game. We switched off for a minute and they got a goal from nothing and then Carson had an excellent save but apart from that Dundee were a poor lot. Ref was absolutely shocking!

I think there’s a bit of pressure on us going into this one. Accies and this one were/are realistically our best chances of a win in the opening 7 fixtures. We made an arse of the Accies one so can’t mess this one up. If we do then the great performance on Sunday is all for nothing and there’s a very a very good chance we will be winless after the first 7 games and adrift at the bottom.

Surprised at Carson and also our inability to deal with crosses. If you’re going to concede 3 goals in the first half then you’ll always give yourself too much to do.

A win here would more than make up for the horror show v Accies and more importantly get our season started in earnest. Unfortunately I can see us getting absolutely murdered about 4-0 or worse. Can’t believe we got Thompson as the ref again.

I’ve also heard these exact amounts being banded about. Worrying we’re prepared to spent that on such an utter donkey! If true of course.

This is my first post in this thread as far as I’m aware! Still, don’t let the facts get in the way of your narrative.

That’s the thing, we haven’t strengthened the first 11, and incredibly that was never even the intention despite certain areas crying out for attention, we’ve strengthened the bench, possibly, we don’t even know that yet! Our starting 11 is probably weaker than last season. I can’t ever remember a Motherwell manager making this many signings and not one of them was for the starting 11!

I’m not sure Saturday was just a bad day at the office as has been alluded to above. I mean it was shocking in so many ways of course, but so were the 5, or at least 4 games before it. That’s 6/5 bad days in a row. Too many to be dismissed as a “one off”. I suspect it’s more down to not recruiting the right players to strengthen the starting 11 and the tactics being howling.

Mind after the cup final in 2011 when we kept everyone bar Sutton and replaced him with Higdon and brought in Nicky Law? That’s basically all we needed to do this summer. Imagine in 2011 if we didn’t sign Higdon and Law but instead brought in Fraser Kerr, Francis-Angol, Stuart Carswell, Bob McHugh, Zac Jules, Joe Chalmers, Craig Reid, Tony Straker and Lee Hollis...... That’s what I fear we’ve done this summer. I’m not saying the new guys will be *that* bad, but a couple of decent additions was what we were crying out for. We probably aren’t going to see that much of the new guys so we may never know. Our squad is massive and crucially there are no goals in it. Conor Sammon is an abomination of a signing. I’d go as far as to lump him in with Bob Malcom and Gerry Britton under “players I refuse to accept played for Motherwell”.

Yep. We will be pointless after 7 games. Even the poorer teams will have amassed 6/7 by that point.

Spot on.

Many will feel their concerns about the summer recruitment being vindicated after that absolute horror show today. The decision to not address the glaringly obvious areas for attention in the starting 11 and spunk the budget on bench fillers of unknown or questionable quality, and that’s before you factor in the eye bleeding (not to mention completely ineffective) tactics and utterly bizarre substitutions is going to cost Robinson his job, our probably our premier league status due the new guy having zero wriggle room to change anything due the bloated squad that’s been assembled all being under contract. The men in charge of the purse strings need to be held accountable for sanctioning this approach also. I fully expect us to be pointless after 7 games and adrift.

That was worse that I imagined it could be. Robinson will be gone by October.

Bit of pressure on us in this one I feel due to many having concerns about summer recruitment/form/formations/strategies etc. This is realistically, on paper, our best chance of a win in the opening 7 fixtures and if we don’t get it, coupled with a decent performance then Robinson’s critics will feel vindicated. You’d like to think after Easter Road that Bigirimana and Johnson both start but I wouldn’t be too sure of that.

I was delighted with Aldred coming back but I can’t help feel the squad is now bloated but with very little, if any, quality.

That would be pretty galling.