Ya Bezzer!

I'm sure one was cleared off the line and McGregor made an unbelievable save all in the last few seconds. Very unlucky that day.

As I've said previously we've been fortunate with our fixture list. Take Hearts for example, they are 4 points behind us but they've had 7 away matches and 1 home, while we've had 6 home and 2 away. We've had Ross County, Kilmarnock, a low point Hearts and Partick at home. Partick on the other hand have had 4 home games - Celtic, Aberdeen, Rangers and Levein managed Hearts. Most teams have played Celtic, we've managed to avoid them completely in this round of matches. The second round of fixtures is going to be like going round the curve in an athletics race, everything evens out and everyone will have played each other twice. We've started well and have points in the bag but going round the curve to be a tougher for us as we will be on the road more than most and the pack might well close up on us. We'll probably have two matches against Celtic coming up, we'll be away to Rangers, Hearts and Aberdeen. And we will play most of the none city clubs on their own grounds. At this point it's unknown how our away form is going to pan out as well as other factors like Ross County and Kilmarnock bringing in new managers. I wouldn't rule out a top 6 place but we still have a lot to prove - and we need to improve our results against the Top 5 teams.

You might say the atmosphere was down to us not kicking a ball from the 1st minute to the 90th minute in the Final but that would be wrong. We didn't kick a ball from winning the semi final. Our previous fixture was a 4-0 scudding off Celtic to go along with other recent scuddings off Dundee Utd (0-4) and Rangers (0-5). The fact is our form going into the Final meant most people who came along weren't really expecting to win and our performance in the match didn't give them any reason to change their mind. We had 1 shot at goal and 38% possession. The Final performance was really just an extension of a very poor end to the season which was completely mismanaged by Stuart McCall. Instead of complaining about fans who came out and bought tickets all the complains should be directed towards the manager and the team who let a lot of good work go to waste. It was the definition of a damp squib and no fans create an atmosphere in those circumstances.

I kinda want to give it to Hartley because he's been my number two pick for about the last two or three games but I have to give it to Campbell again. The boy is class. I'd be amazed if he's still here next season. Clubs should be throwing money at us for this kid.

Finally the universal equilibrium of May for Kirk + McGrillen plus £100,000 has been restored by Heneghan plus £400,000 for Hartley. As for where we are Assuming Celtic beat us we'll have taken 1 point from 15 from the Top 5, while beating all the other Bottom 6 regulars. That's exactly where we are right now - between two poles. We've also been lucky to have 6 out of 8 at home with most of those against winnable opponents. The next round of matches is going to be tougher but we can be happy for now that we have points in the bag.

Weren't at our best today but still good value for the victory. Partick were poor today but they were coming on to their best spell in the match when we scored the second after which they basically threw in the towel, so it was good timing and killed the game. Allan Campbell continued to impress but felt Louis Moult was too wide too often today. Even if we did score three today we need our best finisher in the box, not crossing from wide.

We've been the better team and still look more likely to score but its been a bit disjointed and sloppy for the last 20 minutes or so.

If you want to throw Hibs into the mix that's 1 point from 12. Hearts were not a Top 6 level team when we played them.

Wondered about out energy after Thursdays match and as it turned out it was a very lethargic display. We've improved since last season but today highlighted some problems that I've already mentioned this season. In midfield Allan Campbell has continually bailed us out. All our other midfielders just haven't performed well enough or consistently enough. The worst of these has been McHugh who has been flat out poor this season. We need to see big improvement in this area of the park. Secondly there is our almost total reliance on Louis Moult to score goals. Aberdeen neutralized him today and as a result we never really looked like scoring. Fisher came on today and was a total waste of time again. He has contributed nothing so far. I also felt we missed Hammell today. As I've said before we desperately miss his delivery and Dunne, while not bad at winning headers, is nowhere near Hammell in terms of quality of ball. We had a lot of corners today and I don't think any of them were any good. That's us played Rangers, St. Johnstone and Aberdeen in the league and lost them all. Perhaps this result will give us all a bit more perspective. We've improved over last season but there is still a long way to go if we even want to think about Top 6 finishes.

As you might expect given the circumstances it's been a bit sleepy so far. Finished the half the stronger team so if we can built on that we should have the upper hand but right now it looks like a goal is probably going to be enough to win the match.

Getting a second win against Aberdeen would put down a serious marker. However Aberdeen surely won't be as poor twice in a row. Team selection will be interesting. For me, the team we put out last night is the strongest XI we have. We've been nowhere near as good with different systems and players and I'm wondering if there will be any tinkering or squad rotation and what the effects will be.

Excellent team performance. Bowman worked so hard. Hammell came in and did really well. Campbell was absolutely tremendous yet again. However goals win games and Moult took two situations tonight that weren't even half chances and conjured goals out of them. That's the mark of a genius right there. Moult for me.

The next test, although hopefully it never comes, will be if we can cope with injuries to key players. For me those three key players are Moult, Bowman and Campbell. We have done well but we are still very reliant on Moult to score the goals. Bowman is now a key player because he's crucial to getting the best out of Moult. And Campbell has been our best player this season, he might be 18 years old, but he's running that midfield like a veteran and I don't think it's a coincidence that the two matches we've lost this season were the one's he didn't play in.

Will be interesting to see if we have the energy at the weekend that we did tonight. Players absolutely burst a gut. Might be a tough ask but we'll see what happens.

