Kmcalpin

Whatever striker we deploy, we should either play it over the defence or keep it on the deck. O for Davie Cooper now. He was great at slinging in low hard balls against big defenders.

Absolutely Allan. I'm happy with this draw. I was expecting teams like St Mirren, Dundee United or Aberdeen away. We'll save those ties for the next round. I wonder if Saints will be forced, kicking and screaming of course, to give us the away end.

Agree about Paton. I get why you'd bring Seddon into central defence, but its swings and roundabouts as Wilson is an old fashioned full back as opposed to a modern day wing back. Ebeye and Maswhanhise wouldn't work up front as the former is a penalty box poacher and the latter is a winger.

Absolutely. Didn't really understand yesterday's subs. I would have swapped Seddon for Wilson at HT and brought on Paton then as well. Watt comes on, fair enough, but then plays wide right. Ebeye was also the wrong choice. He's fine in the box but you have to get the ball in box for him and we didn't do that.

Some good suggestions but I don't get playing Wilson in midfield. He's not impressed there. It smacks of trying to shoehorn him into the team.

Yes, we have no leaders on the pitch and I don't think Lennon Miller being made temporary captain is helping him or us. 100!% on the nail about bullying. A bigger, physically stronger, team with a more aggressive attitude bullied us. I recall poor wee, but game, Davor being absolutely flattenend several times and Hibs also had that wrecking ball Bushiri going wild at the back. Apart from central defence, we really are soft as s**t.

I like open attacking football, but as you say, am quite happy to accept a defensive approach, Jim MacLean style, as long as we win. However despite adopting an overly cautious defensive approach and defending deeply in depth, we still can't achieve clean sheets. If the strikers aren't doing the business then we're in trouble. The defence, especially in the centre, needs sorting out. Its just as well we build up a bank of points early on.

The only major short term change that I think we can adopt is a 4-4-2 formation, which I doubt if he'll give a second thought to. We're shipping goals with a defensive line up and not scoring Allan. So promote Watt to play as part of the front two with Stama and play Manwhanise in midfield, alongside Paton, Miller and Halliday. Possibly replace Wilson with Seddon. Change captaincy with Casey/Gordon taking over from Miller. If he wants to stick with 5-3-2 and tinker then replace Wilson with Seddon and go with a midfield of Paton, Manwhanise and Miller and play Watt alongside Stama. There are various other minor alterations he could adopt. Maybe he should take a leaf out of Alex MacDonald's infamous Hearts' management book - any player playing a pass, over head height, to a striker that doesn't result in a goal receives a hefty fine. We just don't have the players to play hoofball as we saw today.

I won't bother expressing most of my detailed thoughts on yesterday's depressing debacle as they mirror many comments above. Suffice to say we approached the game all wrong. Hibs are decent on the attack, as we saw, although defensive blunders helped their cause no end. They are however weak in defence and so we should have adopted a more attacking attitude both in team selection and tactics. I have no problem with SK's cautious and dull defensive approach to games providing that it works. However teams have now sussed us out as we're starting to see and it now doesn't work. Today we didn't seem to have any coherent gameplan and simply repeated mistakes of previous weeks. We all know what they are. SK is a relatively young and inexperienced manager and will make mistakes but he shows no signs whatever of learning from them and that worries me. Today Hibs were bigger, stronger and faster than us. We were worryingly lightweight in both midfield and attack. Our injury list has been horrendous and undoubtedly affected results and thats not SK's fault to a large extent. However Callachan and Nicholson did have concerning problems in that sense, when they were originally signed. That aside, our recruitment, taken as a whole, last summer, seems to have been poorly planned. If we were going to play our current system, why wasn't Bair replaced with a large physical target man? If Nicholson was to get injured (not an unreasonable assumption at the time) who would be his replacement? What defensive midfielders did we sign apart from Davor? In short, little cover in these key positions. We've now had 2 very poor results indeed in consecutive winnable games. We can't afford this run to continue. Its now up to SK to earn his corn.......

Just a minor thought in the great scheme of things today. If Kaleta gets injured who replaces him? Why did Koutroumbis not get 10 or 15 minutes or so? We're 2 or 3 goals down and not getting a point so why not chuck him on to get a wee bit of gametime? Is he that poor that he can't be trusted? If so, why was he on the bench?

Two winnable games coming up in the next week. If we lose both that could be the start of another horrendous run in the weeks to come given some tough fixtures. SK will then be under pressure and rightly so. By way of comparison we've just lost 2 winnable games on the bounce scoring one solitary goal and conceding 5 in the process. Not good.

Spot on Grizzly. He's being hung out to dry. Needs to play off a big target man. It was soul destroying watching a wee 5-10 striker trying to outmuscle 6-3 centre backs. All too often he was reduced to falling deep to collect the ball. Manwhanise needs to play as a midfielder.

I see Dundee is now offering cancellation insurance. A nice little earner. I wonder if its available to their season ticket holders? The issue of postponements, travel and refunds needs sorting out by the SPFL.

I wouldn't have Seddon and Wilson in the same team. Wilson to return to a wingback role.

I see that our club is going to reimburse the fans who bought tickets from Ross County, but were unable to travel to Dingwall on Saturday. A very generous gesture and good on them. It helps to underline our position as a communiuty club. Our fans should not have lost out financially. It would seem that Ross County's terms and conditions allowed them to provide sales and entry data to MFC. Very generous of them. It was a bit disingenuous of them to hide begind their Ts and Cs when refusing to issue refunds from their own coffers though. Pray tell me, if they don't have control over their Ts and Cs who does? A bit like our old IT department's standard excuse when a program went wrong " Nothing to do with us, it was computer programming fault - just down to the hardware" That only held water for so long. I must admit I wouldn't be complaining if our Directors cut back on hospitality the next time Ross County come calling to Fir Park. https://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/2024/11/25/ross-county-ticket-refund-information/

Aye, I would think it'll be 2 games.

Hibs have a tough game on Tuesday evening and Obita will be suspended.

We lost 3-0 there last December, in an appalling game. Fine lines as you say though, and we've won quite a few games narrowly. I think whats upsetting many folk is SK's overly cautious tactics and seeming inability to learn from his mistakes. Its not the most exciting football to watch but in fairness has been reasonably successful so far this season. Recurring weaknesses include defending too deeply; failing to achieve clean sheets; weak midfield; isolated strikers; and over reliance on set pieces to score. We're reading these comments week after week. Now I get that some of these weaknesses are down to a horrendous injury list, but some are down to recruitment failures, especially up front. Usually a manager will try to source a wide variety of different types of a striker to give him various options. That doesn't seem to be the case with SK. We'll look at Vale, Stama, Ebiye, Robinson, Maswanhise, Tavares and Watt. Vale, Tavares and Maswhanise are all fast, can play outside the box but are lightweight. Stama and Ebiye are penalty box strikers but lightweight. Watt is more physical, bit is not a prolific scorer. Robinson is quite talented but very lightweight and not a scorer, despite yesterday's goal. In my opinion only, Robinson, Tavares and Watt have disappointed. SK loves a 3-5-1-1 formation and thats not a recent thing; so why have we not recruited a big target man? Like it or not defenders are becoming bigger and bigger. We had a fortnight to prepare for yesterday's game and SK should know Ross County inside out. So why did he get it so wrong? I get the players too had an off day.

NCHI for you 🤣

Irrespective of returning midfielders, we are badly in need of a combative defensive midfielder in the Davor mould only bigger and nastier. Someone to shield our defence and allow us to defend further up the park

I"d be keen to sign a 6'4 brick shithouse anyway. There are games where such a player is useful and the long ball is a necessity.

Great post. Stama needs to play off a big target man as part of a front 2. Playing as a lone striker just isn't his game. Surely the management must see that?

Certainly some wheeling and dealing required in January. Midfield and striking departments need sorting out, and thats taking into account returning injured parties.

Its impossible to tell how good he is. We're hanging him out to dry and not playing him to his strengths.

The main problem is that he's signed the wrong type of striker and perhaps also the wrong strikers. If he planned to play with one single striker then he should have signed different players. A secondary problem is the midfield, which can't compete in a battle and has limited attacking options, due in no small part to injuries. Time to wheel and deal in January.