star sail

Agreed. Would take 0-0 at the moment but hopeful for more but I have bigger concerns defensively and don't think it was just a flash in the pan that we lost 16 goals in the last 5 games of the season. Given that we have been unable to keep a clean sheet in the friendlies, have lost Ruddy, have essentially the same back four and that Craigan will be another season slower, not conceeding at home would be a real boost. 4000 would be an improvement on Llannelli and Flamurtari (I think?) but would be excellent to see a crowd of 5000+ Prediction 2-2.

I can understand peoples concerns about Thursday. A performance like the first game against Llanelli and we could easily go out as they could score a couple of goals at FP given that they will almost certainly be a tougher test than Llanelli. I would have liked to have seen the first game in Iceland as even when not match sharp it would be possible to sneak a goal over there and something like a 2-1 defeat could be turned round at FP. By the second game the match fitness would hopefully be returning. If the defence are not firing on Thursday and we lose even 2 goals it will be a tough task to turn it round. It's important to make a distiction between fitness and match fitness. CB and AK will have been working on the players endurance, strength and aerobic fitness but Well need games to get the sharpness that brings good performances. Having said that we played 6 competive games last season before the SPL start and St Johnstone held us to a draw in the first game so maybe we should not get to hung up on it. Unsure how I feel about it but I would be amazed if the players underestimate the task they face. I would take 0-0 on Thursday at this point. Anything more a bonus.

Good luck to Ruddy indeed. One of the few players the Well fans genuinely appreciated while he was here but even at that I think in hind sight we will miss him even more. Honestly think that the 5th position in the league was largely due to his influence on our very suspect defence. On another note, Paul Lambert gets another decision spot on. Just to think that a few seasons ago with the Motherwell manager merry go round in full flow folk on here were waxing lyrical about how they would not touch Lambert with a barge pole.

Why head in hands, it was a good point? The option to extend by a year is surely an option in favour of the club. If not it is just a one year contract end of. I suppose it just shows that contracts are not worth the paper they are written on as players can just do what they like. A contract should really suggest that the club do have him at gunpoint if they want to keep him.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/t...ell/8733721.stm whats the punchline on the T- shirt. I can't work it out and the photo cuts it off. THANK FOR BUY IT ??????????????????

I have had one dealing with Leann Dempster as a fan looking for assistance from the club and her customer service/ willingness to help was above and beyond the call of duty. I was really impressed. Very positive vision and one that I would buy into. I have always felt that for a club like Motherwell to stay ahead of the game we need to rely upon the fruits of our own labour. Only thing I would say is that I think there is a bit of Jim Gannon's vision in there. If nothing else Gannon showed that young players are worth the gamble and just maybe gave the Motherwell board the confidence to put the development of young players at the forefront of its future plans. I would love to think that talanted young players from all over Scotland would chose Motherwell first over other clubs because it was seen as a centre of excellence for young players. There is always going to be the Paul Slanes but worth it when you get the Jamie Murphys, Steven Saunders etc.

The arguement that Stewart Kerr has worked with Hollis, therefore he must be good does not really work for me. The classic example is the Andy Roddie situation with McLeish. McLeish had worked with Roddie at Aberdeen and was prepared to pay a reasonable sum for him to come to Well. There was a buzz at the time when he arrived but we all know how that turned out. On the height and weight front, these two attributes are important for an SPL goalkeeper. Set pieces and cross balls have been an issue for Well for a few seasons now (largely because of Craigan and Reynolds in my opinion). Ruddy papered over these cracks because he played so well. His ability at cross balls is largely down to his presence in the box (e.g height and weight). I have not been a fan of Craigan for some time and yet we are stuck with him for yet another season (I know that is an unpopular view). The goalkeeper is going to have to be excellent to compensate. Fraser got a hard time and in some ways rightly so but the protection and assistance he was getting was non existant. (pass backs included). For me Ruddy made our season. I think we would have been losing goals as per the end of the season, all season had he not been there. We need a top notch keeper.

Just to relieve some of the boredom of a lack of transfer activity, I would be interested to know who people think would be a really exciting buy for us given our money constraints? I think for me hearing that Ruddy and The Juke were staying on for another season is about as good as I could hope for.

Saw this a few days back and laughed. On the day these nuts are lifting the SPL trophy they are still full of hatred. Some sectarian comments as well about a boy called Murphy. Makes me very pleased that my Dad brought me up under a Well flag rather than having anything to do with this vitriolic pish.

Really pleased to hear this. Kind of topical as Marc Fitzpatrick has suffered some of the treatment being discussed on this thread over these last few pages by Well fans. Remember the goal at Hearts fondly and for me Fitzpatrick was the Well MoM against Nancy Away. He ran himself into the ground that eve. I think he is the kind of player that, given confidence, could be a first team regular. Brown's the man to nurture Marc along and tell him to ignore the boo boys.

