Ya Bezzer!

Since when was airport security less hassle than catching a train to Perth? Prices, we've been through it all before. If you have 30,000 fans and a potential media market of 90 million people you can charge less at the gate if you have 3,000 fans and a potential media market of 5 million. As for the final question, I'd rather see the team I've supported for 25 years over Dusseldorf or Cottbus.

Yep, TV and the media are to blame. 20 years ago, a live match was something special and the amount of media coverage given to sport in general and football in particular was minuscule. The allure and magic of a football match as a social event has been completely lost through over familiarization. I remember back in the Tommy McLean days it was quite common to only know we'd signed a player when he ran out the tunnel and you said to yourself "Who's that? Have we signed Tommy Coyne/Billy Davies etc." Now everything is ploughed over weeks in advance of anything actually happening, and for weeks after wards until the whole thing becomes a bore.

Apparently the assists are Chris Humphrey - 4 Jamie Murphy - 2 Tom Hateley - 2 Nick Blackman - 1 John Sutton - 1 Alan Gow - 1 People have said he is a better player away from home but I don't get to away matches so that may distort my opinion that he is hopeless. He's been at the club for a season and a half now, he looked like he might be coming on to some form after a disappointing start but he has gone backwards again. We don't really have anyone else for his position, so he plays, but I think the major weakness in the team right now is wide midfield. Randolph - Craigan, Hutchinson - Lasley, Jennings - Sutton, Murphy, seems a pretty solid spine.

How much money did we make from consistantly finishing in the Top Six and getting into Europe while he was at the club? Probably not as much as a million but probably a fair whack plus the transfer fee and add ons. That's the reason I would have kept him. £100,000 is maybe worth two league places in prize money plus we are on the cusp of a League Cup final. Sometimes a players worth is more than just his transfer fee.

I've been against summer football because I was just not convinced the switch would increase crowds and I still hold that opinion. If the weather is nice there is so much more to do than go to a football match. Why pay to go to a game when you can sit out side in the garden with a beer, or go to the park or a drive out to the coast or the countryside? And if its difficult now to get kids to come to football matches what chance do you have when the weather is good? There is also an idea that the Scottish summer is idyllic, with blue skies and blazing sunshine. I did the West Highland Way a few summers ago and believe me it was nothing like that, there was two days of snow in June! However I am beginning to come round to summer football. The argument is shifting from increasing crowds to holding on to the crowds we already have. Supporters are leaving in droves and we can't continue with the status quo. We have to do SOMETHING but the problem is any change is as likely to kill the game stone dead as save it, like an operation where you have a 50/50 chance. The facts are people are soft nowadays, especially younger people. I grow up in an era when the only heating in the home was a coal fire in the living room, never mind luxuries like hot water, central heating or double glazing. Most men worked in tough, physically demanding jobs in heavy engineering or the like. Today that isn't the case and people are used to comfort. If the house was freezing there was nothing to stop you going out to a football match but if the house is nice and warm you are going to think twice. If you are used to discomfort and hard work, then discomfort on its own is a holiday, but most people aren't used to discomfort so it is a drag. I'm more open to the idea now but you can't just say "Summer football will cure our ills" we have to really look at it in detail and see if it could work.

Weather conditions made it very difficult. Inverness probably on top in the first half, we were better in the second. It wasn't a coincidence that the wind was behind each team when they were on top. Hutchinson came in and did well apart from two bad mistakes, luckily a good save from Randolph and a terrible miss from Foran meant we kept the clean sheet. I think we are solid enough down the middle but we badly need some quality wide players as they guys we have there just aren't good enough.

Maybe you would, I'd still be there to but history says fans will desert the club in droves, when we can only get 3,500 for a Hearts game who will turn up for a match against Stirling or Brechin. As for watching Motherwell produced players fighting for the First Division title, no chance. a) One reason we attract good quality young players is we have a track record of using them in the top league. If we aren't in the top league a lot of those players will choose to go else where. b) Revenues drop by 60% in the First Division. The first thing clubs do is axe youth development because they HAVE to keep the club afloat. There would be fewer Motherwell produced players and they would not be of the quality we have produced up till now. Basically we would have no chance of challenging for the First Division title with the youngster at our disposal. It's a nice idea but it's fantasy stuff.

I don't anyone thinks Foran is pish, its just when he was with us he didn't kick a ball for weeks and months of end. If you were writing a school report card you might put "Richie is a talented boy but is easily distracted and homework was not completed on a number of occasions." I'm hopefully we will win. As other people have mentioned Inverness are not on a great run of results themselves, there away form has faltered recently even before the St. Johnstone defeat they were lucky to get some late draws and with any luck Adam Rooney will be put in cotton wool and won't play which really reduces their goal scoring threat.

I'd be happy to make a one off payment of £10 or even £20 into a transfer kitty if I knew all that money would be collected and used to buy a player. However we simply do not have enough fans in general for that to raise enough money to buy a player, never mind enough fans willing to part with the cash. Even if you got 2,000 fans to put in £20 you wouldn't be able to fund the sort of level of player most of the fans would be expecting.

Glad to see Murphy up front again. He is probably our most naturally gifted player and I don't think we've been getting the best out of him recently, or in fact across his whole career so far. The boy is a forward, not a midfielder, not a wide player, a forward. He's proved if for Scotland U21's, he's proved it for us when played there - let's play our best player in his best position.

