Ya Bezzer!

I keep reading this and hearing people say it and yet he's still got 8 goals in less than 30 matches. Not bad for a striker, very good for a player playing wide midfield most of the time. He's not shown his top form consistently over the season but he's hardly been shite. Even over the last 10 matches no one in the squad has scored more goals than him.

Apparently Hearts were wanting £500,000 for Templeton. In my opinion Murphy is a better player with a better record than Templeton so we should at least be asking for £500K if not more from Rangers. I just hope they aren't putting in a bid for Murphy as a 'cheaper option' than going for Templeton.

I, for one, will be glad to keep him.

Looks like Jamie Murphy is going, I think we'll miss him big time. Although he's not been on top form he's still one of the few players in this squad with that little extra something and it's those tiny margins that separate average or poor teams from good teams at the end of the season. Hopefully we don't lose anyone else.

Problem is he has been prone to injuries. He's had long spells out injured in each of the last three seasons. I'm not sure there is 'big' money to be made of him until he's clocked in a few 30+ games a season.

I'm not talking about paying him the going rate, I'm talking about offering him a long term contract. John Spencer is the classic example of the player who looked great on a temp deal, was signed and then was pretty poor and cost the club a considerable amount of money. Even last season, Blackman started with a bang, faded off, went to Aberdeen and did nothing and I'm not sure if people would have been that pleased to have him lingering around for 2 years. Ojammaa's been great so far but two starts isn't enough to really judge a players worth. We need to see more of him before we make that level of commitment.

There are people in the East Stand who consistently seem to have a negative attitude towards the team, pick on individual players no matter what they do and hurl abuse that goes way over the top for 90 minutes. But let's not exaggerate. I'd say that each section has only a handful of them and therefore the East Stand is home to maybe 30 individuals. But I've never seen a Motherwell side booed on to the park. The mood of the crowd is decided by the standard of play and generally the Fir Park crowd does what any crowd does. Applauds when it sees something it judges good, and boos when it sees something it judges bad. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. And regardless of league position or results the quality of entertainment at Fir Park this season has been poor. We have struggled to score goals, to break teams down, played with one up front, played at a slow tempo, tried to pass the ball around with inconsistent results. It's no surprise the atmosphere has either been poor or on occasion hostile. Over the last two matches we have played much better and surprise, surprise, the atmosphere in the ground has been quite different. I think generally, excluding those individuals, the crowd is quite happy to support the team when it sees the team trying to win, playing entertaining football, creating chances, scoring goals - the problem is we hadn't been doing that until the last couple of games.

I agree its too early to throw a 2 year deal at Ojamaa but I think it's a pretty easy situation to work out. Give him a target to hit and if he hits it he gets one. 6 league goals in half a season seems reasonable. He's already got 3.

OK, here's how it works. If you play crap and don't win you get criticized. If you play crap and don't win consecutively you get even more criticism. If you play crap and don't win for a long period you get some serious abuse. However, If you win you get praise. If you play well and win you get more praise. If you win consecutively you get even more praise If you play well and win over a period of matches you get praised to the hilt. Hopefully now everyone will understand the whole criticism/praise thing.

Ojaama and Randolph was the difference between the teams. Went for Ojaama.

One of the things I enjoyed about the match. No quarter asked or taken gets the atmosphere going in a ground. And probably the worst one of the match was Clancy on Sandaza - ooofff!

I was down the other side but it looked to me like Sandaza went down like a sack of spuds. The way he went down didn't look like he'd been fouled, more like he'd thrown himself down but again as I said I wasn't close to it, but didn't look a penalty to me.

Great game today. Probably the first time, hand on heart, I've really enjoyed a game since the first match of the season. It was a good old fashioned kind of match, high tempo, some tough tackling, lots of chances at each end and both teams going for it. If you were being honest St. Johnstone can feel aggrieved at not coming away with something, especially as they dominated the first 20 minutes of the second half in what was otherwise an end to end match, but we won and I'm certainly not complaining about it! It was a good team performance, it had to be as once again St. Johnstone came to Fir Park and played very well, they are up the league on merit clearly, but Randolph was excellent in goals and made one or two superb saves that in the end gave us all three points, Jennings was superb in the first half although drifted out of it a bit during the period of St. Johnstones domination and Ojamaa proved that it only takes one player to make a poorish team into a pretty decent team. Felt McCall made a mistake switching Law and Murphy in the second half, Law is better on the left and Murphy had looked better on the right but overall a good performance, a great result, 3 points and I'm sitting here thinking that going today wasn't just an act of loyalty but something actually worthwhile in terms of entertainment and excitement!

