Ya Bezzer!

Craig Clay is Stuart Carswell all over again on the evidence provided so far.

Heneghan for me. Looked comfortable which as much praise as you can lay on any of our team today.

Well that was a tough, tough watch. Dire performance in front of a small crowd and a flat atmosphere. First half performance was absolutely abject. Second half we improved but only in small spells here and there. Often we were just as bad as the first half. Chalmers failed to convince again, Samson made a howler to cost us the points, Clay remained as anonymous as ever, Johnson was so poor, there was no midfield, no energy, no second balls won, our passing and distribution was uniformly awful, players looked like they didn't want to be out there. We really didn't deserve to take the lead and when St. Johnstone equalized there was only going to be one winner. Will need to buck up significantly from that performance today but it seems fairly plain that outside the first XI we are really struggling. Don't know why Cadden was taken off today, if anything he should have gone into the middle, Ainsworth out right and Clay hooked.

Unlike Kilmarnock last week St. Johnstone have a strong midfield so we are going to have to do better in that area of the pitch. Though we played quite well but central midfield was fairly anonymous. Saints won't let us get away with that like Kilmarnock did. 4 points after 2 matches wouldn't be a disaster.

With all due respect there seems to be a lot of obfuscation there. It's a simple question really, who was our best player on the night? I've voted many players MotM that I didn't especially rate down the years, including Graeme Smith, because on a particular 90 minutes they were the best we had. You are on dangerous ground when you start to ignore reality. As for Samson, Annan Athletic's goal doesn't spring immediately to mind but I wouldn't blame Samson for any other goal conceded this season.

I like that Samson was clearly the MotM last night but some won't give it to him because they just don't like him. What a support.

How many wins did Baraclough get at Celtic Park? Baraclough got a drubbing there, finished bottom six and therefore avoided playing them again. McGhee has a win, a narrow defeat (in his first week in the job) and two drubbings. Nothing to suggest Baraclough would have been any better. McGhee knows the team we have and he knows the budget we have. He's been trying to play down expectations from the very beginning of the season for exactly that reason. At a time when Celtic are putting more investment into their team, we are taking investment out of ours. There was already a huge gap there and now it's harder than ever for us to compete with Celtic in particular. I'm not happy with the result or the performance and there are couple of factors that make it worse, 1) that it was a cup match and 2) that was the second time in a row we've just capitulated at Celtic Park. I hope the players get a rocket up their arse and some questions are asked of their professionalism but at the end of the day if a good team is on form and a very average team is off form these things are liable to happen. We just have to suck it up, I'm afraid and make sure it doesn't demoralise us too much. We have a very tough match coming up against St. Johnstone on Saturday and we just need to forget about this now and not let it put a downer on the start of the season which will so a long way to determining what kind of campaign we are going to have.

I'm not a huge fan of Cummings but he scores goals and Magennis doesn't and there is the difference in valuation. It's also the difference in valuation with Johnson. Cummings has 50 goals in 112 matches and that's what the game is all about.

I also though he got lucky with the penalty claim.

This reminds me that Kilmarnock yesterday had a huge banner in the opposite stand informing adults not to give their kids alcohol.

McHugh went off in something like the 56th minute. We were in control of the match for a lot longer than that. Game didn't turn until about 10 - 15 minutes max from the end. Killies goal came from a move where we didn't lay a glove on them from front to back, maybe McHugh would have put a foot in, that's hypothetical, but that's every players responsibility. Probably just a little bit of tiredness and complacency creeping in.

Outline McFadden's contribution to the team in his first 4 starting appearances? McFadden is probably my favourite ever Motherwell player but he didn't descend to Earth with a golden halo. Marvin Johnson has been given a season and a half of starts to become half way consistent so why then is Dom Thomas getting 4 starts and then a kicking? Dom Thomas has talent and we need to develop it. There will be ups and downs but it really ticks me off when supposed supporters are writing off the career of a player with 4 senior starts, especially when he's been regularly the best player in the U20s for a couple of seasons. What chance do we have of every bringing through any young players with this sort of attitude?

Quite a few contenders yesterday. Tait was excellent again, the two centre backs, Johnson and Cadden. Went for Cadden, as he provided the wee bit of magic that ultimately won us the points.

We got him 3 times last season and we lost all 3 so things are at least improving on that score...

All I am going to say about this is that is a very simplistic comparison between two completely different football cultures. Oh....and good luck growing oranges in your garden this year.

Head clash, a few stitches and a couple of aspirins and he'll be fine.

First half was a bit cagey but I thought we looked more dangerous and as it turned out we got the goal. Ainsworth! Scored the hard chance and missed a sitter! Second half we did really well. Cadden did superb to create the goal and then we were well on top until we conceded a poor goal when we switched off, may we felt a bit too comfortable. Lots of good performances through the team, overall a positive start to the league season

Kilmarnock will be dangerous if we allow them to get balls into forward areas - they can put out a front three of Magennis, Coulibaly and Kiltie. Magennis has physical presence, Coulibaly looks like a goalscorer and Kiltie has pace, quite a good combination if you used them correctly. Otherwise they look quite inexperienced in midfield and defence - something we should be looking to exploit. If we can get the first goal, I'd expect the atmosphere (if there is any!) to turn against them.

You've hit upon the very reason I don't like it. We've taken one of the three major honours in this country and turned it into "pre season". As for the Irn Bru Cup, what is good for the U20s isn't necessarily good for the senior clubs. Any senior competition is devalued by bringing in 'colt' teams and bringing in teams from Wales and Northern Ireland smacks of novelty for the sake of it and is potentially disastrous for the competition. What if the final is Celtic U20s vs Afan Lido? The core concept of the cup is "a chance for lower league clubs to win a cup". That's what it should be about not U20s (who have their own cup) and Welsh and Irish teams. Celtic U20s are better funded than almost every team in the bottom 2 divisions and perhaps even some in the Championship, Dumbarton for instance.

I remember Jimmy Boyle scoring in the 120th minute to put us out the League Cup at Fir Park in about 93/94ish. Definitely felt like we'd lost a derby in the last minute of injury time! And if I remember correctly Airdries last ever top tier match was a beating off Motherwell when Ally Graham scored what I think where his only goals for Motherwell.

Clyde put out a supporters XI by the looks of it. David Marsh and Jamie Watson are about the only names I recognize.

Celtic U20s gonna win the cup, romping it against Annan. Motherwell, Aberdeen, Dundee and St. Johnstone U20's all beating senior teams at the moment.

Kilmarnock seem to be in disarray. Rumours about Clark leaving, apparently some senior players frozen out, Josh Magennis looking like heading for the exit, dismal performances in the League Cup (Morton absolutely bossed them at Rugby Park and their performance against Albion Rovers was described as "pathetic".) Clark clearly doesn't even know what his best team is and a lot of the guys he's brought in have virtually no first team experience. We should be going down there to pump this mob at the weekend. Simple as that. Having said that I'd still take a Moult-steals-it-in-the-86th-minute repeat of last season!

What if we have one offer at 450k? Or 450k is the best offer? You can't just make other teams pay what you want or some inflated fee. It's Marvin Johnson we are talking about, not Paul Pogba. I don't think Johnson's market worth is anything like what some people in this thread do, but as someone else said we shouldn't even be considering selling him at this point. Sit him down and tell him we won't accept any offers for him in this window but he can earn himself a transfer in January. If he gets better and adds to his market worth everyone wins. What did we get him for? £50,000? It's not a big gamble.

He played in 1 match out of the 3 while he's been there. Assume he's got a wee niggly injury or they wanted to try out other players.