Andy_P

Time will tell. There was an argument that this might be a make or break for Frear what with him going into his last year. It's started well but if that doesn't continue you've potentially Hastie ready to challenge for that place with a year/eighteen months more first team experience behind him than what he might have had by staying put. Perhaps the same applies with MacLean, particularly if Cadden goes. Turnbull likewise if Bigi were to go too. You might be right Lobey but at the moment the theory of a group of 18-20 with some youngsters on the fringes of that group and others gaining experience elsewhere ready to step in, or at least move up the pecking order when others move on is a reasonable balancing act. Whether those on the fringes or out on loan are of higher quality than those further up the pecking order currently though is another argument! Sent from my Wileyfox Swift using Tapatalk

Your thoughts and votes please...

Cheers for the latest Yorky. The guy in work had spoken of a definite thaw and improvement in the relationship between Clyde and NLC but I hadn't realised that had extended to getting the use the car park once again.

There's a car park behind our stand, assuming we're in the long stand, opposite the Main Stand. It's used for both sets of fans though as far as I know. As a consequence of former Clyde regimes battles with former regimes of NLC the car park behind the home stand was made unavailable for Clyde and given over to users of the gym/sports centre thing behind the goals. The Bully fan in work often spoke of his disgust as they approached the turnstiles to find a completely empty car park save two o three leisure centre users cars. That much I can tell you. How quickly it disperses? No idea.

Aye. £12 and £6. This one still as close to a home game as you'll get for you?

But he's right, at least in part. Mud sticks so easily in football that when the claim is made that we're just long ball merchants some folk will accept it without a second thought. Like last season we were the dirtiest bastards in the league because Rangers lost to us and spat the dummy backed up by Brendan Rodgers seeing an opportunity to put ideas into referees heads and suddenly you've all and sundry wailing for non-existent fouls and arseholes like Neil Lennon screaming about protecting McGinn against us when the wee dick had spent the full game kicking anyone that moved in claret and amber. Absolutely there are Motherwell fans out there who will genuinely believe our game is hoofball 100% of the time. Heard and seen it repeated often enough that every long ball they see just reinforces what they've come to believe is the case and are now becoming blind to what is actually the case. Do we utilise the long ball? Yes we do. Overly so at times when what is actually our primary tactic of getting the ball crossed in from wide areas isn't working. And when done too often it is unquestionably to our detriment such as Saturday past. But some would have you believe this is our only tactic but that's just not the case. How did we manage to score our first last night if we're just a long ball side? That's not entirely uncommon, Cadden did much the same the previous week too. How did we come to end up we having Frear, who missed however many games, being the player who put most crosses into the box last season if all we do is put long balls up the park? How does Tait seem to get as many assists if all we do is punt long balls? Now you can certainly question the aesthetics of primarily wanting to get balls into the box from wide areas and you can perfectly justifiably make a claim that a quick tempo possession based style that moves the ball on the ground at speed can offer more entertainment value but If you genuinely believe that the only thing Motherwell offer is hoof-ball then I'd agree you're following a particular flock rather acknowledging we have more than a single way of playing the game.

Your thoughts and votes please...

If there is an upside to Saturday it's that we that we are pretty much left with two must win games and should therefore anticipate two spectacles with much higher tempo and focus from the team than there ordinarily might have been. There should be no leisurely cantering through the final two fixtures now. There may well have been some mitigating circumstances for the result on Saturday like Dunne's injury, or two players playing their first games in six months but the reality is if they are serious about progressing in this competition they threw away their "luxury" of being able use it to use as an opportunity to get minutes into legs as Robinson put it. There's a fair bit more pressure on them now than needed to be. It's going to be an interesting night.

Bold!

Your thoughts and votes please...

Robinson has referred to Liam Donnelly in relation to the Rooney transfer in a story on the BBC website if that's who you were referring to.

For the first time this season, your thoughts and votes please...

Given what was said when MacLean and Hastie went on loan it certainly seems the case that if there is any intention to introduce youngsters it will most likely be in the second half of the season. We can but hope that if the likes of Scott and Turnbull do get an opportunity they are able to make a similar impact to Allan Campbell who very quickly became impossible to drop. My immediate reaction when the story broke about Sammon was to share same bemusement many have spoken of. I must confess I thought we would be looking for someone offering a bit more variation to what we already have. That said, Hearts aside, his goalscoring record in Scotland is pretty decent and it's not the worst piece of business in the world to add someone to your options who has a history of scoring goals nudging into double figures and who is able to provide cover and competition.

It mentions in the Edinburgh City scene setter on the website that the print at home option wouldn't be available for the two League Cup games.

