weeyin

This - plus it just unprofessional making a public statement about enjoying the injury of a fellow player. Doubly so, when you are representing the club as a captain.

Yes, that's exactly what it means.

I meant refs are subject to being influenced by all sorts of external factors, but reputation will do it too. I'd bet Jim Goodwin picked up a few more yellows based on his reputation where someone like Joe Wark was given the benefit of the doubt.

So you think if Scott Brown played for us he'd have more or less cards? If you think it would be more, then you are agreeing the refs are influenced by external forces.

Didn't notice that. Hopefully the media team is just tied up in launching the new service and it will be back to normal after that.

Not exactly emphatic, with lots of caveats, but at least a little more scientific. (And, in fact, implies that players with blades were more likely to be injured on older 3G pitches).

I watched Villa vs Brentford yesterday. I think he'd do better with either of those teams as they players on the park that were creating chances and playing in their strikers. Having said that, he's not the first striker that has moved on from Fir Park and struggled to score goals. Our style has suited a lot of players like Sutton, Moult and Higdon and they have thrived on it.

I think that lack of highlights is just League Cup (because BT Sport own those rights). Apparently it's the BBC feed we're going to get for the live stream - with the Mixlr commentary team. But that remains to be seen. I have heard nothing official about it.

I'm assuming the club also wrote the apology.

I can see why opinion is split. The few times I have seen him, PNE have been so poor and lacking in ideas, it's been difficult to judge.

I aagree with you - and I didn't quite make myself clear. What I meant was we can't take the moral high ground about opposition players elbowing our men in the face when our captain said he enjoyed it. Of course it should still be a foul.

This. Plus, if some clogger in the Rangers defence elbows Johnson in the face in the first 10 minutes, we have no grounds for complaint.

Was this not supposed to the the week of "Live Motherwell FC TV" for the overseas fans?

Of course it does. When you build a reputation as a team of hard men where the captain is making public statements about enjoying breaking peoples' noses, any ref - good or bad - is going to view every tackle from a different perspective. And if a bad decision is made, people on an appeals panel are going to be thinking along similar lines. It's human nature. That's why players like Jim Goodwin were always under constant scrutiny from the refs. His reputation meant that every tackle was subject to microscopic scrutiny. A good ref is likely to be influenced by statements like that. If the refs are as bad as you make out, do you think they have sufficient skills to ignore that kind of thing?

Aye - it's talk like that that gives refs license to make all those excellent red card and penalty decisions - like in the Cup Final.

I don't know how Moult played last night, but I watched the Preston game at the weekend where he got 20mins as a sub. First time I've watched Preston this season, but I did see them a few times last years. I know they must have shiown good form at various points, but each time I've seen them they have been pretty poor. Against Ipswich last year I don't think they had a single shot on target. Last weekend, they had a few more chances, but between them and Stoke, there wasn't much football being played - lots of high balls and speculative punts. There was very little being created for any of the strikers.

He has form with this, even when he's not been injured. Last season he was talking it up about being a physical game and how happy he was to fight people on the pitch or off the pitch.

Last season, we won every game when Lafferty scored at Fir Park. More of the same please.

Hopefully they'll sell him for about the same amount they sold McCarthy to Everton.

It's obviously true that players can be injured on grass, but I think it's the nature of the inuries that are worth exploring. It seems that ACL and some joint inuries are more common on plastic - but without hard data, that might just be my bias. I agree that the biggest impact is the lack of entertainment. And given this is supposed to be an entertainment industry, the authorities should be responding to the paying spectators' and the players' concerns.

It's not easy to trap a pass when you don't know if the ball will bounce shin height or shoulder height. Regardless, I don't think there's any argument a good grass surface is better than a good palstic surface. So why not have the game played on the best available? At least in the top flight. And who knows if Russian players play on them without issue? I doubt there's much data available on injuries and recovery times from there. They used hybrids in the World Cup (which are basically grass) so FIFA - despite their claims - must think grass is better.

Same here. Since the day QPR tried the first one back in the day, they have all been terrible. The best one I have seen seems to be Alloa, and even those games were hard to watch.

Of course, the SPFL is going the opposite way, issuing a statement yesterday about the high quality of the plastic pitches and how they meet FIFA standards. I'm with the Players' Union on this. The pitch is a place of work, and if plastic is causing unnecessary risk of injury, it should be removed.

It's officially the Reserve League this season, replacing the Development League. There's a League 1 and League 2. Standings and fixtures on the SPFL web site, but not many other details. EDIT: a few details from the BBC

Apparently not. The new system means U18 us the oldest age group before "reserves", I believe. The reserve teams were implemented this year to appease the clubs who complained they either couldn't afford an U20s team and/or the teams who complained they had nowhere meaningful for their fringe squad players to get a game.