Andy_P

I'm sure Dundee have done it in such a way that they've managed to still incorporate Dens Park in the title 'The Fuckknowswhatitscalled Stadium at Dens Park'. That would be a bit more palatable. Our neighbours across the M8 have also agreed a deal recently that sees a local taxi company secure naming rights of their stadium. It nudges into figures across five years with the option of a further five years at its conclusion. I think there's a fairly extensive uptake of advertising space inside the ground included also. But it all depends what you are being offered, for how long and what's involved. What might work for one team might not necessarily be suitable for another. Sent from my Wileyfox Swift using Tapatalk

See previous threads on the same subject matter as to why I'd have him in a heartbeat. But seeing that potential he showed against Hamilton, throw in the knowledge he wasn't anywhere near fit, barely played for months before coming to us, didn't have anything much of a pre-season to build a core level of fitness on, aren't people, even remotely intrigued to see what he could do with a full Stephen Robinson style pre-season behind him? Sent from my Wileyfox Swift using Tapatalk

I can understand the skepticism to a slight extent. It does tend to be a statement, or subtly worded alternative, that you see around this time each close season. What you generally don't however see are things like what the comparative period is, when the tickets went on sale, the variations between and adult, concession, student and child ticket sales, how many tickets are free as part of the Wellevate scheme and when all is done and dusted and the season is a couple of weeks old what the actual numbers are. So whilst I agree that news of positive sales is very encouraging, and you would hope some of those sales are indeed in response to a season that had some tremendous high points but I also agree with Kmcalpin, in that it will probably will be a case of waiting and seeing. On a personal level I've found the introduction of the Ticketmaster platform excellent. Whilst it was getting to the point I was on the verge of contacting the club for the code, the purchase was done and dusted in a couple of minutes without the need to contact the club. If you consider however 5 x minutes or whatever per person that has been saved by manually processing a sale in person or over the phone that's a lot of 5 minutes that have been clawed back that can be used in other ways to benefit the club in other ways. I also believe the Ticketmaster platform will really come into its own for all-ticket games when fans will be able to order and print tickets at home or even, if entry to Fir Park is going to be set up in a similar fashion to Glasgow Warriors who also use that platform, you just have the barcode from the ticket visible on your phone ready to be scanned. Some difference from having to make a trek to Fir Park if you don't happen to be local.

No, Clarkson's caps were a good bit earlier. It was towards the end of season 07'08 Clarky got his goal, away to the Czech Republic. Ross McCormack came on that day also but didn't quite have the same feel good factor as he was all but away at that point. Saunders cap was at Pittodrie. Can't remember exactly when but it might have been against the Faroe Islands but as sbcmfc says I also recall it being a case of "right time, right place" for him with the U21's not being a million miles away.

It was re-tweeted either by Flow or the club's Twitter account a month or two back. It's a Testimonial for one of their players. There was a wee bit of mutual appreciation of another following the Challenge Cup game last season so it may the invitation has come on the back of that. Sent from my Wileyfox Swift using Tapatalk

Scotland U21's game against France is being streamed on the Youtube page of FreeSports. Might be just mine but the stream is ridiculously stop start but after the chat about Allan Campbell being played very deep against Togo in between the buffering it actually looks like he's playing almost in a centre-forward role at times. He's certainly he's one of the players deployed furthest up the park.

The automatic reaction to the Lambert suggestion is a big hearty belly laugh. But I guess with Kilmarnock managing to get Stevie Clarke in and even I suppose Rangers managing to attract Gerrard would appear to have emboldened one or two clubs to ask the question of people they simply wouldn't have dared even contacting previously. I still think this is St Mirren attempting to puff out their feathers to make themselves appear to have a bit more about themselves than they actually have. Being linked with a English Premiership manager from last season will do no harm in shifting season tickets and hints at a level of ambition to any players that may turn the head of players they are attempting to sign. Fully expect them still be choosing from the usual suspects like Neilson, Goodwin or McCulloch when the time comes.

