Andy_P

Your thoughts and votes please...

I am genuinely baffled by the number of people who would seem happy to toss Gillespie aside after a rare below par performance.

Moot point as it is, I recollect when Josh Law signed it was mentioned in the blurb that he had been up and trained with the club several times before he actually signed. [sets up open goal for another Steelboy Stuart McCall nepotism rant...]

If Murphy is available I'd be very happy to have him back, even if it was on loan. Murphy left us with complete dignity having given us great service. He also took the abuse he received on his return with a similar dignity. If Robinson felt he could contribute and we could afford him, I'd be delighted if he came back.

A few posts suggesting we should have been more defensive or cautious. In much the same way as I thought the exclusion, and ultimate sale, of Danny Johnson inhibited our ability to switch formations in the second half of last season, so too does our recruitment in the summer. We really do seem to have set ourselves up to play this style whether it's against a Third Division side or the current Champions. That is going to be beneficial but at times it is really going to make life difficult for ourselves when you aren't 100% on it. For the first half an hour or so I'd say we pretty much were. The football we attempted to play was very easy on the eye. They were hemmed in and being passed around for long spells. But when we lost that edge around the half-hour mark the dominance we had enjoyed ebbed away. The timings of the loss of the first two goals were pretty critical. How would both teams have reacted had we been able to settle on that lead? We'd looked fairly assured in possession. Could we have eased the tempo a shade and looked to retain possession rather than going all guns blazing and some of the team seemingly burning themselves out very early on? And to go in behind at the break was as frustrating as it was unmerited. I don't know that our front three were just as ineffective as some are suggesting. They are certainly vital to that formation working effectively and they all played their part in a very good start to the game. But Hylton, Long and Seedorf looked fucked after about half an hour, which allied to Celtic gaining momentum as the game wore on saw us tail off considerably. I can understand it to a certain extent. Scottish football is easy to mock,and many south of the border do, but the intensity of some fixtures such as todays I suspect won't readily be replicated in the reserve leagues of English Premiership or non-league so readily. Being fit is one thing. Being sufficiently match fit to handle the intensity of the game here is something a bit different. So whilst the second half collapse is a concern, the individual mistakes that suggest poor decision making there were still a few positives to take. If being ran into the ground speeds up that process for two or three of them being "ready" and we can replicate and extend that opening half an hour for more and more of each game I would like to think we'll see more good results, and games for that matter, than bad.

Jutkiewicz and Law also on the scoresheet in England. McHugh getting a hat-trick for Morton and Steven Saunders netting last night in the Championship to add to the former players finding the net.

Your thoughts and votes please...

A step up next week in League One Clyde, but the Bully fan I know says Clyde are no fans of the Challenge Cup and routinely put as weak a team as they can get away with, without being fined.

Deviating away from the topic for a moment, the recent documentary/film about Maradona is excellent, said assault being contained within. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5433114/

It is. But equally if you're playing the "In The Know" game and are quite happy to take the credit when you get it right, you have to take it on the chin when you a look a bit of a daftie and get it wrong.

My thoughts too. You look for any small gains you can take from fixture scheduling and them having Champions League qualifiers either side of the game, having had to return from Eastern Europe having an away fixture with an early kick-off is arguably as good as you might hope for in that regard.

Jury is very much out on Long. Way too early to make a definitive call on how good he is or isn't. I liked the look of him of him against Linfield in Belfast where he not only scored but looked willing to go out wide and drop deep to seek possession. Some important attributes in a lone striker. I didn't see much physicality though which did leave a nagging doubt. There's been a couple of times he's looked to be through and taken poor touches (Scott missed a couple of one-on-one's too in the League Cup remember) whether that's been through a lack of control, lack of sharpness physically or mentally, or even just shite surfaces that'll become evident the more he plays. I don't know if he'll come good but writing someone off at this stage as hopeless when amongst the 4 appearances he's made two have been as substitute and a start that lasted 8 seconds is buffoonery of the highest order.