Oh yes there.......Ah forget it!!

Ok. You win!!

One of the best games in Motherwell's history and within the hour there is a thread with us all fighting! Cannae beat it!!! Why be positive when you can be negative. It's the Motherwell way! I'm a better fan than you. What a lot of pish!!!

We all know from bitter experience that if a team are on a bad run, can't score, have not won for months etc Motherwell is the team that alway gifts them a lifeline. If this Celtic team are not really fired up for this game there is something badly wrong at Parkhead. Wee Broony has not been inspiring me with confidence either in his last few interviews (Celtic have the best fan's etc) and we have struggled up front in the last two games. For these three reasons I am going for 4-0 Celtic. Would be very surprised (and delighted) if we get anything from the game. Very negative but the way I'm feeling about it. Would love if someone is quoting this back to me at 9.30 with a 'you were talking pish' reply!!

If you were to suggest to any other governing body in world football a system whereby one team could end the season playing fewer home games than away and that the team finishing seventh in the league could have more points than the team in sixth, it would be kicked out without a second thought. It's a toy town league that is set up to favour the already favoured Old Firm. That Rangers and Celtic be the only two teams gauranteed their fair share of home and away games and be gauranteed two home games against the other makes dodgy offside decisions against Ross Forbes seem fairly reasonable. It's a complete sham! That the St Mirren chairman admits the futility of even trying to protest shows still further what little influence the smaller teams in the SPL have on the way our game is run. Attendances are plummeting, the game in Scotland is losing credibility and decisions like this are still being made. The future of Scottish Football is fairly terminal I feel unless there is a major cultural shift in the way in which the game is viewed by the administrators of the game and the press who for years have put their considerable weight and influence behind the Old Firm.

I think it was the whole Scottish Football thing that turned Gannon off. My guess is that he will be thinking that Well are still a poor team in a poor league. Don't think he will be starting to think that he made a mistake by leaving. (Before anybody say's 'but he was sacked', he was working his ticket from late November onwards).

I get what your saying Jay but I love being mock outraged. It's part of being a football fan after all no matter how seriously we take the game it's still escapism and a way to let off some steam away from the bigger deals in life. It's what I love about this message board, it's a virtual world so nobody can really hurt anyone by what they say. I would wholeheartedly admit to greeting for the sake of greeting. I just happen to think it's a shit article from a supposedly quality broadsheet newspaper. It's a tabloid article. I'd go for the patches anyday. I would love to see a sea of claret and amber tweeds complete with patches in some European town or city this Autumn.

What's wrong with that? Is that not what makes a league fresher and more exciting. What does he want? That every team finish in the same position every year. The guys arguement is shit. The Times, your having a laugh!

These guys have got to be controversal. It keeps them in a job. He probably does not even believe in what he is writing. We really have an ten team league given that the Old Firm take up the Top 2 places every year. Two seasons ago we finished top of the eight team SPL with very limited resources. That's a fantastic achievement and certainly much better than any achievement of some pretensious journo who contributes nothing to the common good. If he wants to have a go at someone it should be Rangers. It amazes me that they can continually serve up awful football with the big budgets they have. That is a team who are happy to use the 10 SPL teams as punch bags and just scrape past the finishing line every year giving little in the way of entertainment in the process.

Just as well some of the punters on here don't work for the SPL. If they did we would be heading for the first division. We all saw the proof in the summer on the official website of the pitch being fixed. We played three European games at Airdrie (with financial consequences) to allow the pitch to knit together and still you people say the club have not done enough. That there is an investigation in the first place is a disgrace and just the SPL's way of being seen to do the right thing. If the club get fined for this we have to start asking big questions about issues beyond dodgy linesman. We need to get behind our club on this and stop bashing them for the coldest winter in 30 years.

Yes you a right he did come from Northampton but he was talking about his QPR days. I had forgotten that he was at Northhampton in between.

I remember reading an interview from Coke when he first arrived from QPR saying that he had blown his chance there because of laziness and lethargy and that he was determined not to make the same mistake again. Hope he is not falling back into old habits after a great start to the season.

Murphy for me. Hope he has done enough to convince Broony of a starting place next week.

On another day he could have been off. I am all for player discipline but that was one time when I would not have blamed O Brien for lamping the wee ned. Type of tackle that ends careers and under those circumstances emotion has to come into it. Thought the officials were shocking yet again. Some baffling decisions. Great 3 points and some good football played on a very difficult surface.

I know as much as the next man about all this though I can get good strips when I cut my lawn. I would guess that the expense is in the foundations of the pitch (eg ush, drainage, base layers etc) that will not be affected by current problems. I would think that re-seeding should not be that expensive. If the club do have to re-seed after the last game of this season, the pitch would have an additional 3-4 wks (from last year) to knit at the best part of the year for growth. This should not be an expensive option. Having said that my guess is as good/poor as anyones.