Ya Bezzer!

Going to say something I very rarely say about Motherwell. I thought we saw out a 2-0 lead in quite a professional manner. OK, it's not the same spectacle as the Dundee United match but I'm fine with that! Thought both teams started pretty jaded looking. Lot of games in a short period and it looked it. We started to get into the game about mid way through the first half and scored shortly after. The red card incident and the quick fire goal afterwards meant we were pretty comfortable for the rest of the match. Missed a sitter to make it 3-0 (didn't quite see who it was, Vale maybe?) and just saw the game out with minimum fuss in the 2nd half. Aberdeen had more possession but I felt fine about it and I also thought we looked more likely to score the next goal. Only hairy moment was when we gave one of their players a wee bit much too space and he hit the bar. Not an amazing performance but a couple of well taken goals and a fairly calm second half.

Quite a few important players missing for both teams today. Gonna be a battle of the second strings.

I once posed naked for a magazine. Last time I went to that newsagent.

He's been inconsistent. There was a spell last season when he was absolutely terrible. Still one of our best three centre backs though. As someone else said McGinn, Gordon, Casey is our best back three and we've not been able to field them.

4 of them away from home. SPFL can't even get fixtures right. And guess what? Rangers and Celtic don't play 3 away from home in a row.

If I'm being honest I'd take a draw any time we go 2-0 up against the OF cos I've seen it too many times before. Thought the start of the match was a bit of a weird one. We looked wide open down the right and if Rangers had been better on the ball we could have been in real trouble. However we took our chances to go 2-0 up and it was only then that I thought we grew into the game. From then until Rangers equalised I thought we were the better team. Conceding 4 minutes into the second half was very frustrating as you felt if we'd defended those first 10 15 minutes of the half a result was on the cards. Just defending too deep on a 2-0 lead and not for the first time this season. Overall we defended reasonable well under pressure and the midfield did a hard shift putting their foot in. Like Rangers we could have been better in possession but the guys worked hard off the ball. I'm more or less the full pitch away from the Davie Cooper end so I can't say much about the disallowed goals but the first one looked very soft. It seemed at times like the VAR officials were leaning a certain way and the Lennon Miller booking was ridiculous. Clement made some major selection boo-boos today and the Rangers team that ended the match was miles better than the one that started it but we held on fairly comfortably and at least deserved a point.

In the 10 league matches Lennon Miller missed last season, Slattery played in 9 of them and we didn't win a single one of them. In the 17 league matches Callum Slattery missed last season, Miller played in 16 of them and we won 6 of them. That's out of 10 league wins last season. I think that kind of sums up what either player brings to the table and how essential they are.

It's a balancing act, not one or the other. This might not be a prime Rangers team but they are significantly better than us in every area of the pitch. We struggle to defend against much lesser teams, leaving ourselves open at the back is simply suicide. On the other hand you have to present some threat going forward and take your chances when they come. As for Rangers being 'fragile at the back', they have played 8 European level matches this season and only conceded more than 1 goal twice. Domestically they have kept 5 clean sheets in the last 7 league matches and only conceded 3 goals, one of which was a penalty from a "whit's the goalie doin" moment. I don't think they are actually that bad at the back and as I said after the semi final I thought they were pretty decent off the ball in terms of pressing, aerial duels and all that stuff.

Just because football is weird I'm predicting a clean sheet! 😂

There is a lot of inexperienced referees at the top level right now, probably more than there ever has been before. It's not going to get better any time soon. Then you throw in VAR and the fact that the laws of the game are being re-defined almost on a bi-annual basis and it just makes things even worse.

At the end of the day it's easier to coach 'negative' tactics than it is attacking football because attacking football depends on talented footballers. If you can't afford to pay talent and you don't produce any talent then inevitably Scottish football isn't going to be a great watch. But fans are also to blame. They don't want to watch technical football ("Get it up the park!") and have absolutely no patience in terms of team building or coaching. They want instant results and if you win 1 draw 1 lose 3 you can guarentee a sizeable section of the support will want you fired. There is no medium or long term thinking at pretty much every level of the game.

