Andy_P

I have to say the utter ineptitude for that third was quite something. Not that the first two were much better. Shambolic defending from the first minute.

Depends how quick you're up Milo. If you're sharp you can sometimes get parked on or just off Seaforth Road which is the road that runs alongside the cemetery behind the turnstiles at the away end. Another option with more possibilities is on the Esplanade just at the beach. If you past the ballroom ideally you're looking for somewhere broadly in line with the stadium. At some point along that road there's a wee offshoot that nips down to the left and goes back on itself. Follow that road once you're parked up and it comes out at the pub right across from the turnstiles at the Beach End. Quick nip around the corner to your left and you'll be at the entrance to the away end.

No sign of Kennedy in the team photo that Motorpoint tweeted (and MFC retweeted). At the time of writing currently in the shoutbox above.

A couple of different strands to that Melvin but a good thought provoking post. A lot of unknowns. We don't know what players will still be around next season and we don't even know if McGhee will still be around next season. And of course we don't know what shape our competitors will be in either, so it's a difficult one to speculate at this point in time whether whoever is in charge of us next season will be able to build a sufficiently capable squad to keep us up. But If we stay up, then as I see it, McGhee will have achieved all that was asked of him at the time of his appointment - namely keeping us, bringing through youngsters and trying to bring money in through sales. Whether that's been easy on the eye or otherwise is another debate entirely but based on targets set he might feel he's earned another deal. So working on the assumption he's still here and if as has been suggested, we'll be on a firmer footing financially then perhaps as a consequence the ceiling on who he, or the club, wishes to bring in may be a little higher and perhaps the quality may be nudged up a notch? I specifically add in "the club" there as clearly there is a preferred route the club are looking to go down when it comes to new signings. It's no co-incidence that our head of recruitment is based in England for example. I think we're some way removed from 2007 when John Boyle clearly got a fright the day of that 3-2 defeat to St Mirren and realised he taken "efficiencies" with the playing budget as far he could without disaster striking. In his first season with us I think those looser purse strings were certainly reflected in one or two of McGhee's signings. Now I don't think for a minute that McGhee doesn't have a major input or indeed the final say on incomings; or that every signing made has to have been exclusively identified by Martin Foyle, but the impression created is that when a position to strengthen is identified by the manager it is our chap down south who is providing the list of potential signings and McGhee then begins his involvement on a more detailed level. So whilst yeah McGhee's the manager and the buck stops with him I think we're far removed from 2007 and that is perhaps being reflected in the signings being a little more of a gamble. Having said all that I'm not convinced the recruitment has been quite as bad as is sometimes made out. "Limited" Tait may be yet still better than Law at right back. Heneghan I'd contest is better than either Laing or Kennedy, has much greater potential than either two and I'd speculate on a more modest wage too. Clay has been neither startling nor disastrous, at worst squad filling material that most teams of our level need. The jury remains out on Blyth and Bowman for me since we've so little of either. Belic and Brill are on the face of it poor signings but again you can make a reasonable argument for taking on both. Pre-injury Brill did have a reasonable reputation at ICT so perhaps worth the gamble to see if had a chance of being able to recapture that form and Belic has already been confirmed to be a virtual last minute offer to club to have a look at at no cost to us so not much lost there either. So I suppose to ultimately answer your question, yeah if he's around next season I do have faith that we'll have a squad sufficiently capable to keep us in the division at least another year longer.

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That was a frustrating one. Never in a million years did Hearts merit a three goal winning margin. Another slightly unconventional selection from McGhee with Ainsworth up front and Hammell further forward on the left but one that was proving reasonably solid if not spectacular. I didn't think there was much in it in the first half and the last 10 minutes certainly gave cause for optimism for the second. I'm sure the game changing couple of minutes has already been discussed at length before my post but the sending off at first glance seemed incredible. It barely even appeared a foul far less a booking, and as for a red!?!?!?! Just baffling. And of course to compound matters for the second time this season Hearts score against us at Fir Park aided massively by a deflection. The heartening thing for me was that for about the next twenty minutes I thought we competed well and looked decent, Cadden down the right in particular. If I had to make a criticism it would be a failure to speculate with some shots from distance rather than trying to find that perfect pass. Hearts goal for one illustrated the potential reward for having a pop. The killer second and their further goal gave the scoreline a gloss that I really don't believe Hearts merited. Before the red the minimum I thought we were looking at was a point so to end up with that outcome is a right sore one.

