Ya Bezzer!

RIght back was a priority so good to see someone come in there, hopefully Tait can make the position his own and improve us down that side. Heneghan seems to be quite well thought of at Chester from what I read so it will be interesting to see how he does and also where it leaves Laing/Kennedy. Blyth seems to be one of these 'possible potential' type signings.

My Morton connection says he was poor in the Championship last season.

Hardly a backlash if Motherwell avoids being swamped with zombies. Rangers fans tend not to turn out in big numbers anyway for cup games (unless its a final) but the fact that its the first game of the season might bring more out than usual.

Very disappointing that the polls now shows that the majority of voters want to voluntarily confer a special status on Rangers the minute they are back in the top league. Fairly clear now that all the same mistakes will be made all over again and that nothing changes - at Motherwell, at Rangers, at whatever jumble of letters runs the league this year...

Have we though? And where does it all end? Maybe Kilmarnock gets Aberdeen and Hearts on a midweek and we get them on a Saturday meaning an extra 1,000 away fans turn up. Or maybe Dundee have a crucial relegation tie against us and they bring a huge support down or maybe we get Celtic in the Scottish Cup instead of Montrose. Or maybe it pisses down for three home matches in a row in January and a couple of hundred people decide to stay in the pub or the bookies while its sunny in Dingwall and a couple of hundred decide not to sit in the house. Trying to calculate all the permutations and situations across a season is impossible and there will always be teams that benefit and teams that don't. The idea that everyone is entitled to the same level of income over a season is ridiculous. I know this though, you don't lose £120k that you never had in the first place. We got a tough break with the fixtures, sup it up and move on. The fact that we play Rangers in the League Cup partially makes up for the league game anyway.

Classic sour grapes from us. We knew the system and presumably voted for it but when we are disadvantaged instead of someone else we cry foul. There is no symmetry in the fixtures and we've known that for about 15 years now, it's hardly news. Our wounded yelping is actually a little bit embarrassing. I thought we were actually moving towards a sustainable financial model and here we are banking on the horde-in-blue turning up.

Don't think Rangers and Celtic should be used as cash cows for provincial teams, they should be treated as having equal footing as all the other teams. Fans can't complain about OF bias on one hand and then insist that their away supports be milked for our financial benefit. To be as fair as possible the fixtures should be entirely random with no manipulation. We seem to have lost out to an extent but we should not be basing our finances on away fans. As for the imbalance in fixtures, I think the current league set up is as good as we are going to get (although I'd change the play off system as we need more turnaround in clubs competing at the top level) so you just have to accept it's the cost of a system that I think has worked fairly well up till now in terms of keeping the league exciting over the season for most teams.

Wouldn't it be nice if this was the actual fixture list that's actually played?

To be fair Airdrie fans have been pretty negative about the whole team. Some were saying it was the worst Airdrie team ever.

Mackin was getting slated by Airdrie supporters last season but he did hit a bit of form in the last couple of weeks with goals against Dunfermline and Ayr Utd (I saw the Dunfermline one and it was a nice goal, well taken) and of course then scoring in the Youth Cup Final. He is still only 19 so he's maybe still got a year or two to develop but he needs to really knuckle down this season if he wants to make it.

You love that spreadsheet don't you? Can't stop mentioning it. I'll make a special one just for you next season.

3 of his 5 goals were against St. Mirren and they aren't in the league anymore.

I thought Hall did very well last season and was fully worthy of his first team place. Obviously Brighton thought so too. Difficult for any player to turn down that opportunity, I would have been more upset about it if he had gone to Hibs or another Scottish club as was rumoured. Whether it works out for him remains to be seen but I know he'll be getting paid a lot more than me! Our youth set up should be there to generate cash for the club so I don't really have a problem with the club selling although its a blow for the first team if we are losing good players but that's something we'll just have to get used to if we want to remain in business. Chris Cadden will be next so if this is the kind of thing that upsets you you better prepare yourself.

Have to say I'm a bit skeptical about this. For me Hutchison could easily step into an Aberdeen side, a Hearts side, a Rangers side, a Hibs side. It's well known Thistle have one of the lowest budgets in the league and there are other provincial sides that will pay higher wages - Dundee or Ross County for example. If Hutchison was available and considering coming back to Scottish football I'm sure there would be a lot more interest from better financed teams.

