Andy_P

Okay, I think this one we're probably going to have to agree to disagree on this one PW. You're pretty insistent you think Erwin came on to replace Law at left-midfield. I'm pretty sure that for the first 20 minutes of the second half Law had swapped with Ojamaa and was playing just off John Sutton through the middle, and that's the position Erwin originally came on at. Yes at that point we had four players in advanced positions but that was no different to how we had lined up throughout the whole of the second half to that point. For me your game changers are Ojamaa going off, which if he hadn't I very much doubt Erwin would have been moved out left and ZFA going off which wouldn't have required Reid going over from right back. You are convinced it's the Erwin for Law change that set the chain of events moving, I'm sure I'm boring you as well as everyone else so right or wrong I'll leave it at that on this one.

I'm still struggling with this one, sorry. If you had said playing Law playing at left-mid from the off didn't work then I'd have agreed with you. In fact I said as much in my original post. If Erwin had come on and went straight to left-midfield I would probably agree that wouldn't have been my ideal choice there too. Saying that it unbalanced things by having to shift a right-back to left-back to cover for an injured defender in ZFA, yeah I'd agree with that too even. But going to elaborate for me on how Erwin for Law, a pretty much like-for-like swap in the middle of the park, two injuries, two further substitutions and 20 minutes before their goal directly cost us the game as you are implying? No it didn't in the end. But did he contribute anything less going forward than Law did when he was out on the left? Don't think he was any worse. But at the particular stage of the game when we are looking for a win and have a wee bit of momentum behind us if you're asking would I back the manager for bringing on a striker for a right-back/midfielder/utility/whateverpositionheis to try to go for the three point, then aye, I'd go for that substitution pretty much most times. I take it you didn't buy a programme today then? Lee Erwin: Motherwell v St Johnstone match programme 30.08.14 I don't see his confidence being dented too severely in all honesty. Ojamaa being "feckin shite" as you put it. You wouldn't have been too uphappy by his substitution then? Sorry but that last bit I can't help but laugh. You don't happen to do the Evil Kagawa parody twitter account do you?

You think it was down to Erwin coming for on for Law that cost us a point? Really? Law had been playing off Sutton for the whole of the second half until he went off. Erwin took up a central position when he came on and only then went to the left-hand side when Ojamaa had to go off because he was goosed. It poses a question certainly as to why Dom Thomas, assuming he is fit, wasn't considered for the bench with him seemingly the next best fit for a left-mid/left-wing role but then Ainsworth hardly has a sparkling record of lasting the full ninety so perhaps why Cadden was given the nod over him? I don't know, but I do think it's being very simplistic - and wrong - to break down as much to suggest that bringing on Erwin for Law cost us a point.

I think this one perfectly illustrates how the scales have tipped. Not much in it over the piece, but in the past few seasons we've been masters of eeking out a single goal victory when there hasn't been anything in it or even if maybe didn't fully merit it. Our turn to be on the receiving end today. Thoughts Saints edged the first half. They had more efforts on goal and there was the Craig Reid goal saving tackle too but we at least looked a good deal more balanced than in recent weeks - with the obvious exception of Josh Law. Not creating a huge amount but we even had a midfielder willing to have a pop at goal. Wow! Second half, frustrating how it ebbed it away. The initial switch of Law and Ojamaa helped - in proving again that Law most certainly isn't at all comfortable at left-mid - as did a more general upping of performance levels offered a degree of encouragement but crucially again we weren't creating a huge amount and when we did Sutty fluffed his lines, in particular with the header straight at the keeper. And then of course we lost it in the last five minutes. We'd had due warning with a similar free header being plucked out of the air by Twardzik shortly before but I have to say I've a little sympathy for the team and management here. Having already what appeared a decent change in Erwin for Law he made another, in my eyes at least, a sensible substitution in bringing Ojamaa off who looked done. He couldn't really have legislated for ZFA having to go off and then McManus pulling up within minutes of the changes though and with a striker at left-mid and right-back at left-back it's perhaps no surprise how much joy Saints were getting down that wing as the game edged towards full-time. I didn't think we deserved to win, but I don't think we deserved to lose either. I like the look of O'Brien, Lawson had a decent outing considering it was his first in however long and it was a bonus to see Ramsden back also. I'm downsizing my hopes on a week-by-week basis at the moment but if we were able to have a backline of Twardzik: Ramsden, O'Brien, McManus and Hammell all fit and playing together for a bit, and we get the forward trio of Ainsworth, Sutton and Ojamaa clicking we've the potential for much more than we're seeing at the moment. It's hard going, it's worrying, it's bloody annoying having Hamilton looking down on us but I do think it'll get better. Maybe perhaps only as good as fighting for the top six better but still better than this.

Your thoughts and votes please...

