weeyin

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.

Hope he didn't injure himself with a miskick.

Of course what I was saying was a guess - although it is based on a lot of what the club, the manager and the Well Society have communicated over the past few seasons about our relative budgets, our rigid wage structure and how various loan deals have worked. And like I said, I wasn't a big fan of Sammon being signed - even though his goals were every valuable in the league cup group. I don't think he's complete shite either, though. Just average. I'd rather we had signed someone that offered something a bit different, rather than more of the big, strong, hard running variety. Last season Bowman scored 10 in 42 games, Main 9 in 30 (for us and Portsmouth) and Sammon 10 in 37 games. I'd say that is a pretty mediocre return from all 3. We need someone up top who is closer to the 20 goal mark and it seems we are pinning that role on Johnson - that's a big ask.

1) Standard practice is that loan deals involve the lending club paying a portion of the salary. No reason to think we broke with that practice or busted our wage structure for a backup striker. 2) I never claimed he was good or that I wanted him to sign (as my posts at the time will show). But I'm pretty sure he was signed as a backup to Main, Bowman and Johnson. The only reason he started games in the League Cup was because Johnson wasn't near fitness, Main looked like he forgot he was a footballer and Bowman got crocked. 3) When did arguments start happening in lists? 4) Ten reasons George Newell will end up on the treatment table. You won't believe number six!

How much would you like to pay for the 4th choice starter? Should it be more or less than Newell? Would you prefer we paid a full time, full wage to warm the bench most weeks? And I didn't say Hartley had played a decent 90 minutes yet, (but keep arguing against a different point to the one I made - it usually means you know it's valid). There were posters on here saying Hartley was finished and how there's no such thing as match fit and he should be on top form after 7 months out. He is obviously improving from a physical and match-fitness perspective. That shouldn't suprise anyone who has ever watched professional football before, but the usual knee-jerk posts suggest otherwise.

Kenny Miller's lack of professionalism means he has been dropped by his last 3 managers at Rangers for disciplinary reasons, kicked out the club for behaving like a wean, and fallen out with his most recent employers (under the guise of the playing vs managing conflict, but anyone with half a brain will know that arrangement would have been agreed long before the contract was signed). And all the time while his wife tweets about how unfair it is that her man should have to behave like an adult. No thanks.