Don't think we played great football tonight but every player in the team got the sleeves rolled up and gave everything. Every player in our team wanted it more than every player on the opposition and not for a spell, it was over 90 minutes. That's what made tonight our best performance of the season by a long way. We should have won by more. They say you get out what you put in and that was epitomised by every Motherwell player on the field tonight. Take Ryan Bowman, far from the greatest player to ever pull on a Motherwell shirt, but by god did he graft his arse off. Earned every penny of that BACS payment in sweat. Allan Campbell, with 11 games under his belt, is an absolute prodigy. For me he's the best player in the team (with one near rival who I'll get on to later). Reminds me of Scott Leitch at the top of his game but at that age you'd expect him to go on and be so much better than Leitch, even though Leitch was a very good player for us. If Campbell keeps his form up, and I've yet to see him have anything less than a stellar game, he's going all the way to the top. Louis Moult. Getting closer and closer to my all time Motherwell XI. He's just a magic act. Made two goals tonight out of NOTHING. No offense to Dunne but I also think Hammell brings much more to the team as long as he can stay fit. Dunne has the height and athleticism but with the ball Hammell is a different level of player. Great atmosphere tonight as well, the fans matched the players. Hampden chips, here I come!

Got to be Louis today.

Didn't see much with my hobbits eye view of the pitch but Boyle dived and it was never a penalty. Though we got away with one earlier when Stokes went down so perhaps it evened out. First half Barker was tearing us a new one down the right and putting great balls in. He was a big danger and him and McGinn were running the game. However we were a bit unlucky to go in 0-1 down given the dubious penalty. Second got off to a bad start with losing a poor goal. Didn't quite see what was going on but it looked like it should have been cleared and was avoidable. At that stage a comeback didn't look on but as soon as we scored Hibs just fell apart. You'll rarely see a bottle crash like that. Almost from kick off Hibs were all over the place and the equalizer seemed almost inevitable. Great finish from Moult. Probably didn't deserve the win over the piece but a third was looking likely until we started dropping deep in the latter stages and let a team we were completely dominating back into the game for a slightly nervy finish - much like Kilmarnock last week. Overall a good away point, played well in parts in the second half and dominated for spells and looked dangerous. Usual suspects stood out - Kipre, Campbell, Moult. Bit disappointed in McHugh again and we always seem to get a lot better when Andy Rose gets subbed. Cadden at right wing back is a weakness too when are are up against strong wingers.

Like I said over on P&B with Hibs only having had 1 home match and us only having had 1 away match there has been no real form established by either team. Accies went there and won 3-1 but that could have been an anomaly, we don't know at this stage. The same goes with our 4-1 defeat at St. Johnstone. By all accounts Hibs out played St. Johnstone on their own patch last week so I'd expect a tougher match than we've had since our visit to Perth but a result is more than possible if we can restrict teams to one goal or less.

If he did that on here he would probably fall victim to a miserablist trope! We've got better but I think there is still a lot to learn about this team. If you look at our results so far this season we are up 4 points on the corresponding fixtures last season but lost the same number of games - 2 out of 5. (Rangers 0-2/1-2; St. Johnstone 1-1/1-4; Ross County 4-1/2-1; Kilmarnock 0-0/2-0; Hearts 1-3/2-1; Total 5/9. That's an improvement but it's mostly centered around that one match against Hearts - which was our best overall performance of the season (so far). Due to the rather odd fixture list this season (4 home/1 away) we still need to see if we can get any sort of away form going and if we can get results against teams expected to finish in the Top 6, defeats against Rangers and St. Johnstone so far suggest we've still got a bit to go in that regard. So although there has been an improvement I think we shouldn't jump the gun until at least a full round of fixtures has been played. We've been a little bit fortunate that we've had very winnable home matches (in contrast Partick have had Aberdeen and Celtic) and we've also got away with some poor 1st half showings when we might have gone in at HT with worse scorelines than we did. One other area to look at is if Robinson is willing to adapt his plans. Seems to me that Bowman and Campbell weren't part of them early on but 5 games in I think both of these players have proved they are worth a starting spot and have consistently improved overall team performance. Hammell also proved on Saturday that he is miles better than Dunne with his foot on the ball.

Often Lennon has been the personification of that Celtic brand of persecution and paranoia that is utterly infuriating, with a tendency to blame all his short comings on everyone else. However listening to his after match interviews this season he seems to be showing a humility that hasn't been present up till now. Perhaps being Hibs manager is good for him. Craig Levein though, from his big toe to the top of his head, will always be an absolute arse of a man.

This. Cathro Hearts we should be beating (or immediately Post Cathro for the pedants out there). 8 out of 10 teams in the league had beaten them in the past year and every other team in the league had taken at least a point off them - except us. Overall they had 4 wins in their previous 21 league matches. Under Levein they will probably improve so we definitely caught them at a good time.

Seems to me the two key decisions to make in terms of line up are to get Campbell starting and to play Bowman off Moult.

About 75% of the quotes I get on here are by you. Bit creepy.

We won so don't take any lessons on board? That's a great game plan for when we go away to a team who, like Rangers and St. Johnstone, will probably be Top 6 this season.

Any time there is a runner from midfield they go right past McHugh every time. Happened every game this season. Needs sorted out. It's gonna be a big problem against better teams.