Pretty much this for me. It hasn't been uncommon for him during his two spells with us to go four, five six games without a goal. And when he does more often than not he'll go on and score in three or four of the next five or six games. I think perhaps akin to the start of last season where the service to him wasn't great and it took him a few games to get on the scoresheet. He just needs that first goal to get up and running.

Other than the downside of having to play them twice in four days, I'm pretty content with that. There is plenty levied at Motherwell fans (often much of it by fellow supporters granted) but in comparison to other teams we do treat this competition with a fair bit of respect and when there's an away game travel in decent numbers. If there's some sensible pricing involved it should make for a decent atmosphere.

Never saw that reply coming! Tricky to contest on current form admittedly. And I must confess Albion Rovers has made me cautious of just looking for the "weakest" team and hoping for them. So I'll just take who we get and see where we go from there. But law of averages and that malarkey we must be due a pop at it...

I'm sure it's just a case of the finding the right candidate rather than the role being pulled.

Excellent thought provoking post Catweazles and equally good reply from superward. I don't know so much about nobody being there to steady the ship but I do feel that we're kind of marking time off the park at the moment, trying to hold what we have and keep to the routine that has served pretty well of late. With the loss of a very successful chief-executive, a new General Manager being installed I don't see that as being unreasonable in the short term. Particularly so when financial factors like waiting for the SPFL to finally deliver a meaningful sponsorship deal, the continued absence of finance brought in from Rangers games and the now lost revenues from both Hibs and Hearts have a big bearing on finance. November will at least bring some clarity over whether the WS will have accumulated enough to take their interest in control of the club to the next level, or whether the board will begin seeking investment elsewhere and that clarity will surely help begin to shape what direction the club will take in the future. On the park itself I think we've been holding our breath waiting for something like the start of this season to happen since McCall's first full season in charge. There has been an awful lot of quality left Motherwell in the last few summers, yet somehow we've managed to dig out two second place finishes. Now I don't see a repeat of anything like that for a minute this season, but in each of those two seasons it took a good few months for the team to gel. The table isn't making pleasant reading just now but I'll see how things are once we've got our first choice back-line in place and the creative types likes of Ojamaa and Vigurs have another couple of ninety minutes under their belts before I write the team off completely this season.

You're really, really trying too hard now.

He should be, once he's got to a sufficiently high level of fitness.

It's early in the season yes, we do have a few players injured ofcourse, but we really need to try to address this run before we do find ourselves embroiled in something really nasty. We've had spells where we've lost three on the spin under McCall before, or gone three without scoring, or even gone three without scoring and losing and recovered well enough from it, I really don't want us to be trying to see how well we can recover from four successive losses. I didn't think we were that bad in the first half to be honest, certainly at half-time I still felt a point at least was there for the taking but we were pretty awful in the second half. I suppose it won't have been too hard for teams to notice that we're conceding goals pretty regularly from distance. Killie seemed to have picked up on it as their scorer was firing in shots from anywhere. I don't know if he got lucky with the goals because the rest of his efforts were abysmal but at least was having a pop, something we rarely seemed willing to do. They did have a couple of other decent chances to be fair but we had a lot of the ball, and long spells in their half and weren't out of it. But after Vigurs free-kick there was nothing. How very typical that after waiting and waiting and waiting for the change to lift it, we finally see some movement on the bench, only for Kerr's red-card and the subsequent goal from the free-kick to render changes utterly pointless. Not looking great at the moment.

Your thoughts and votes please...

I don't know anything much about physiotherapy and the techniques employed to attempt to ensure as many of the squad are as fit as possible for as long as possible. But it has been said on a few occasions in the past that running with a smaller squad is a calculated gamble on the club's part. That they would rather go for a smaller squad with quality than a deeper squad of less capable players. When you have quirky situations like last year when we had all our right-backs unavailable to us, and this season when all our left-backs are unavailable to us cropping up, for me it seems just that the gamble has caught up with us and is having a jolly good chuckle at our expense.

It feels like this argument about how good or bad Stevie Woods was has gone for as long as he spent at Fir Park!

