Ya Bezzer!

1. I said before the game I felt we had to pick up something from the match. Later this afternoon the league table could look very different. 2. We were 1-0 up and we blew it in catastrophic style, not a morale booster. Neither will be going bottom of the league today if St. Mirren do the business or Ross County pulling away. 3. Again we were 1-0 up and blew it. Their defensive record had nothing to do with the defeat. 4. People were talking about Long's goalkeeping last week with justification. 5. Partick Thistle could be potentially safe before the split if they win their home matches. If they win today they go 9 points ahead with a huge goal difference and then play us at Firhill after a match we absolutely must win the week previous against St. Mirren. There is not a single person here that wouldn't take Partick's position over our own. Really Partick just have to take something from the 2 home matches coming and then win at home against us to be fairly confident of being safe.

It's difficult to protect the goalkeeper when he's not in the 18 yard box. The truth is if you can get away with murder if you are goalkeeper who is a bit taller. The mistakes last night were as bad, if not worse, than Twardzik's against Dundee when Twardzik was absolutely slaughtered. And Long's mistakes were certainly more crucial to the defeat and potentially more disasterous for our season. The facts are that Long has made as many bad mistakes now as Twardzik in a third of the games. I don't think it's a good idea to keep chopping and changing the goalkeeper but Long situation is like that of the team, he's getting close to the last chance saloon. He/we cannot afford any more mistakes.

Are you aware that it's March? We've 9 matches left and we probably have to win 5 of them to avoid a play off at the very least.

If Accies can beat Ross County or even get a draw we still have a chance to over take Ross County but unfortunately our terrible goal difference could really hurt us now because basically all our rivals are points +1 ahead of us. For instance if County win tomorrow they are essentially 6 rather than 5 points ahead of us and I doubt if we are going to make up that many points on a team in decent form. If County win tomorrow, I think our best chance of finishing higher than 11th is drawing Partick into it by beating them at Firhill. Before that we will need to beat St. Mirren. In the meantime Partick have two home matches so we will have to at least match their results when we play Hamilton and Kilmarnock. We just simply cannot afford any more slip ups barring post split miracles.

I genuinely want to see his pass completion stats. Must be something like 10%!

Unfortunately I think tonight is going to be highly significant in our eventual fate. Tonight was very much like the St. Johnstone match earlier in the season where we did well to get ahead at a tricky venue and then just imploded and made terrible, terrible individual errors. We desperately need our near neighbours to do us a big favour tomorrow or we are getting very close to the last chance saloon. If County win tomorrow then we simply have to beat both St.Mirren and Partick before the split to have any chance of finishing outside the bottom 2 in my opinion.

Goalkeeper to blame for both. Defender did the right thing heading it back except the goalkeeper wasn't even in the 18 yard box!

It's a strange thing but even though we have seen a big improvement over the last couple of weeks and as you say most of us would have been happy with 4points, results elsewhere have not gone for us and we are in probably a worse position now than we were a couple of weeks ago in terms of avoiding the bottom 2 spots. There is still a lot of football to be played of course but I think if you are looking at our situation in any kind of impartial way it's looking less and less likely that we can finish ahead of Ross County. Not only are they in better form than us, on paper at least, they have the easiest run in of all the teams. Partick Thistle could still be dragged into things but they have (realistically) 7 points on us, have two home matches coming up and entertain us at Firhill before the split. I reckon Partick only need 9 points to be more or less guarenteed safety, so taking that on board we are probably going to have to go there and win. Next week is going to be a big week. Both Ross County and Partick have winnable games (St. Mirren also) while we have a tough one at Aberdeen. I don't think we can afford to come away from that one with nothing but time will tell.

I think it's very difficult to sell English players back to English clubs. The reason these guys ended up at Motherwell was they weren't deemed good enough in England to play at a certain level - the level with the transfer cash - and it's going to take a lot of convincing to get English clubs to buy them back. Our main focus should be on developing our own players or bringing players on from the lower Scottish divisions and that's where we have failed badly in the last ten years or so. Who is our most successful sale over that time? Probably Jamie Murphy who has never played higher than League 1 down south. Livingston, Dundee Utd, Hamilton, they have all produced very good players that have gone on to play at the top level of the English game. If you can get a reputation for producing players like McArthur, McCarthy, Robertson, Snodgrass etc, especially more than one, then clubs are seriously going to look at your home grown players but at the end of the day it comes down to producing quality players that can play at the top level and we just haven't been doing that. There is a good argument for saying Airdrie have brought through more good young players than we have over the past 6 or 7 years and when you consider they have struggled badly over that time with just a few hundred supports that shows just how badly we've got it wrong.