If he goes he'll be joining an English premier league team's youth set up. Same as we signed various other people like Ben Hall from others and they go into our youths. Premier League youth team players come up here on loan all the time and a lot of them aren't good enough. Anyone remember the huge impact Riccardo Calder, Kyle Knoyle, Danny Bachmann and Luke Conlan made last season? Even the much vaunted Islam Feruz flopped at Hibs last term. And funnily enough we shot up the league when Grimshaw left to sign for Preston (never kicking a ball) and Cadden came in.

Yeah but there is short term gain against long term success. He was getting games and experience here. If he doesn't get that at which other club he goes to (probably one with more resources than us, and therefore bigger playing squads and better players) then he will go backwards. There's thousands of former professional footballers out there with no club or playing part time or low level football because they disappeared out the picture.

A mistake by Hall I think but £100K generated by youth development is always welcome.

Brill just spent a season sitting on his arse at Inverness. Given that McGhee has already said Samson will be the no.1 it seems a strange one for Brill to sign on here, you'd have thought he would be looking for games as he's generally been a first choice keeper over his career.

I'm not trembling. Who said I was trembling? Stick to what I said. I said it was the toughest possible tie in the group outside the Rangers match. Stranraer away is a more difficult task than Stranraer at home. Also tell me all about Stranraer? Stranraer went out the League Cup last season to a 2nd half OG away at Easter Road. A narrower defeat than Dundee Utd and Aberdeen took on the same ground in the same competition. They missed out promotion to the Championship narrowly two seasons in a row, they are closer in quality to Morton than they are Annan or East Stirling. It's not even close. Should we beat them home or away - yes, but it's a game that has more potential for an upset because we are playing the next best team in the ground on their own patch. The original reply was what was the best fixtures we could get, well all I'm saying is these weren't - Stranraer at home, Annan and East Stirling and then Rangers at home would have been better fixtures.

Go back, quote the post and then highlight anything you disagree with.

Disagree. The trickiest possible tie that we could have got outside Rangers was Stranraer away. And that's what we got. Meanwhile Rangers play Stranraer at Ibrox, a much easier tie for them. Stranraer have been a decent outfit over the past couple of seasons and will be one of the favourites to go up to the Championship next season. The trip to Stairs Park is the one in the group were you'd think maybe the 'big' team could drop the points. If we lose in the first match we are basically looking for a runners up spot for the rest of the group because it's extremely unlikely Rangers will drop any other points. Even if we beat Rangers we still have the most difficult remaining tie in the group and who knows the draw/penalty kicks scenario might come into play.

"A Celtic source however has told STV that the figure is not accurate and only reflects total staff costs, rather than a figure which reflects solely player wages." To be honest I'm inclined to agree with the Celtic source. I think it's very unlikely that the average Celtic player is earning almost £20,000 a week. Perhaps their top earners like Virgil van Dijk last season or Scott Brown, Commons etc will be around that figure but more likely most first team players will be on significantly less. 40,50, 60% less I'd reckon.

It's highly unlikely anyone is going to give us anything for Ainsworth but if we could move him on I wouldn't be against that. I think we've probably seen the best of him and he just didn't look right all of last season. He did a good job for us, scored a few goals, set up a few as well but we are in a different era now. Dom Thomas also needs to move up a spot in my opinion or we risk wasting a player with potential. He needs more game time than he's been getting.

You think it was a shite competition because Motherwell got knocked out of it every year. Not a shite competition overall - do you honestly think it was a bad thing for Scottish football when Kilmarnock beat Celtic or St. Mirren won 3-2 v Hearts. Or Ross County beating Hibs in the last minute this year? Please spell out what you don't like about a straight knock out cup competition. What's so bad about the actual format? Maybe you'll think differently when if go out the cup on goal difference because we didn't score enough goals against Annan.

Let's be quite honest about this. The question over Moore is this - Is he good enough for Motherwell? Not, will he be sold on. Barring something incredible happening we know he's not. He's got a year to prove he can cut it in the Premiership, anything more would have been a waste of the limited monies we have now, have you not heard about the budget cuts?