A few things here. On the team selection itself. When I saw the line up it immediately struck me that we had no defensive cover on the bench. That seemed extremely risky were we to suffer from injury or a red-card. I would have expected at least one defender in case of emergency never mind someone off form. Why we've gone for David Ferguson only McCall, Black and Johannsen will know, I think Jack McMillan, played at least one of the pre-season games at left-back so l would presume there is either no one else available or they don't deem anyone else sufficiently ready. It's been suggested by a couple that Reid should have been at left-back. Where is the actual evidence that he has played there before? Genuine question, is there any? We know he can play at right-back and has filled at centre-half and in front of the defence in the past. But when has he played left-back? If we are to assume what we started with in defence is all we had then would moving Reid to left-back, presumably Kerr to right-back and Ferguson in the middle not mean two players out of position rather than just one? (admittedly a rookie). I'm not saying it's right or wrong but that's the kind of thing McCall is often criticised for. But when the game started, that was it, we had virtually no scope for defensive change no matter how things would have gone. I think as it is people and McCall will see Ferguson's performance for what was. A youngster playing his first full game out of position. Few if any are going to attribute any blame whatsoever to him. If anything he's likely to be credited by his manager for getting through it as well as he did. But to suggest he should have been taken off. Replace him by who? We had nobody to replace him with! And if you think his confidence was dented by playing the full ninety just what would you expect it to be like if McCall had replaced him? It's unfortunate to have two left-backs out at the one time in a squad as tight as ours. I think there is certainly validity in questioning why there wasn't defensive cover on the bench, but I strongly believe it would have done much much more harm than good had Ferguson been taken off and made to look or feel in any way culpable for the situation he was placed in yesterday.

The portion of the interview I heard he clearly stated he was the manager and the responsibility was his for the result and performance. When asked about the crowd's reaction, said he would have booed himself. To be fair I thought he struck the right note throughout the part of the piece I heard.

Not one of our finest afternoons it's fair to say. I hope in the fullness of time this will be one of the games that will aid the development of some of the younger guys in the squad like Ferguson and Erwin, crazy as that me sound. Their careers won't be all sweetness and light and if playing through that today helps them be better prepared to tough things out the next time we have a total and utter shitter then that'll be one of the few positives I can take from today. Can't grumble at the scoreline. Fair enough on the balance of play and dominance ICT had for most of the game. Perhaps easy to say in retrospect but was it the wisest of decisions given the wind, to take drop one of the better "footballers" in the side and some faffing about about in and around our box aside, spend the best part of the first forty five minutes lumping aimless balls into the wind? A very marginal improvement in the second half but even in that 10-15 minute spell of huffing we never really looked like scoring. I felt for the young lad Ferguson, particularly in the first half, although I think it was him who put in a magnificent block at one stage to save a near certain goal. But he had a pretty torrid afternoon of it. Positives? You're scrambling aren't you? Fraser Kerr showed some potential again, perhaps as much in three games in his favoured position as in three seasons of being shunted between right-back and right-midfield. Law seemed to be getting some stick around us in the East Stand but if he can continue this pleasing habit of working his way into the box - and become that bit more clinical when he does - he could prove a useful source of goals from midfield. And maybe it will prove to be a significant moment in that two of the senior players in Lasley and Sutton were hooked during the game? It's hardly a changing of the guard by any manner of means but perhaps its no bad thing for both to be reminded there are others in their position waiting for an opportunity. Much improvement hoped for and expected next Saturday.

Your thoughts and votes please...

Stephen Hughes. Injured as usual?

Your thoughts and votes please...

You do wonder what he, and Motherwell, might have continued to achieve, had his career not been ended prematurely (by Willie Miller of Hibs was it?). He crammed a lot into his couple of seasons in the 'Well first team, almost all of it good. You had the brilliant second half of the 88'89 season, the Cooper inspired 89'90 campaign which saw us just a couple of points away from a European place and ofcourse things culminated in the Cup win in 90'91. Maybe not such a coincidence that things took a major turn for the worse when he had to retire. You think of Colin O'Neill and you think of the Peter Grant incident, the goal in the Semi Final, the "Hugo Sanchez eat your heart out" celebration at Cappielpow and the daftie riding around the track at half-time on a motorbike. But it's often overlooked the commitment that was required from him to get to a point to make things like that happen, like McLean destroying him in training to get him to a point where he considered him match fit - I seem to remember a stone and a half's weight loss mentioned - or the infamous puking up before every game to prepare himself for battle. He's some man, and if he's ill I'm fairly sure he'll be battling it head on like he used to do on the park.

Well we certainly go to Tannadice with a low expectation level amongst our supporters that's for sure. I hope the team don't go with a "beaten before we've even set off" mentality however painful the last three games against them were last season. For all the hype that comes with any Dundee Utd side that put a couple of decent results together remember that this mob only registered their first clean sheet of 2014 in the league on Sunday and up until this year our record has generally been not to bad at Tannadice, so there's a small measure of hope at least. May well be ignorance on my part but we know they've made good signings, how? How many of us are close followers of the likes of Sparta Rotterdam, Arka Gdynia and Hull City reserves? Maybe they are, maybe but United are right up there with our friends in the north east when it comes to platitudes bestowed upon them, sometimes without foundation, so I'm always a little wary of believing the hype. As for us, it's kind of ironic that just a couple of weeks after many reckoned we needed more games, we could probably be doing with a free midweek to allow those who are struggling a few extra days to recover. It's going to be extremely difficult to get a result certainly, but not quite the cast iron certain defeat being painted.

Wylde knocked us back last summer, no?