In the Edinburgh City preview on the website it mentions "testing" of scanning some pre-purchased tickets ahead of the game tomorrow night. Presumably that will be the same technology which will be involved in scanning the new cards as people go in, so maybe they are being a little cautious and seeing how that goes before releasing season cards/books?

So we're off and running then. Well not quite we exactly but you know what I mean... Taking a nosey at the games in our group yesterday I see there were a couple of old foes involved in Gary Harkins at Queen of the South, who somehow seems to pop up against us season after season for some team or other and obviously there's Goodwillie at Clyde. QOTS on the face of it would appear to be the biggest threat to finishing first so it might well have been handy had Stranraer not blown their two goal lead but I would like to think that we'll be meeting them with six points out of six, and our fitness and match sharpness tuned a bit more, before we meet whatever challenge they bring. With Accies amusingly losing at Annan (again!) and with St Johnstone being taken to penalties by East Fife I suppose from the first round of games there's enough of a warning there to show what can happen in your first game back if you aren't quite on it. Looking forward to Tuesday. It seems like it will be a team selection tailored around current levels of sharpness rather than perhaps a perceived first choice starting eleven but, as ever, it would be good to win and perhaps like at Hampden last season to get a few different scorers off the mark for the season.

"looking towards the capital looking for a move" The capital? OK then...

There might be a very slight ripple effect from the English Premier League deadline being on the 9th August. If they have finalised their squads by then, it might mean the rest of the English leagues will be able to make some of their loan/permanent moves a touch earlier and in turn ourselves. Might not though...

Crikey, I've really confused matters by actually going on to talk about McClair now...

This period was pretty much at the beginning of my consciousness of what was actually happening in the game, and indeed outside of the game, beyond simply getting to annoy people across the country with a Motherwell flag on a six foot bamboo pole but was it not so much the case that around this time the club were really beginning to find themselves in the shit financially and their hands would have been forced with the McClair bid in 1983? It was not so many seasons after that there was talk of part-time football, going bust in fact were it not for reconstruction, and debts running to several hundred thousand pounds. I don't think John Chapman was around the scene at that point of the McClair transfer so I'm not sure if he would be "culpable" but certainly he would be a major player in turning things around.

Circumstances meant he perhaps never quite got the level of the McClair's and Lambert's but Joe McBride is perhaps a "near miss". Prolific with Motherwell, went to Celtic, got capped for Scotland and was top scorer in Scotland the season they won the European Cup. Sadly for him he got injured prior to Christmas and never recovered in time to make their European Cup team, nor apparently to the same level he was at previously.

Pretty solid efforts both although at first glance the use of words like "unique" left me a little puzzled. The close ups perhaps reveal a little more as to why that could be said but I can still see some close similarities to some kits we've had in the past. The home kit puts me in mind of the Xara effort around 99'00, which I really liked. I can understand why some people don't particularly like white shorts with an amber top. I personally think if you are going to go with white shorts they "blend in" better if the shirt has white, or at least has some white in the collar and cuffs and I think that might have been worth having here. The 1886 I think is a decent idea but placed where it is just looks odd and arguably detracts from the look of the shirt. But when all's said and done the main box of an amber shirt with a hoop/band has been ticked. The away kit has me thinking of another Xara kit from around 2006 or 2007 which was similarly largely claret with some amber trim. It's a style that has worked well with us and this is no different.

You could also argue the point however that their diamond is rarely if ever unbroken either because they have nowhere else to put their badge nor kit supplier but on the diamond itself. And the further consequence of that is that there is nowhere else for them to put their sponsor than below the diamond which often leaves them with a very busy looking shirt, particularly when they also include shadow images such as their artex style Hummel kit - and bizzarely the later re-incarnation of it, and dependent on the sponsors logo. And that's before you even get into things like lead times from their suppliers to actually get their kit on sale. So the commitment to retain their diamond isn't without some cost. Given that we're not out of June and some of our support give the impression they've almost chewed their arms down to their elbows in nervous anticipation of seeing what our kit looks I'd suggest given the times we live and operate in we've got the balance between giving a nod to tradition, adhering to SPFL requirements and meeting the expectations of supporters in teams of availability to purchase just about right.

I see it requested often but I have to confess I have yet to be fully convinced that Cadden has been at his most effective for us when played centrally. Don't get me wrong he hasn't been played there extensively but when I think of him offering most it's generally when he's fit, fresh, and getting down the right-hand side beyond the opposition left-back.

There was a wee FAQ style article released in the aftermath of the fixture announcement by the SPFL which attempts to explain some of the thinking behind the scheduling. Not particularly in depth but interesting enough and worth a look on the SPFL website. One question was exactly the one posed here about 18th August and it seemingly stems from a UEFA fixture change which rendered the originally earmarked midweek unavailable for the League Cup ties. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk