Welldaft Mk1

Normally I am a happy clapper of sorts but that was woeful today. Apart from Goalie and defence the rest of the team were awful. Wee Campbell has gone backwards of late. That subsitution. A draw v St Mirren whilst not great is better than defeat. I can get what they were thinking but subbing Mbulu for Bigi cost us the game. I am sure there is a good footballer in Bigi and he has turned up once or twice, but for me he is more of a liability than as asset. His defending is worse than a 90 year old granny. Maybe it is harsh but I would rather not see him play again. All that said the midfield and up front were poor too. Whilst we are out of the relegation places the club will stick by Robinson but many more days like that and his time is up. Whether we can afford to bin him is another matter.

Your not going to please all - certainly not on this forum. But imagine we played a full strength side and lost 1-0 but had injuries to a couple of key players ? The ones on here moaning about lack of professionalism, would be on here moaning about Robinson not learning his lessons from last December. I could almost guarantee it..... Fwiw I agree with his decision to rotate the squad and have already forgotten about a loss v Celtic away. We now have to kick on and get the 3 points on Saturday. If for nothing else it will stop a few on here coming back on and saying the changes made v Celtic meant nothing and so on.

I would ask the Q why are we even debating it or discussing it. Yes it is a message board but we are so shit and he is so shit - we have recently beaten Aberdeen, drawn with Celtic and won away in Perth. I get a sense that if we won every game some on here would say we should get of Robbo because we have not won every game by 3 clear goals. I would agree if we were sitting where the bottom 2 are - but we are not. He put out a reserve side tonight which after the injuries same time last year was the right thing to do. We have taken full strength teams to the tattiedome and been beaten by bigger margins. Settle.

With our second string I see they have had 5 shots at goal. Sometimes you see 27 shots and 1-0. We need to shut up shop. 5-0 and move on. We have huge GD advantage v bottom 3 but will take a dent tonight. Celtic should be beating every team 5-0+ with the financial disparity / gulf.

Thanks for posting the summary of AGM above. Nothing of any note in terms of news most might have been unaware of. The move to Ravenscraig surely is a non starter unless we win the lottery or a Sheik takes a liking to claret and Amber. I did see on P&B and it is mentioned above that Turnbull and / or his agent have turned down up to 4 offers of an extended contract. May not be that many but clearly we seem at an impasse. Hope it can be resolved as we are protecting a valuable asset and one that has integrated well into the 1st team. Also hope that Turnbull looks at the many youngsters who have left the club prematurely and whose careers have stalled or even ended altogether. He does seem more level headed than the likes of Slane, Erwin, Thomas etc but another year or 2 at Fir Park will hopefully see him earn more in the longer term if he kicks on.

That occurred to me too. Especially if as I suspect Rangers go top of the table this afternoon. In years gone by Celtic would be comfortably ahead and you could always hope they take the foot off the gas a little. But as much as they will probably still win the league comfortably it is quite good to see half a dozen sides within a couple of wins from the top of the league. It would be great to get something but hopeful we don’t get a tanking and any injuries.

I thought he was partially to blame for goal v Hearts recently. Came off his line and was no where....but.....hard to argue with saving 2 penalties in a row in crucial games at crucial times. So maybe cost us a point at Hearts but has probably given us 3 points more in 2 games v Celtic and today. Delighted with the result today, especially managing to hang on after they scored. The key is to try next week and break this run of one crap result followed by one decent result. Large malt this evening....

The probalem has always been when young players believe the hype. Paul Slane is a classic example. I am sure he will have cause to reflect and regret the decision to leave Motherwell when he did. Even Lee Erwin to a certain extent. Talking of which I am sure I read he has walked away from yon Iranian team citing homesickness. Wonder if any Well fans on here would want him back ? Although FIFA are likely to get involved by all accounts. I would like Turnbull to sign a deal for 2 to 3 years, with the obvious caveat that if we receive an offer of X amount we will let him move on. He is reportedly a Motherwell fan and seems quite level headed so hopefully a deal can be done. If he opts to leave then we should be due money either from a development fee or transfer fee.