Not many better left backs in the league than Hammell. Should definitely get a 2 year contract at least, especially since he's added goal scoring to his talents this season!

I just got round to watching the Dundee United highlights and this is a whole lot of nothing. It's a nonsense that a player is getting a ban for something as innocuous as Higdon's gesture when week in, week out, players are diving and cheating and getting away with it.

I think I know who is going to win this one! Hutchie was immense at the back but Ojaama just gave us a massive injection up front.

Since the Alba cameras were no help at all I'll give my version of events regarding the Craigan sending off which I was close to. Barrowman and Craigan went for a high ball, Barrowman flicked his head back and catch Craigan. Looked accidental but Craigan had a word or two with Barrowman for what he felt was dangerous play. He then held his head for a bit in the affected area and Barrowman came over gave him some verbals and moved off. Craigan lost the plot and then rushed right over to Barrowman and gave him some hair dryer treatment. Then, as far as I could see, with Craigan right in Barrowmans face, Barrowman seemed to lean forward and 'butt' Craigan, not hard or anything but it seemed to me like there was a butting action by Barrowman and he touched Craigans face. Craigan then clutched his face again and the referee ran over and sent him off! That's what I saw, perhaps I'm a little biased of course but for me it was a booking for the pair of them and if anyone should have been sent off it was Barrowman. But Craigan shouldn't have reacted like he did, you expect an experienced player like him to keep a cooler head.

I think tonight proves we need two up front. Higdon did well tonight and formed a good partnership, Murphy and Ojaama haven't played up front so that's just conjecture but again the main point is - TWO UPFRONT.

Things didn't look good when Craigan got sent off. I had a decent view of the sending off and I thought it was harsh but Crags should be using his experience not to get into those kind of situations. However, it didn't really alter things very much - we dominated before and after, except for a little spell immediately after Dunfermline scored. Some great defensive performances and up front Higdon and Ojaama were excellent. Left clapping, not done that for a while - hopefully we can put in that level of performance on Saturday.

In Italy though there are huge numbers of loan deals. Often lower league clubs only have a small number of contracted players with the rest of the squad loaned in from larger clubs. In essence what we've been doing with our younger players isn't that far from the Italian system except it's not quite on the same scale.

I don't see any reason why they can't continue the U19 league but allow a number of over 19 players to take part. It used to be the case with U21 international football and of course there is the Olympics. Perhaps 3 players in each squad could be over 19 and that would give over age players a chance to get games.

Don't disagree with any of this but the fact is the players mentioned aren't keeping us back, they are still among the best players at the club. Take those three players out the club and where would we be? Probably going out the cup a couple of rounds earlier and finishing lower down the league. I certainly don't think we'd see silverware flooding in. To win things you need genuine talent, experience of winning things before and confidence/belief. We had that in 1991, even in 2002 but we don't have that now. There are no Davie Coopers or James McFaddens or even Craig Patersons, Iain Fergusons or Bobby Russells. Currently the 'stalwarts' are the best we have.

Hope I'm wrong but I don't think this is going to be a walk over. Dunfermline are coming off a great result at Kilmarnock, have brought in some good signings during the window and confidence will be up coming into this match - in fact if Dunfermline could get 3 points it would lift them off the bottom of the table - surely a major motivation for them. They also have a decent away record this season, if the league table showed only away points, Dunfermline would be Top 6, 5th in fact. However this is one we must win. It's a chance to arrest our recent poor form and wipe the slate clean regarding our terrible home form. Since we probably won't finish near the European spots with our current home form this match could literally make or break our season.

To those that want to drop Murphy - take a look at who has been scoring the few goals we've got recently. Then take a look at the squad goal tallies. Then remember back to the Dundee Utd game at Fir Park when Murphy was dropped and we gave probably our least penetrating attacking performance of a season filled with them. Then when you've done that come to the conclusion that without Murphy in the side the chances of us scoring a goal drop by about 50%.

I still think Forbes could do something for us if he was developed properly. He has a level of ability on the ball that is quite rare and I think we would be foolish to give that away at this point. Obviously there are flaws in his game, mainly athletic ones, but I think it would be to our detriment if the player with the best eye for a penetrating pass didn't have a place at Fir Park. At the end of the day Forbes fate rests with the managers tactics. If we play a 4 midfield as the last two managers have (mostly) then Forbes is probably surplus to requirements. If not, and we play 5 in the 'Gannon' style Forbes comes into contention. Maybe McCall needs to take that option into consideration as on several occasions this seasons teams have shut us down by playing 5 in midfield. It might not be something we want to do every week but in my opinion Stuart McCall needs to show more formational flexibility and as a result should be using Forbes more.