weeyin

Way too early in the season for 'real tests' IMO. Real tests come at the end of the season which, thankfully, in recent times, we have passed (Scottish Cup Final aside).

It has also never seen them finish above us, so I'm happy to stick with the ethos we have.

Which signings do you think McCall should not have made?

Due to similar reasoning, I was quote happy to see Dundee Utd and Aberdeen win the league when they broke the OF dominance. Don't care about them now, of course, but it made for a nice change back then. They were also responsible for some great Scottish performances in Europe at the same time.

Give us a clue.

I think you're right. I'm normally in favour of the white shorts, but this year's top has so much going on it looks better with the amber.

3 for Killie. The rest for Oldco.

From Twitter, seems like we were good going forward, but gave away soft goals.

Get in there.

McCall said it's "horses for courses" this season, so it could be tactical.

Looks a good player. (Celtic fans must be worried about how he will be out to prove a point next time they meet).

With all the fear about Lawless, maybe we should have signed a couple of Partick Thistle rejects to guarantee ourselves a win.

McCall said in his latest MFC TV interview that a few of his targets haven't worked out for various reasons but the budget is there and he is definitely going to bring in a winger.

When you aren't playing well, not getting beat is where you need to start.

I don't disagree, but good teams are built from the back. The goals we gave away to ICT and Aberdeen were pretty soft (not to mention our European efforts). Of course, the lack of cutting edge means we are more reliant on good defending, but if we are only going to score one (or none) then the defence needs to step up until we get our attacking sorted out.

Historically, always a bit of a bogey team, but their style should give us a chance to play some football. If we can cut out the stupid mistakes we should be able to get a win here.

Of course we don't want to go down that path, but given the turnover in personnel it was likely we'd be looking around mid-table this season. I'm hoping we can bring in the one player McCall (and the fans) are crying out for, plus maybe add a little in the next window, but there wasn't much chance of us replicating last season right out of the traps.

Exactly. I'm not sure what some fans were expecting this season, but having just ripped the core out one of the best Motherwell teams in memory (a team that took 3 managers, 4 years to build), anything better than mid-table this season will be an achievement. Last year, if we gave away a goal, we had the confidence and the fire power to score a couple in response. Right now, we don't have that, so our mistakes are costing us dearly. It's early days though and the only way to find the best formation and get the players used to it is to grind it out on a match day. It took McCall a number of games to get the best out of Higgy, Murphy, Ojamaa etc. and it won't be any different this time around. This season, however, is more likely to look like the Gannon/Brown season than hit the heights of the last one. Rebuilding doesn't happen over night.

Fair enough. A bit more settled than I thought. Still think we will sneak this one though.

I'm not quite up to speed with all their transfer dealings, but I thought they brought in about 11 new players? EDIT: in fact here's the list - - Norwegian forward Torbjorn Agdestein on a free transfer from Brighton; - English defender Carl Tremarco on a free transfer from Macclesfield; - English goalkeeper Nick Draper on a free transfer from Lincoln City; - English goalkeeper Dean Brill on loan from Luton Town; -Irish midfielder Adam Evans on a free transfer from Burnley; - English midfielder Ben Greenhalgh on a free transfer from Maidstone United; - North Ireland forward Curtis Allen on a free transfer from Coleraine; - English forward Danny Williams from Kendal Town; - English defender Harry Hooman on a free transfer from Cheltenham; - English midfielder James Vincent on a free transfer from Kidderminster; - Irish defender Joe Gorman on a free transfer from Crewe; - English midfielder Marley Watkins on a free transfer from Hereford.

The Board had anticipated the shortfall so presumably budget accordingly to approximately break even again.

You call it a knock forward to beat the offside trap, I call it a sweet reverse pass to the supporting striker. For me, the long ball game is big punts into the box for a tall striker. I know we have drifted into that (especially when the players get tired and look for a lazy option), but if that had been Faddy rather than Sutton that hit that assist, there would have been people on here creaming themselves about his spark and talent to unlock defences.

Did you see our goal against Aberdeen? McCall has shown he likes to keep it on the deck and play a bit of football, so I think that will come in time. Regardless though, I think we match up OK against ICT and will pull a win out of the bag.

We're one point ahead of where we were this time last season and we're going to win this game to keep us ahead of last season's start.

Didn't we beat Killie away last week?