I can't remember the last time I saw as much blatant diving but to be fair it wasn't just Kilmarnock that was doing it. You'd have to point the finger at Marvin Johnson and Scott McDonald as well. There was one where Johnson did about 5 'sausage rolls' across the pitch that was especially ridiculous. Maybe it was all down to having an especially weak referee - Beaton vies with Willie Collum as the worst in top flight Scottish football.

The best I've seen of Josh Law today. Mentions for Keith Lasley and Marvin Johnson

Today was a much better performance than most this season but I still felt we looked a little lethargic. Not quite the same zip we had last week. In terms of finishing outside the Bottom 2 I think the damage might already be done as Ross County look like they are motoring now. Ross County putting 4 wins on the trot together has really made things difficult for us. However we certainly look much more competitive and all we can really do now is to pick up as many points as possible and cross our fingers and hope things else where go for us. Thought Lasley, Johnson and especially Josh Law were all very good today but the lack of width with Conor Grant in the team was a problem as was players making runs into the box. Probably need to be looking for 30 points before the split.

Not sure about that! But let's face it Ramsden is no great left back either and it didn't stop us putting in our best performance of the season. Straker can't be used as an excuse - we need to win this one.

Good news, especially the length of contract. We need to vary contract lengths because what has happened this season should never happen again with well over half the squad out of contract. Plus as good young talent we can maybe hang on to him longer or negotiate a good deal. Now - get him on the pitch!

I just don't understand why changing to summer football makes Scottish football more attractive to broadcasters. For a start there is going to be a European Championship or World Cup on every two years. Even assuming we don't qualify and the schedule isn't upset Scottish football isn't going to get a look in when the entire world media is focused on international football. We'd have all the winter season finals and promotion/relegation playoffs during our regular season that would steal all the limelight then we'd have all the major sporting events of the summer coming in Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, Wimbledon, the golf Majors, the horse racing season, all the Grand Prix races, athletics, rugby world cup and on and on. And of course the winter season and the summer season overlap for 50% of the year so nothing really changes for at least half the time. My interest in Irish football didn't increase from "no interest at all" because they changed to a summer season and I suspect the average English fan would have a similar attitude to Scottish football. The elephant in the room is that Scottish football is completely uncompetitive. Only one team is going to win the Premiership and most of the cups for the foreseeable future. Without competition there is basically not going to be any interest outside of the die hard supporters and if there is no public interest there are no advertisers and therefore no television interest.

Well I think a big part of that problem was him not getting game time, something Manchester United probably greatly regret now. Dom Thomas is 19, he needs to be getting games now.

Nice find. I can put Dave Mackay in my All Time Motherwell XI now! He did play his part in denying Motherwell a trophy though, beating us in the Final.

There was good support on Saturday from those that were there but unfortunately there was only three and a half thousand. We must be down about 1,000 fans at the moment. Come out and support the team against Killie. I know it's not been great this season but last week was our best performance of the season and we need to follow it up and you can do your part by coming along. There was close to 5,000 against Stjarnan with a few dozen away supporters. This is a much more important game than that, this could take us off the bottom of the league.

Pretty much. It will be same again with Straker coming in at left back. We really need to get something out of this match, I think there is an argument for saying it's our most crucial match of the season so far. Kilmarnock's form overall and especially their away form is quite good recently (1 defeat in 5) so we'll probably have to put in a performance to get anything out the game.

