one m in motherwell

Where are you seeing that?

Noticed this: @gordonduncan7: Ian Baraclough says he still believes he's the man to turn Motherwell's fortunes around. More on @ClydeSSB tomorrow.

To be honest, I'm past the point of caring. An experienced hand to - somehow - get this team to look like they give a fuck and get us to a comfortable tenth will do for me. Never mind this up-and-coming manager shite again.

I seem to remember someone - McCall perhaps - pretty much saying exactly that just prior to his appointment.

He's had since day one to sort. Never mind how many players he's brought in, or who they are, he's never once shown any kind of managerial skill that would indicate he's the right man to build us up again.

I'm not sure it's quite as underhand at that. He can talk a good game, but is clearly woefully out of his depth but those who appointed him were clearly taken in by his patter. Fingers to be pointed at both.

If he had any self respect, as soon as the team bus gets back to Fir Park he'll be straight up to Flow's office to put his office keys under the door together with a hand scrawled note saying 'Thanks and goodbye'

I completely agree - for whatever reason though he's had carte blanche to sign as many players as he likes. Baffling considering the dire straits we were supposedly in pre-Les.

Certainly hope so. I always got the impression that Robinson was his man though?

Nope. Worryingly there's perhaps too much invested in him to sack him, which is probably more concerning than the performances.

Cue Taylor being shoved upfront on his tod. Samson to replace Thomas on the left with about fifteen to go.

Probably McGhee?

At least Rangers are getting pumped. Small mercies and all that.

I wonder - genuinely - whether he will walk if we lose this. For all his confident talk pre-match, he surely must be coming round to thinking that it just isn't working? i have a worrying feeling however that, given its not a league match, he'll still be here come Saturday no matter what. The worst thing is that for all the changes over the summer, there seems to be no prospect of us turning this round under the current regime.

There are perhaps two things at play here. On one hand, we probably had a list of targets that Bara wanted to sign, although as Flow admitted on Twitter, this can be quite a long game with no guarantee that the targets will pay off. So, this would leave us with a 'B' list of players that we knew could do a job, that we perhaps turned to when other negotiations dragged on etc. To my mind this is the motivation behind signing Clarkson, Taylor and potentially Samson too (although the Taylor deal is perhaps more down to Pearo's injury. The other potential thing is that Bara genuinely doesn't have a clue what he's doing. As much as our scouting system sounds like something straight out of Champ, it seems we're going about our business as if we're playing it, signing a whole screed of players without any real long term plan. Now, in a way I'm not too fussed if these players can genuinely do a job for us, but I'd much rather sign - and I mean actually sign, rather than loan deals - a select few quality players with a view to using the rest of the team to blood some of the younger players. The few folk we've signed on permanent deals do look like they would tick this box, but it's strange that we've not been trusting enough of the younger ones' ability to come in and do a job. Which begs the question - this shift to a youth development/bring them in and sell them on ethos - how long is this going to take? Have we actually put anything in place at a grass roots level to bring players through that we can sell on?

Yeah, that would work. As noted, pace will be a factor so as long as we can find a way to use what we have without totally abandoning the midfield we should do reasonably well.

I could live with either of those. The only downside to playing Chalmers on the left of midfield is that we'd really be restricting all our pace to one side of the pitch - nullify Ainsworth and we don't have much of an out ball. That said, it looks like a midfield with a bit of needle about it, which I'd be reasonably confident could face up well to Accies. Win the battle there and we have two (three if you count Ainsworth) pacy forwards ready to collect. Ultimately, as long as omit Taylor and give both Skippy and Marv some time on the bench I'd be happy. The latter two are also belting options to bring on at some stage.

Only one of each? Fuck's sake Bara, play the game.

...which means its probably not those two names mentioned.

Re. the Dutch guys - I'm assuming one is van Zeelst, I don't recall any other names being mentioned at the time - any ideas?

Aye, but is that potential ability or actual...

The international break is either coming at a great or a terrible time. The two wins this week will hopefully have built up a bit of momentum, and given the squad a little bit of confidence ahead of two tricky games against County and Accies, so I just hope we can keep this up over the break. The positive spin is that it gives us a little bit more time to gel (especially with us hopefully getting a couple of new bodies in this week). No substitute for competitive games however so we'll see... As a few others have said, we seem to be playing reasonably well as individuals (largely) but the team hasn't yet clicked. I've no doubt this will come, and we'll be fine this season, but I think top six is probably a bit out of our reach at the stage of the rebuilding process we're currently at.

My view on Bara changes week to week. At times I'm full of goodwill, firmly in the 'aye, it's a new team, got to give them time to gel' camp, but then sometimes it seems as though he's fundamentally incapable of setting a team up to play in the way he talks about. Can't work out whether its a case of the players not following instructions, or Bara not having the nous to get his vision across. Either of the latter two would be enough to get him hunted. In any case, whether he's out of his depth or not, the Board clearly think he's the man for the job - being backed to bring in five strikers seems to indicate that he isn't going anywhere soon.

I'd happily take bottom six at the moment, just so long as it's not bottom two.

Interesting, although if Las isn't at the races we're gunned with that setup. Would probably start Moult ahead of Fletcher this week but would expect to see him on at some point.