I tell you what, whether you really really love him or really really hate him it's soul-sappingly tiresome reading the weekly oneupmanship that goes on after every win or loss.

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I didn't find it quite as painful as last Saturday's defeat but in a way more frustrating. I had hopes with some fire in our bellies after last weekend that we might have enough about us to sneak at least a point and for the first half an hour that seemed more than possible but what a disappointment thereafter. No question their sending off was merited and I thought we approached the spell thereafter well. Didn't get overly excited played it well and were well balanced between showing patience and not over committing chasing a goal. But it all seemed to fall apart after McDonald's red. Was it a straight red? I've seen it replayed a couple of times on a mobile and I wasn't sure, even more so when you set it against the challenge that earned Kiernan a yellow and one not too dissimilar that Clay was spoken to in the second half. Our mindset seemed to change immediately with it and barring a five minute or so spell before the break we offered little or nothing thereafter. Whereas last weekend there seemed a plan to what to what we were doing when we broke this week it was painful viewing watching the ball lumped in the general direction of the heavily marked and increasingly knackered Louis Moult. Rangers scoring seemed inevetible. A case of when not if. Could McGhee have changed it earlier? Should he have changed it earlier? I was surprised when Jack McMillan got the nod over Frear or Ainsworth for Chalmers initially when it seemed a more offensive change would have been more in tune with the situation as it was. But come the second half we were crying out for a freshness and change of tack. I can understand the thinking that when you reach a certain point in the game you think well, let's just try to ride it out but when time and time again, and only as recently as last weekend, have we struggled to get over the line in such situations its a gamble that rarely seems to pay off. It just feels so disappointing that at one stage in the game we've had such a good opportunity against 10 men and yet at the end of it all we've lost with barely a whimper.

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I certainly don't blame Lee Erwin for taking the option of moving to Leeds both from either a financial or career perspective. Clearly he was going to improve his bank balance considerably and as a footballer I would like to think he would have had the belief and self-confidence that he would go down there and make it at Leeds. But the Jamie Murphy route lingers in my mind here where he adopted to take a more graduated route that will hopefully conclude with him playing in the English top flight next season. Would Lee have been better served following a similar path? If he does join Thistle time will tell whether he has improved as a player from the one who was performing pretty well when he left us but as it stands I remain to be convinced that uninspiring loan spells at Bury and Oldham will have served him better than another year/eighteen months at Fir Park would have.

Echo Dezz's comments. Congratulations on your appointment to the WS Board Jay and I hope you will be able to use your enthusiasm and influence to help the Society grow and prosper.

Well you've posted your opinion on a fitba forum Jim so it's kind of up to anyone reading your post to decide whether they agree or disagree with you and to how much length they want to go into if they choose to reply. I wouldn't say your talking shit as you put it but I do disagree with your opion and have made it clear why. For the sake of discussion surely better that you know why I disagree, no? But aye, nobody is falling out.

I disagree, How many former players have let us down when they've come back? Off the top of my head not many. Alex Burns? Brian McClair? Henrik Ojamma? Can even chuck in Fraser Wishart if you want to go back a couple of decades. But each "mistake" if you want to call it that rectified within months. You contrast that to the hundreds of games and the contributions we've had from Craigan, McDonald, Hammell, Lasley, Burley, O'Donnell, Pearson, Sutton and McFadden. Despite the fury it seems to unleash in some folk for some unfathomable reason there is no absolutely no reason why a potential signing who it is felt could make a contribution should be discounted just because he's played for us before And I don't see that much wrong with augmenting the increasing group of home grown players with calculated gambles from the lower end of the English game either. The very fact the biggest sale we've made in years in Johnson came from that route, and in the squad currently you've got Louis Moult who is surely likely to better that and even after a few months there have been murmurs of interest about Heneghan suggests it's a market to be explored and exploited further. We're all hurting but lets just put the scattergun down as what to and who we are venting our frustrations at for a wee bit eh.

Your thoughts and votes please..