The last semi final we didn't take anything like 9,000. Probably 5,000 at the very most.

Reynolds has gone backwards this season, I think his confidence was dented when he didn't get the big move he was expecting. That said the idea that Hutchinson or Saunders can slot in and we will cheering clean sheet after clean sheet is painfully naive.

Attendences are much, much better in Norway than in Scotland, if you exclude the Old Firm. Almost all the top league clubs get 7,000 - 10,000 and the average across the league is over 10,000. Bare in mind that the biggest club in Norway, Rosenborg, get about 18,000 per game so that average is much more representative of the league as a whole than here where Rangers and Celtic more or less represent 65% of the entire attendance for the league. As some people tried to point out, when we eliminated Alesund earlier in the season we were defeating a considerably bigger club than ourselves.

The problem with an 18 team league is we just don't have enough teams in the big to medium size. There are probably only 18 teams in the country that are capable of attracting crowds of more than a 1,000 on a regular basis. The problem then arises if we relegate two of those teams into a nothing league below where almost all the other clubs are only attracting crowds in the hundreds then you get two possible outcomes. 1) The lower league is completely uncompetitive and the teams that get relegated come straight back up or 2) The relegated teams fail to get promotion and probably go out of business or are forced to go part time and are dragged down to the level of the 'minnows' league they are in. If the top league is restructured you have to make sure there is still a decent level below it otherwise the whole thing comes tumbling down.

Not to bothered about Blackman, I'd have Murphy and Sutton up front anyway as I don't think Blackman really offered much other than his goals and how many had he scored recently?

As far as I know the money won't be divided evenly between the 20 clubs. The Top Ten will get most of it, the winners of the second tier will get a lot more than they do now from the SFL but the rest will get smaller and smaller amounts. But since the SFL has hardly any money it will probably still be more worthwhile for a lot of the current SFL clubs. If you had 16 or 18 teams in one league instead of two the top clubs would lose more money.

True, unfortunately TV will kill Scottish football stone dead and its not far off. Yet the SPL is bending over backwards to accommodate the thing that will ultimately kill it. Get a good highlights package on BBC on a Saturday when people can actually see it and lets do away with live televised matches. There will be a shortfall in money but I honestly believe the TV contracts will be getting smaller and smaller anyway as interest falls away and the game dies.

Would keep Fitzy if only because you know what you are getting from him. Blackman - 10 goals is good but I've never really been that impressed by him as a player, for me Jutkiewicz was far superior. That said I've always believed that you judge a striker on his goal tally and nothing else. The problem with Blackman is as I see it is he doesn't really offer much when the team is in a rut. I still think Murphys best position is as a out and out forward and I think I'd be more likely to play him there than Blackman. Overall I'd probably have him back but I doubt very much if he has another 10 goals in him and we've already probably seen the best of him. Gow - As someone else said he is very frustrating. Obviously has a technique and game intelligence that stands out from the rest of the team but you get the idea that the rest of the team aren't really on his wavelength. He's also one of those players that gives off a certain body language that isn't often appreciated by the fans, especially when things aren't going so well. I'd probably keep Blackman over Gow although I think Gow is a better player, if that makes sense.

We still have a positive goal difference this season but you'd think we'd been conceding goals all over the place, the way some people go on. In fact the Rangers match was very much the exception to the rule. As back fours go, we have a decent one compared to most SPL teams and that includes Craigan. I've said it before but name me the centre half at a provincial SPL club that you think is better than Craigan is. Come on, let's see the list! Frazer Wright, Grant Munro, Martin Canning, Michael Duberry? Yeah, they are all so much better than Crags! Actually throw in Hibs, Dundee Utd and Aberdeen and you'll still be looking!

His record doesn't make for impressive reading but you could compare this appointment with the appointment of Terry Butcher. They have similar trajectories at the same stage and for me Butcher was our best manager since McLean. Hopefully it works out, although hopefully McCall doesn't finish bottom in his first season!

Like all managers Stuart McCall will be judged on performances and results. Obviously I hope he does well but he should be given time to mold his own team and I hope that after 2 or 3 games people aren't jumping on his back.

I wasn't happy with the Rangers performance, it IS disappointing when we can't seem to do the basics BUT it doesn't mean the team needs cleared out. I think it is really disrespectful for fans to slag off players that have actually over the last couple of years performed very well for us and say that they are useless or need shown the door on the basis of a couple of games rather than a couple of seasons. There was a lot of talk about the loyalty of Brown when he pissed off to Aberdeen but it seems to me a lot of the fans don't have much loyalty to the players that have actually brought a fair bit of relative success to this club. Too many knee jerk reactions around here, too many short memories. We really do have one of the worst supports around.

Yeah, that'll do the trick. We've been in the Top Six for virtually a whole year, lose a couple of matches while we are managerless and what seems to be our entire support shites themselves with panic. Pathetic. As for the last couple of matches, I'm going to give you a fact here - Rangers and Celtic have been much better than us most of the time for about a hundred years - catch up, guys.

Jim Gannon was a bit like organised religion. As long as he said the things people wanted to hear a lot of people were willing to ignore actual reality.

How can clubs address the problems? There are rules and laws that the club have to follow and they also have a responsibility for the safety of the people in the stadium. Stewarding and policing cost the club a fortune, they do it because they HAVE to, not because they are mini tyrants that like crushing people under their jack boot. I realise that stewards and police can often be over zealous but its really out of the clubs hands.