Dundee were always likely to improve. They are paying wages akin to Killie and 30% more than us. St Mirren however have only taken 1 more point than us these past 5 games where we have played Aberdeen, Rangers, Celtic and Hearts away. And if getting their act together means losing 3 goals in the 2nd half v Livingston I will take that recovery all day long. More concerned about Dundee, but think we will have enough about us to stay above the 3 below us by the end of the season.

You should restrict yourself to posting late at night...clearly you are more level headed and fair minded :-) I am not sure where you get the idea that our support prefers unknowns to solid Scottish talent. I for one would have been happy to take Ross Callaghan on board. It does appear as if St Johnstone as an example have on many occasions recently bettered the wages we offered to some targets. Kilmarnock are documented as paying as much as 30% higher wages than us. The only team that are performing better than us based on budget are Livingston. Conversely Dundee have a similar average wage to Killie and are arguably underperforming. The stats on win % are interesting but it is worth noting that I suspect that both McGhee and McCall had a much larger budget and average wage to work with than Robinson does. The reality is that as a fan owned club we should only be paying wages we can afford. That means that for the foreseeable future we will be more involved in bottom half battles than top half. At home we have drawn with Rangers and Celtic and comfortably beaten Aberdeen. We have also been very unlucky not to take anything from games v Hearts and St Johnstone. Fans get frustrated when we lose games but I think Robinson has done a decent enough job. I think our frustrations and certainly mine stem from the fact that when we narrowly lose a game, we can reflect that with a little bit more effort and concentration we could have taken something. Yesterday a case in point. Nothing really between the sides for the most part but we concede another soft goal. A nothing header that lands in our net. I am confident we have enough about the squad to avoid bottom 2 spots, but we will not be far away from them all season and we will continue to have one decent result followed by one or two shit ones.

Everyone else can go to Tynecastle and cause Hearts problems. We are either utter shite for real or Hearts just love playing us or both.

This is going well ! 2 injuries and now a goal. Going to be a long long night.

Robbo has his faults for sure, but so do we all and all Managers for that matter. You look at what Killie have done under Clark. It has been quite frankly sensational but yet according to recent article they pay their players on average 30% more in wages or at least basic wages. An average salary of £47k does not buy you many quality footballers. In fact almost every player we bring is a gamble. Some of which have paid off and handsomely - Moult, Johnson and Kipre. We have the lowest wages apart from Livingston, St Mirren and Hamilton. Finishing above them or above 3 teams is where our budget suggests we should be and actually exactly where we are right now. I am not saying we should stick with Robinson come what may, but I see all this criticism and I am not sure it is warranted nor am I sure we could find a replacement who could achieve a hell of a lot more with a similar budget.

Just watched the lowlights. Said after last week we may have another Kipre on our hands. He is a young lad but the attempts to defend /win both headers were very poor. Livi has not scored in past 4 games. Probably because they played teams that could defend set pieces. We lost yesterday because we were poor in defence, lacked a cohesive and battling midfield and were powder puff up front. Everything else was ok..... I think I have reached the conclusion that it is not worth watching Motherwell play on plastic pitches. They can be bad on grass but I have rarely if ever seen a good game even in the rare occasions when we have won. We are not great and we played v poorly yesterday, but I got a sense they were just not comfortable on that surface.

Just back in from the game. Bonus was their was no parking fee of £5 and we got free tickets. Thanks to the chap outside the main stand for that. All that said despite only paying a few quid for petrol it was still too much for that guff. I wish we were only merely shite. Sadly we were utter shite. No positives at all. All the players that did well last week were awful this week. Grimshaw passing and all rebound play - woeful. Alan’s Campbell has even gone backwards. Stupidly I put money on a Well win. So I take the blame, but I was quite upbeat about our chances. Just goes to show with Motherwell you should never use a performance the week before as a barometer for the next week. God help us against Celtic.

Also puts some perspective in our performance on Saturday v team with x4 salary in essence if we finish where we are in the league right now we are actually over performing v our salary position. Maybe a few fans would do well to remember that..........nah did not think so. If these are accurate it does beg the Q how Hamilton have a similar wage bill despite having a small fan base. Same goes for St Johnstone I guess.