Interesting choice of word there - 'fear'. I'm excited about tomorrow and whilst I think it's a difficult ask for us and you would generally go to most games at Ibrox very apprehensive I find myself anything but fearful. I think that having poked the evil beast in the eye as it were in the play-offs when there was a whole lot more at stake by comparison this tie is small beer in the pressure stakes. I'm quietly confident.

You might be right, I don't know enough about him to say otherwise but as an aside that all reads like the classic hyping of Dundee Utd players that took place four or five years ago. ... And exactly what we want to see when it comes to our own prospective sales of the future!

I agree it might have been easier all around to make it as widely known as possible voting could be as simple as placing your vote by email. In fairness though it does state under the list of candidates on the voting form you can vote by the email method by, as you state above, confirming WS membership number or dob. I did that last night actually and first thing this morning received an email from the WS confirming my vote had been received.

Clearly an obvious faux pas with the image but I'd suggest it's maybe wee bitty harsh to say "errors in Motherwell programmes continues". Some good strides have been made with the programme in recent times and I believe it came third in the top flight in one of the Programme Monthly awards last season, with the two teams finishing first and second having a whole lot more resources to chuck at their efforts.

Personally I'd be quite happy if we extended his deal further. I do think there's a player there. He's made some mistakes certainly in recent games without question but I do like his style of play and in the right midfield setup I think he could flourish. Someone is going to benefit from the opportunity we've given him to get back to fitness and play - I'd prefer it that it was who were beneficiaries of our time and investment thus far. The question for me isn't about his ability it's about him staying fit enough, long enough to deliver and in an ideal world I'd like to see what he could do for the remainder of this season and see how he goes once he's had a full pre-season behind him. I do agree in the short-term that we would be overloaded in central midfield if Pearo were to come back but if he did, how long a deal would he sign for? He might well be off again to India in the summer as he did last year. And then there's the Keith Lasley dilemma that the management are going to have in the coming months. We may not be so heavy in that department come the start of pre-season even with the likes of Campbell and perhaps Turnbull further up the pecking order. As you say though there's a bigger picture at play in terms of the overall squad depth and much as I'd be keen for him to stick around there's an equally fair case to say we've given him a decent opportunity over the last six months and for various reasons things could have gone better.

If we're having a grumble about the referee I'll also chuck in his booking of Moult for what I saw was deemed to be an "over excessive celebration". That one irritates me enormously as again enforcement of such activity varies wildly. He celebrated with our supporters, there was no incitement. The boards are so close to the touchline he could barely have left the confines of the pitch. You contrast that with some of the celebrations we've seen that have gone unpunished and you just think that's ridiculous.

As an aside. We'll obviously get the highlights from MFC after midnight tonight but Alba are showing an hours worth of highlights tomorrow night at 11pm.

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A special couple of minutes at the death today. In the cold light of day it's only a point but it was brilliant, just brilliant. And it was so well deserved at that. Ok they had their chances to put us away but even with 10 men we were creating every bit as much as them and it was never a case of us stealing a point. It was thoroughly deserved. And who knows, it might well have been three had we not gone down to ten. Whether that was merited I'll need to see again but certainly his two feet were up and it seemed a bit of a lunge. You can make the claim that a similar challenge on Wednesday was deemed worthy of only a yellow and he may feel entitled to make a similar type of tackle but such a challenge is always risky. It was frustrating for it seemed only a matter of time before the goal would come. We'd one off the line and McDonald's header saved at point blank range and Accies had rarely threatened. I thought we'd coped well enough going down to ten but we failed to take the chances that were coming our way and we also failed to heed the warning from their disallowed goal. It seemed criminal to be caught out with an almost identical move seconds after they'd put the ball in the net. Credit to the team for keeping it going and never giving in. A lot of guts and determination out there. I thought Allan Campbell in particular was absolutely magnificent (on what I think is his first start?) and went toe-to-toe with anyone who came near him. Showed strength and savvy beyond his stature and was not intimated in the slightest. But what of Louis Moult? Some man. It wasn't his best afternoon. Things weren't quite going his way and he looked frustrated as a consequence but the benefit of having such a finisher in the team was perfectly illustrated in those final few seconds. Those scenes when he put it away. Fantastic! I glanced up from the melee in the stand and I'm sure I even saw Samson up celebrating with the rest of the team. Again, it wasn't a win, but it at this moment in time it sure feels like it!

Your thoughts and votes please...