There are lots of different elements to the discussion. Celtic's dominance is often cast up as an apparent example of how poor our league is but it's not like we're alone here in having a supremely dominant side. I mean what are we up to in Italy now? Seven successive Serie A titles for Juventus? It's been something like 5 out of the last 6 in France have been won by PSG, not to mention a treble this season. Porto and Benfica have carved it up between them both for about the last 20 years. Basel were only just pipped from making in 9 in succession in Switzerland. Despite what you are lead to believe things aren't significantly different in Scotland to a number of other European leagues in terms of dominance and predictability of winner. There is a whole separate debate to be had about the actual quality of the football on display in Scotland but for excitement, drama and at times sheer farce Scottish football is great. The league set up is such as that in every division you will generally have very few teams that don't have something to play for as you head towards the end of a season. The battle for second place and the European places and at the bottom end looks like it will be as competitive as ever. The Championship has about 4 or 5 teams that could realistically put in a challenge for promotion. There are lower league sides that historically have performed at higher levels like Airdrie and Clyde are positioning themselves for challenges to take a step back up and the likes of Cowdenbeath (and perhaps Hamilton to a lesser extent) doggedly defying the odds again and again to just stand still. There are stories of interest right, plots and sub-plots across all the divisions, you just sometimes have to get beyond the slavish devotion to the Old Firm that you get from a lot in the mainstream media to get a flavour of them. We also obviously suffer from the geographical proximity and the gulf in size compared to our southern neighbours. How many times have you been scoffed at by English fans for only having 4000 fans or whatever. The reality is of course is that per head of population our top division is one of the best supported in Europe. That us playing Celtic is the equivalent of somebody like Rochdale or Oldham making the FA Cup Final. But that doesn't make for as good a piss take does it and the "small fry" nature of our league gets reinforced time and time again. UEFA's influence? That's a bit more tricky. The money involved undoubtedly helps Celtic get further and further away with each passing season and it would be absolutely lovely if one of us were able to deny them a third successive treble. There is no doubt Europe can be a significant benefit to them. But by the same token the Champions League and Europa League's relevance to Scottish football almost seems to lessen each year. Few make it very far and at times it actually feels a bit like a World Cup or European Championship where because you've so little involvement after the early rounds that you can almost view it from a detatched perspective and enjoy the competitions for what they are. All things considered, I'm pretty comfortable with what Scottish football is all about. By God there's lots that can be improved upon, issues that need to be tackled and what not but following the League Cup draw the other night, the anticipation of new signings, new strips, new scoreboard and the announcement of friendlies to come my appetite has already been whetted for the new season to come.

I had a nosey before my code came through in the post. You can certainly up an account and have a look to see what availability is there. But if you're an existing season ticket holder you won't be able to renew without the code. As regards a group I'd imagine the same process as above might need to be followed of linking accounts but you're probably better clarifying that with MFC.

I don't think he got more than a couple of first team appearances if I remember rightly. Was sacked after he smashed Jim Griffin in training.

I don't know whether it was coincidental it happened to us but if the last two years are anything to go by as the top seeds we should expect to face the next most difficult opponent (Queen of the South) at home, as happened with both Rangers and Morton. Otherwise really what's the point of having a seeding system if you don't give the higher seeded team an advantage. If that's the case obviously you're looking at two from three of Edinburgh City, Clyde and Stranraer for your away days.

I quite like the format of the League Cup, but the regionalised nature of it means it has the potential for throwing up the same combinations of teams quite often. That's Stranraer and Edinburgh City twice in three years now. Still on the whole the competition has provided us with some new opposition to face and the chances to reacquaint ourselves with teams we haven't faced for long and weary.

Seems a fine suggestion to me Jim!

You have to, and club obviously are making efforts on a few fronts in terms of making pricing as keen as possible, making the "match day experience" as enjoyable as it possibly can be and the work going through all the Community initiatives. That goes I suppose as much for retaining support as building on what we have. The demand for the two Finals I imagine will have been useful in giving the club a rough guage of what potential currently exists out there. It will also have been a wonderful opportunity at raising the profile of the club locally. NLC putting up banners, bunting in the streets, seeing shop and premises windows all decorated is publicity that you can't really buy. I suspect that everything that came with the Cup Final despite the fact we didn't actually win it will have had much more impact and a positive effect on potential supporters as the seasons we were finishing second or third. Like Katie though it would be interesting to see how the schemes like Wellevate have been performing. There was a degree of satisfaction at the beginning of the campaign that home supports were nudging above 4000. It will be interesting to see where we are at the start of next season and if we've been able to capitalise on the Cup Final. I also think that whilst we look to the club to see what they are doing there is a, perhaps responsibility isn't the right word, but a role for all existing supporters in doing what we can do ourselves. There are no better people to sell the club than of those of us who already live and breathe the club, and it was good to see that resource tapped into with the likes of the season ticket ads last summer and the cover of the programmes etc.

Which obviously you would have to do as buses have different capacities and the club have been booking with those capacities in mind. If you're just randomly allocating numbers on the day then it would have been a disaster. If the club have earmarked 80 odd people to go on a double decker bus (say the yellow double decker from hell that was bus 18 yesterday) and then on the day because it happens to be 18th in line someone decides bus 18 will in fact be a single decker you are going to have a stack of irate supporters getting increasingly tetchy demanding to know what bus they're going to get to the Final on. They should ideally have been lined up in numerical order but from what I saw all buses were clearly marked with their numbers and people were taking the common sense approach of just keeping walking until they got theirs. No big deal.

It's a curious thing. He's obviously a half decent player and when you factor in the level of commitment, determination and desire he shows you would think those would be qualities and characteristics you would desperately want to have in a side battling against the drop. But seemingly not.

You're right of course. Hence the reason for my very deliberate "others I've forgotten" get out of jail card... In truth Aldred fitted in so seamlessly and approached his time at Motherwell in such a professional and committed fashion that, not for the first time, I actually forgot he was just on loan. It's the way of the game these days that loan moves are so common but whether through level of performance or for the way they've "got" our club some live in the memory longer than others. He's perhaps not quite Ruddy or Jutkiewicz English Premiership/Championship level of quality but he's right up in that bracket of terrific loan signings. Hope we can make it a permanent deal over the summer.