I am the only one that voted for Mbulu ? Absolutely Johnson for his goals but we know he can do that and Grimmy for his all rebound effort - again we know he has that in his locker. Also Gillespie did well and shows he could well match up to Trev whilst he recovers from DVT. But first time I have seen Mbulu and for his first start he was very composed and hardly put a foot wrong. Early days but we may well have a Kipre Mk11

No you would not. Most posts including mine have stated quite clearly that we did not lose 7-1 just because of Thomson. But we are liberty to point out that he has an uncanny record / knack of getting decisions wrong against us. Or sending off more players than any other referee (not even) on average. His stats against us are appalling and point to more than mere incompetency. The players however downed tools and defended woefully in the 2nd half. Some players are just not performing to the standards they were last season.

We all agree Craig Thompson is not the reason we ended up shipping 7 goals, but for all that his % of harsh decisions v Motherwell are bordering on the bizaree. It does not help our cause and possibly his that most of the games he is given to ref is when we are playing the Old Firm. It appears to me that if there is ANY debate or dubiety to be had he has always gone against us in terms of penalties and cards. This is not even a biased view. How many of the red cards have been rescinded ? How many others should have been too ? Then you have pundits that have NO allegiance to Motherwell arguing or even agreeing it was not a penalty or a red card. What does this guy have to do to stop getting our games. If we were any other club we would have released a statement by now. There is nothing gained in doing so as nothing will change. Can you imagine the outcry if these decisions were going against either Celtic or Rangers. I am not saying he has it in for Motherwell FC. But the repetitive nature of these decisions and discussions when he refs a Motherwell game are now at a level where if I were MFC I would be actively petitioning the powers that be to ask he is not given many if any more Motherwell games. Wont happen but it should.....

There is always an excuse. That is what people do when they fuck up badly. You wonder what would have happened in the unlikely event Carl McHugh just for once avoided getting himself sent off. Probably a loss but not by 7. The Manager has to seriously consider a spell on the side lines for Carl until his discipline improves........if it ever will.

Feck off Motherwell Losing 5 goals (at the moment) is inexcusable. Maybe McHugh was just being a midfielder and maybe his cards or one of them were harsh. But this is hardly an isolated incident. He almost evens to get sent off in every game. If I was the Manager I simply could not have that in my team. Maybe harsh but I could not take the risk of playing with 10 men in quite a few games. Our GD was almost respectable Ah well don’t know what I expected against such an odious team at Ibrox and an utter fanny for a referee.

Interesting stats. Not least the fact that there are actually 7 teams with a younger playing squad. Kind of makes a mockery of Robbo insistence we have the youngest squad in the league ! At least we are in top 6 for homegrown players / minutes played....

From that list I would keep if possible Aldred, Mbulu, Macguire, Livingston, McHugh, Cadden, Turnbull and possibly Grimmy based on last 2 games. The rest bybye......

That should not be a fear at all. We have shown we can play football and I suspect if we continue to do that v teams in bottom 6 we will win more than we lose. But v Celtic and the likes we do need to change tactics. Levein openly admitted he wanted his team to play expansive football v Celtic. They lost 5-0 ! The sign of a good Manager is changing tactics to let us compete with better sides. The point I do take is we now know we can play some decent football so let’s not go back to hoof ball v Hamilton, Dundee etc I was pleased with yesterday with exception of Main and Bowman. Difficult to fault their effort, but they need a dozen chances for one goal. Bowman had 3 guilt edge chances and took none of them. The header from 6 yards the worst of the lot. It is for this reason we have struggled to take points and even last 2 games without Turnbull we could have got 2 points instead of 6.

Did not get along last night but delighted with the result. As St Mirren and Dundee have proved so far a change in management does not always mean a change in fortunes. What I particularly liked was the amount of shots from outside the box. As per most were straight at the keeper but as Turnbull ably proved you don’t shoot you don’t score. So many times this season we have been frightened to take shots from that range all the while the opposition as in Livi, Hamilton etc have been scoring believers against us. More of this please. Same team for Saturday ? Maybe Campbell to come back in but for who ? By all accounts Grimshaw performed well and we pretty much know if McHugh is available he will play. Turnbull is like Campbell last season now (hopefully) a fixture in the starting 11. Strange how many of us pointed this possibility out many months ago and again (like Campbell before) it took injuries to make it happen. Anyway a good Halloween