I agree with the first part, McInnes has made an entire managerial career out of shitfesting it. I'm not sure I agree with the second part. He's the sort of the definition of Scottish football's tactical backwardness.

No one of any integrity could talk about that game and not say what he did.

You could name any two Motherwell players and it'd be true!

In the end the referee has done the players and managers a favour by shifting the post match conversation. We were pretty poor tonight. Thought we started well enough and were the better team in the opening stages but as soon as we scored we went completely off the boil. Second half was all Kilmarnock and the equaliser was coming. Could the goalkeeper have done better? Might be being harsh but I thought in real time that he could have got a better set of hands to it. Even without the red card incident the officials had an absolute shocker tonight. Far side lines man looked like he did five minutes revision on the offside law right before the game and the less said about the referee the better. In the end a draw was probably about right but it's disappointing when you are `1-0 up at home and you don't take advantage.

I don't have a problem with Dundee Utd being awarded a penalty for that as long as we get ours. Just basic inconsistency yet again.

Got to be Stam. And I said after the last home match he hadn't shown me much. Well he did today.

Score 4 goals at home and you still can't enjoy the game! Holy shit that game just about summed up everything about how Motherwell make everything as hard as possible for ourselves. Score in 52 seconds, 3 minutes later we are waiting around for a VAR penalty decision at the other end. Go 3-1 up, should be cruising. Goalie concedes an absolute howler. Hey, 4-2, should be easy enough now, eh? Oh here's our old pal Louie to give us 7 or 8 minutes of absolutely bricking it as we stubble towards victory by the skin of our teeth. It could easily have been 4-5 to United. Or any other outlandish score you want to type out 2-5, 7-5, 6-6 etc. I've heard people say we play negative football. Well that was absolutely a game that should be been shut down. Instead Stephen O'Donnell is brought on to defend and ends up chasing a ball 100 yards up the pitch with minutes to go while Casey is trying to take a run and jump at balls only he can see in his imagination. But, OK, OK, we won so I can calm down now.

The responsibility for letting off flares is on those that let of flares. No one else. Can we just stop making excuses?

If there are 4,500 fans at a home match there are probably a 100 or less that are causing all these problems, pyro and other wise. Just ban them. Get rid of them. They are costing the club it's reputation and possible fines, so just take a hard line and get them to fuck. Problem solved. Why should we pander to a tiny minority in our fan base and let them cost the club money and potentially harm themselves or others? They have been warned time and time again and they don't give a damn so just stop fucking around and deal with it.

Obviously we've been shite lately but we are still 5 points ahead of last season. Nothing against criticising the team and manager as long as there is a wider perspective on where we are. But you'd think it was -5 points for a loss sometimes with some of the comments. We've won 6 and lost 7 this season. Yet the criticism seems to vastly outweigh the praise.

1 clean sheet in the league since 24 Feb. That's 27 matches. We've only had 4 in the last 53 league matches.

I wouldn't write him off just yet but I'll say this. There have been quite a few players come to Scotland from Australia in recent years. Very few of them have been any good.

To be honest while they aren't great they aren't really any worse than the other teams around us.

Not sure what is more embarrassing the Motherwell 0 bit or the Hibs 3 bit. Abject performance. It was apparent from about 10 minutes we were going to do absolutely nothing in that game. Most of it is on the players, it's not the managers fault when a goalkeeper waves at a cross, but the manager also has to accept some blame when he's unable to alter the course of the game. That level of performance is unacceptable. Defenders looking at each other instead of defending, goalkeeper flapping, Hibs roughing us up and no one doing anything about it. Midfield basically absent with Lennon Miller trying to do a 4 man job himself. Up front it's all wrong. For me it's gone south since we introduced different players into the team. Stam, sorry, but he's been completely ineffective. Wilson moving into midfield, not happening. Seddon and Balmer coming in has put us backwards and turned us into a throw in freak show. Davor is a dead shirt, Halliday had improved but he was stinking today. Watt came on at HT and had zero impact. Upfront, I said it back then and I'll say it again. With Robinson up front we were much better than now. Maswanhise needs to be playing on the touch line instead of playing half the match as a centre forward. OK, McGinn is injured and that forces a change but there has just been too much tinkering around when we had a system that worked earlier in the season.