So at the time of writing we know... IN Nobody confirmed as yet OUT Luke Watt, Nadir Cifti (loan return) and Stephen Hendrie (loan return) CONTRACT EXTENSIONS Charles Dunne, Cedric Kipre, Ryan Bowman, Richard Tait, Andy Rose, Liam Grimshaw and James Scott. And probably others I've forgotten about. Close season now open for business...

A deflating day, although I must admit, my disappointment eased a touch having gone back to Fir Park after the game for a bit. It was nice to be around like minded souls. Obvious stuff but the game was won and lost in the first half. It was just such a disappointing first half performance from us. I think just about everyone bought into in the air of assurance and confidence that all at the club were showing beforehand but I think that just made the tentative and hesitant performance in the opening half hurt all the more. We performed much more creditably in the second half but Celtic obviously had the two goal cushion and had no real requirement to push on at that stage. If Bigi's free-kick had gone in or Cadden's header gone in or even veered further in the direction of Frear, who knows how the last few minutes might have panned out but the better team won and on this occasion we only have ourselves and not Craig Thomson or any official to blame this time. I think there's definitely a debate to be had about where we stand currently and what we need to do to progress and move forward but are those few minutes after full time when the rawness after a Cup Final loss is at it's greatest the time for that? Or when some of the contributions smack of capitalising on an opportunity to air negative opinions when morale has taken a hit. Rather than any perceived failing on the support I actually thought that most waiting around to applaud the team after the game and when they got their medals reflected well on us. A fact remarked upon by one or two in the media and some of the opposition support. I've seen loads of finals where the losers have fucked off pronto but I think it's to our credit as a support that we've sucked up the results of the League Cup and Scottish Cup Finals and hung around to show appreciation to the team. It can surely only enhance the rapport between the players and supporters and be viewed as a positive when attempting to attract or retain players. So, a disappointing end to the season without question but undoubtedly a season that's been a success on so many levels be that the improvement in league position, the success we've achieved in Cup competitions that have been so coveted and are so valuable to the club financially. But the club's Twitter account is right, it doesn't end here. It can't end here. A success it has been but there remains a fairly high ceiling in the league for improvement, an opportunity to expand upon to the style or at least add a variety to the type of football played and of course we will always retain aspirations of lifting silverware again (oh for the fortune of playing a non-Old Firm side in the Final again!) I'll be renewing the season ticket next week!!

Your thoughts and votes please...

I know they want everybody there and all but crikey, I've left later to get to Dundee!!

I would find a change of badge odd on a couple of levels. For one thing I would think it might warrant some consultation, perhaps a selection process that involved supporters or at the very least some advance notice. Secondly it doesn't seem that long ago that Flow was going on about ensuring the "correct" Motherwell badge was been used consistently across our "brand" something he acknowledged hadn't been properly adhered to both inside and outside the club (you might have noticed that the banners NLC have put up for example don't have a white ball). But you never know I suppose.

The two new deals strike me as being sensible rather than spectacular. We know what we're getting with both ability wise, particularly Rose - Grimmy hints at having a bit more potential to develop and show greater consistency and they are both sufficiently youthful that their fitness levels aren't going to fall off a cliff during the summer. It would not be unreasonable to think then we're going to be no worse off next season than where we are now with them. And that's not to suggest where we are with them just now is a bad place. That for me gives us a solid platform to develop from next season. When you think of the injuries to the likes of McHugh and oddly enough both Grimshaw and Rose over the past couple of seasons I see it as no bad thing to have that depth in midfield. A depth that is hopefully going to be deeper still with the emergence of Turnbull. In a ideal world we let David Turnbull continue from where he's finished the league campaign this season and we perhaps don't need one or the other. The likliehood is though he's going to be eased in and out the side in much the same way Campbell was. Rose and Grimshaw are going to help with that easing in and out process. I think it's interesting that they are both one year deals. It doesn't suggest that there is a long term vision to build the midfield around them that's for sure. Rose I think will continue to be a useful player to have around the squad for as long as is required until the likes of Turnbull or whoever come on and push him further back in the queue, or of course he decides to relocate. Grimshaw has really come in the last couple of months and I think faces a challenge to see if he can replicate that form on a longer term basis to earn an extended deal this time next year. So aye, good solid and sensible planning to get them both tied up for another season.

Are you sure he wasn't just upset at the fact it was Motherwell who signed him? Raised over in the dark side of the M8 I also have numerous mates who support Airdrie and whilst friends for the best part of thirty years they may well be the signing of Ferguson and us effectively being something of a "parent club" in recent times with the numerous loanees we've sent their way is viewed as a none too pleasant and continual reminder of their current status.

Not to say there wasn't anything else, but again for a proper "players in kit with the trophy in front of them team photo" short of the Final itself the only one I can recollect would be that team photo for the following season. I actually wonder on how many occasions they would all have been together after the Final to take something akin to the 1952 photo you refer to. There would have been the open top bus parade and I have sketchy recollections of a civic reception being put on by the council for the club at some point but one or two moved on fairly quickly or acrimoniously, not to mention availability of some through injury so I don't think there would have been that many opportunities to get such a shot. Sent from my Wileyfox Swift using Tapatalk