Welldaft Mk1

True. But it did not affect the eventual outcome. Whereas the 1st goal disallowed v Hibs at Fir Park. Absolutely noting wrong with it. The penalty away at St Mirren that never was. The offside goal v Rangers at home. Polworth sent off v Aberdeen. I watched Boyce tonight say the F word several times to Nick Walsh. Not even a yellow.

Wednesday was a huge improvement on the two games beforehand. But that would not be too difficult! That plus the fact we have 3 wins and 2 draws from Wed evening games. Shame we cannot play evening games all the time. All that said there was precious little quality on show. We all too often chose the wrong option or misplaced final passes in the final 3rd. Fine against an average St Mirren but play like that again tomorrow and we will lose. Hibs are not world beaters but they have a very good midfield and front line. Since I suspect we will play same side again we need to be better than Wed evening and hope for no Ref fuck ups (asking a lot I know) and a Hibs side that are below par. With a fair wind we may get a result but I am at the stage I genuinely believe we will look back at the officials again. Have we had many if any decision go our way this season ? It feels not..

Is it shameful when we have been missing more than half a team ? Certainly for the St Johnstone game. I don’t see us getting anything from Saturday so that makes it 3 wins from 7 games quite probably. Not easy granted but they are mostly against sides in and around the bottom 6. We should have more players back for this run in and if we cannot win 2 to 3 games post split we deserve to go down. I am going to jinx it but I don’t see us losing our last remaining game v Accies. I think we will exact our revenge.

I genuinely believe that all 3 sides below us could win 3 or 4 of their remaining games. Let us not forget that all of them have a game v us and in fact Killie will have 2 games v us. And yes they all play each other. But that also means there are 3 or so games when the bottom 4 cannot all get maximum points. So I think that to be completely safe you probably need 37 points as I would not see all 3 of them winning more than 4 games. So we really need 3 wins probably to avoid bottom 2 places. The sooner the better but one would hope we can manage that in the 8 games remaining.

Are there any Scotland games on the horizon ? Asking for a friend...

I particularly like when he miscontrolled the ball by the line and it went out of play. Jock and Lewis. Maguire is better than that. Yes Maguire is better than that twice or three times they proclaimed. Actually no he is not I am afraid.

This. Not as bad as Saturday but not that much better. Listening to Goodwin on the Radio. Their 2 best midfield players are not entirely fit but are willing to put their bodies on the line. Pretty much sums up the shitshow with our injured players. Not saying they are at it but I get the feeling we would not see that at Motherwell sadly. Oh and also hoping that they can overload the 3 Motherwell midfielders in the middle of the park. Shame our Manager cannot see that. If they do overrun us in midfield then GA can head back down the road. Lets wait till FT but giving up midfield rarely works well.

Not at all optimistic. Good that Campbell is back but very concerned about central defence. Very concerned. I would have started McGinley over Magloire. He looked out his depth at the weekend. And to top it all two of St Mirren best players that were missing have miraculously recovered. Thanks SPFL. We have a side beset with injuries and they have a full squad. You kinda knew that was how it would pan out.

Yes. I know GA said Magloire had a good game. Admittedly I only watched the 1st half before chucking in the towel. But I thought he looked out of his depth. If GA persists with playing all 3 forward players then Watt could drop deeper. My preference would be to go Kelly SOD Lamie McGinley Carroll Maguire, Polworth, Crawford Watt Long Cole 4-4-2. Probably don’t have the midfield in correct order but 3 in midfield again with what looks like a still poor ish defence and we are doomed.

Not seen anything official yet. Not that we normally do these days about who is fit and who is not. We tend to find out when the line up is released on twitter. But if the team is the same as Saturday + SOD then we will be marginally less crap. And I mean marginally especially since it will not “b a drama if we lose”. If we also line up 4-3-3 I genuinely think this season will be up there with Malpish if not worse. I hope we put up a better performance than Saturday but expect we will be getting nil points from tomorrow evening.

I am still very much in the give Alexander time camp. Despite last 2 calamitous losses we are middle of the form table over past 6 games. Whilst I will say he is part responsible for Hamilton it would have taken a magician to get anything from that starting 11 on Saturday. He cannot be blamed for injuries, nor player contracts, nor players not battling during a game. Sure he has to shoulder some blame for the Jan signings. Most of whom would have been identified beforehand. We do not know whether we tried to get other players or some that GA recommended but Kelly and Lawless injury aside the rest well....been as well signing nobody. If he keeps us up he will have fulfilled his initial task. If not I would assume there is a clause in the contract allowing either party to move on. He may decide to stay and the club may think he has promise to get us back to premiership or not.