I'd be in two minds about Carson moving on. Selfishly I'm not unhappy that we have two excellent "first-choice" keepers on the books when you consider that twice last season we required keepers to come off the bench and of course we had Carson's "injury" emerge from nowhere. It illustrates that if you can afford to run with two, it's no bad thing. But then there's the consideration that he's in his last year and should we look to get a fee? Is it wrong to make the assumption he would show the same kind of form he did before? Given how the club have worked in the past with the likes of Andy Rose is there some kind gentleman's agreement in there about bids for him (especially after the Celtic bid?). Interesting one.

Your thoughts and votes please...

I don't disagree with that Dave (and you can add Dumbarton to your list too) my post was more in response to the lines above that both Motherwell's ticket office and the section set aside for online booking had been fully taken up. That in itself should both give Livingston advance notice that additional sections will be required from the minute the turnstiles open and if as has been suggested the sections already sold number around 1000, that's going to take 1000 off the number who need to queue twice to buy a ticket and then get in.

There's surely no question they'll open up the additional sections going around the corner, as they did in the League Cup game last year, if we've sold out our original allocation.

Not to take away from the impact he made but are you perhaps mixing up the start of last season and the season before? We'd reached a Cup Final, were on the way to another and were borderline top six in the only season Tanner has featured for us.

In more recent decades I don't the impact of commercialisation can be understated in terms of the band/hoop's usage. I remember Alan Dick being quite open that the club weren't unhappy with the variation of a band/hoop design and non-band/hoop design because they knew the majority of people who buy replica kits want to have the most up to date shirt. And more shirt sales = more money. It's the same reason you barely have a kit these that lasts for more than twelve months before being updated.

For me since he came into the side James Scott has shown all the attributes required to be an excellent lone striker. There's at times been evidence of a decent physique, pace, touch, finishing ability and movement. Just not all at the same. Yet. He's going to get better and better as he develops all those attributes and gets more experience under his belt and when it all clicks he's going to be a terrific talent. For the here and now though he's surely going to start against Livingston because he's played himself into the starting role with his goals in the League Cup group games and because he's shown more than Long and both Cole and Manzinga are injured. But he is still at an age yet where for his own benefit he needs his time on the pitch to be managed. To use David Clarkson as an example he came into the first team at a similar age and had an excellent eighteen months or so. He ended up doing so well and our situation was such that we couldn't really afford to rest him. But both the team and he paid for that in the next couple of seasons after when he lost his edge and struggled when the inevitable dip in form came. Whether its a starter who comes in or further back up, until any of the other strikers begin to prove their worth, to enable him to be rotated we do still require further back up.

Your thoughts and votes please...

Connection to the 1991 Cup winning team in that Dumbarton photo too in the shape of Bobby Holmes.

Fair enough, I'm not denying that what the clubs concerned have done is morally questionable (if not indeed perhaps legally questionable), but if his contract has expired then as with Cadden, Turnbull is entitled do as he sees fit. As much as it isn't Cadden's responsibility that the compensation rules aren't as watertight as they should be, neither would it be Turnbull's however much we might miss out on. My view is that once a contract has expired we no longer have a say or influence on what the player does. Our battle should be with the authorities to ensure rules are as they should be not with players who have been model professionals whilst under contract with us.

Or there's the flip side that we've aided Cadden's development for 18 months due to a change in formation from that which he played for the previous two years taking him out of a comfort zone and giving him an appreciation of playing a deeper wing-back role. And let's not forget the experience of two Semi Finals and two Finals in during those eighteen months. I'm sure that did absolutely nothing for his development... I liked Cadden and would rather he be at the club than playing for another team but I'm not convinced that had we been playing 4-4-2 all through Robinson's reign those eighteen months wouldn't have seen very much difference to the "hit the ball past the full-back and try to run fast past him" tactic that had been synonymous with him since he broke through. That said I absolutely agree that he gave 100% when selected which for for me means that Cadden's obligations to Motherwell ceased when his contract expired. Thereafter he could pick and choose where he wanted to go as he saw fit. Let's not forget though, we may have invested 10 years plus into the development of his game but we got four or so years of a first team player, and what 150 games or abouts, on the back of that investment. Sometimes compensation isn't always monetary.

Your thoughts and votes please...