I think you are getting a bit carried away to be honest. Pearson and McDonald made a huge difference on Saturday but I'd hardly call being more or less depend on 2 players to stay fit as "strength in depth and quality". I also think you are completely dismissive of St. Mirren. You say they brought in "no one of note" but just for a start James Dayton would walk into my XI if we had bought him. They have actually brought in 6 players in the window some of them are unknowns but so is/was Connor Grant. Facts are St. Mirren have been a better team than we have been in 2015 and will continue to be until we back up our win at weekend with more performances and wins like it. We can all imagine a better future. In terms of run ins, if you take league positions as a general indication of form (not completely accurate, Accies have the worst form in the league and are 5th) and assume it's twice as hard to win away from home as it is at home then you can get a rough estimate of the difficulty. If you do that Partick have the hardest run in, followed by St. Mirren, then ourselves and Ross County have the easiest.

I enjoyed the game yesterday and I wouldn't have been harsh on us if we had even drawn or lost because the level of performance is what we've all been looking for. However, we are still bottom of the league and I think the crucial factor is that Ross County and St. Mirren are in better form than us. To put it into perspective Ross County have picked up their last 10 points in 5 weeks. It's taken St. Mirren 7 weeks and us taken us 10 weeks to pick up 10 points. If we are going to avoid the play off place, never mind bottom spot we are going to have to better Ross County and St. Mirren over the next 11 weeks and despite the win and good performance we are still well behind our opponents in terms of recent form. Yesterday's win took a lot of pressure off of Baraclough but he's still very much in the relegation spotlight and if we don't build on yesterday's performance I'm afraid the knives will be out again because picking up 1 point from 24 between January and now might still be what relegates us, even if we improve in the later stages of the season.

7 red cards this season - not great. That's more than Aberdeen, Dundee Utd and Inverness put together. And that was Ramsden's 3rd red card in 1 and a bit seasons - also not great.

For the third week in a row we play a team on an unbeaten run, although with Kilmarnock it's mainly been draws. They certainly seem to have bucked up a bit since Allan Johnston left. However, this is our game in hand over St. Mirren so we absolutely have to take something from it, and really we should be looking for a win and try and put a run of our own (of the positive kind) together because Ross County look like they are going to be putting some points on the board now. We also have a few winnable matches coming up - Hamilton at Fir Park, Partick and a huge one against St. Mirren so we need to try and get some form going with these games looming on the horizon.

Most of the team played well today. Lasley, who was 'done' last week remember, was terrific and put in a brilliant game saving tackle just at the end there. Erwin ran his socks off for the second week in a row although I wonder where the goals are going to come from with him but his attitude is great. Long made a huge save in the first half, if Inverness had scored then we would probably have been looking at another defeat. However the two real stand outs were Pearson and McDonald. That's the difference two internationals, two Champions League level players can make in this league. McDonald pips it as I felt Pearson tired a bit as the game went on but if we can keep these two fit and get Hammell back suddenly we look like a team again.

I'd kinda of forgotten that going to football matches can actually be an enjoyable experience! Good blood n' snotters performance today. McDonald and Pearson made a huge difference and that's all it takes, a couple of real quality players can kick the rest of the team on. Last week we hardly touched the ball in the first 3 minutes of that match, this week we dictated the play from the start. It just be a small thing but I think it really matters that you put a marker down right at the start of the match. We dominated the early stages and if you do that the other team knows they are in a match. One thing though was we didn't really create many good chances, the irony was the one we did that fell to McDonald, well I think that is the kinda of chance that John Sutton thrives on! After about 35 minutes or so we looked to start a little bit tired and maybe went down a gear and let Inverness back into it. Luckily George Long made a great save to keep us in it. Second half both teams had spells on top and we were a bit lucky in that Inverness hit the post and the barbut we scored two good goals and we did well to lift it after Inverness equalized. Ramsden, I didn't see the incident but it wouldn't surprise me if he did something stupid because he has previous. I was also a bit disappointed with our wide players today although Johnson came into the game in the second half and you can see he has something, Connor Grant wasn't much involved and doesn't look like a natural wide player. Lots of good performances though - Long made a crucial save, Law looks a lot more comfortable at right back, Lasley was great, Erwin worked his socks off, Pearson and McDonald were terrific though. They have raised the whole level of performance. If we can get Hammelll back and fit and sort out the wide positions and I think we'll have a fighting chance but we need to follow this up next Saturday, no use putting that performance in today and then failing against Kilmarnock.