There might simply be nothing in it. Assuming he had a contract extension in his clause it may well be that it is up to Gallagher and not the club to trigger that. Unlikely maybe or worded such that if both parties agree etc. If however the contract clearly stipulates that playing 25 games automatically triggers a one year extension and there has been all sorts of skullduggery then that would be a shame. Lets face it - I would not blame Gallacher for trying to re negotiate as his career has gone upwards and he only has 4-6 years left for maximising his earnings. But I would hope if the contract favours Motherwell he respects that or allows a negotiation that favours Motherwell come the summer. Where the fans would rightly be angry is if Motherwell caved in to pressure of the current situation and removed said clause. Or if Gallacher has been playing funny buggers this past month as he and his agent are not getting their way.

You mean exactly like I said 2 posts back. Pay attention Dave :-)

I think we will take nada from our weekend game away to Hibs. So Wed night is crucial. Small comfort maybe but we have 3 wins and a draw from our last 4 Wed games since Alexander came in. Also worth noting that St Mirren are missing 3 or 4 key players. So if we can get OHara and Campbell back with SoD returning from suspension and maybe one other then in truth our team will be as strong or weak as St Mirren. That may mean little but it would give me some confidence we could make a game of it. That said lose on Wed night and if Killie or Hamilton get a result this weekend I would say our odds on finishing bottom 2 become more likely than less likely.

To be fair it is all rather exciting - in a nuts in the grinder kind of way. A lot will depend on who is fit and available to play between now and end of season. There is an International break of two weeks before game 33 so that may help us get some players back for the crucial post split fixtures.

I was about to post same. He has enough minutes and probably more than Jordan White was afforded in his last few cameo appearances to make an educated guess. I say educated as like every Motherwell player he has stubbed his toe and may not play again for some time. I just hope this is not going to be the season where come the end we are championship bound and we start dissecting the reasons why. To be fair I don’t think Alexander coming in would be one of them. But so many things have conspired against us what with points awarded and taken away, too many dodgy ref decisions, a quite unbelievable absence / injury list and players coming to end of contract or wishing they were. A perfect storm. We may yet survive but considering the season it would be a bit of a miracle.

Playing Accies again and u say no need for pant wetting ??

Not sure about that. Celtic missed a few good chances including a sitter from Christie. Ross C battled way and showed real fighting spirit and probably deserved a draw. The fact they got 3 points with White scoring kinda sums up our season even when we are not playing. Wed night is massive as is every game until end of season. It is clear all the teams below us will get a few wins so unless we start picking up points we are under severe threat of going down.

Well we are essentially fucked. We need 5 or 6 players back not one. That team today plus one recognised starter is still cannon fodder. God only knows what is going on but this is beyond a joke now re injuries.

Not having that. We as the fans are essentially owners of the club. I do not expect sensitive information to be shared but the lack of updates on player injuries or circumstances is starting to become infuriating. It is perhaps understandable we don’t want to share such bad news with the opposition ahead of a game. But this has changed since Robbo left. So essentially the key message appears to be that the players are somehow unhappy with the new management team. Alexander seems quite inoffensive to me and so I wonder why that is ? I am not asking you to share sensitive information nor would I expect you too. I have been in that position before and rarely if ever posted what I knew on Steelmen Online. But then again nor did I give hints or clues either as I knew it would probably piss people off.

What does this even mean ? I have nothing against you OTF but if I am being critical you are guilty of coming on this forum and giving part answers or hints and often actually telling us nothing. It is clear you are in the know but and I speak for myself it can be quite irritating. You have hinted at some discontent with current management and I along with others are totally bemused as what is unfolding re the amount and nature of injuries. To have 18 players unavailable is probably unprecedented in any football club. Thee could be perfectly valid reasons for all of them but something appears to be amiss.

This. I know people are upset as am I but I am seeing points that are rendered meaningless. Like we would struggle in the championship. Of course we would. We had a 3rd choice defence and 2nd choice midfield. No team could cope with the amount of players missing today. All that said bewildered that GA thought going with 3 up front and in midfield would help us. Also bewildered about the amount and nature of injuries. Have seen nothing like this in 40+ years supporting Motherwell. Something just feels not right. Mystery illnesses all over the place.

We have next to no players available but you think Alexander would then set us up to make us difficult to beat. But no go with 3 up front. He is as mush to blame for this as the dross on the pitch

It is shocking but to be fair apart from the front 3, Kelly and possibly Polworth none of these players would be playing. We cannot expect to beat any team in the top flight with a virtual 2nd string team Young Johnston has acquitted himself quite well

WTF is going on. We are missing a whole team almost and for such a crucial game. No wonder we have an apparent strategy of keeping quiet on injuries. It would cause a panic and take too long to go through them. I generally am a positive person but our chances of a positive result have just taken a complete nosedive. We have got to try and make a game of it today and pray some of these players are ready for midweek. Could not have happened at a worse time