steelboy

saturday will see a return to supporting a team that features neither scott brown's ripped coupon on the park or a clueless manager who's ambition seems to be take walter smith's anti football crown off him. i cannot fucking wait! with europe being over for us for another year and most of the players having had a wee break this is almost like a new start for us when we can get properly focused on the task at hand in the spl. st johnston will be desperate to get their first win so hopefully we can frustrate them a bit and come away with a sneaky win. i've no idea what brown will do with the team , i can't see him playing two out and attackers on the wing and i expect that if gow does well humphrey will be back on the bench but mcdiarmid park is massive and suited to humphrey and he's had two good games there before. does anyone know if hammell will be fit? -------------randloph page craigan reynolds hammell ---lasley-- jennings-- hateley humphrey----------------- murphy --------------sutton prediction: 2 nil to the well (murphy, blackman) i think i'm going to go up to perth on the train for the first time on saturday, are there any decent pubs around? maybe even a sports bar as there's 3 games on at luchtime.

since his squad includes barry bannan who is probably the smallest player i've ever seen as well giants like caddis, arfield, wotherspoon and fleck he's talking shite. if anything we've plenty wee guys (naismith, maloney ect) and could do with some decent big players.

how many people do you think are wearing motherwell strips on an average day? unless a company wants to promote it's brand in PE classes and 5 a side courts in the greater motherwell area it'll be the tv, newspaper and stadium exposure they'll be after.

hateley will be at right mid for his delivery and to back up saunders at right back and gow will be at left mid, it'll be the same as butcher's 04/05 of mcbride-leitch-o'donnell-foran.

whit? before sky you were lucky if you got one live game a week, these days you could pretty much watch live fitba 24/7 if you wanted to. there's also a clear connection between players becoming 'less skilled' and fitter, players get less time on the ball and there's more emphasis on defending. a team of fitzpatricks would beat a teams forbeses every time. also celtic won the european cup on the toss of a coin so it doesn't count

but did joe wark ever have to face dougie mcdonald? every team in scotland's fans (and probably all fans around the world) will tell you about the truly great players their teams used to have. i think it has more to do with the fact that people saw less fitba and had fewer ways of comparing players.

st john - faddy mcloy - admitedly we've not had many top keepers but big randy might be the one forsyth - mcculloch pettigrew - clarky wark - hammell will beat his record deans - mcdonald

were all those guys really quality though or has the fans perception of what quality is shifted in the age of televised fitba and an over active media and internet? plus of all the guys you've listed there how many of them were actually signed from another senior club? bobby graham and gahagan i think but i may be wrong.

what quality players would these be? the ones who were getting relegated in the 70s and 80s?

if he shirks anything down where i sit he soon will. we needed to get someone who can play on the left and i think we'll now see a gow-lasley-jenno-hateley midfield with humph going back to being an impact sub. i doubt he's came cheap though so it must mean there was a bit of money there but brown couldn't get anyone else in.

i already disliked gow before he was linked from us and i like him less even more after his antics of the last week. he comes across as a complete cock and even if we can get him for less than he was originally asking for i still wouldn't want him. i don't think it's a co incidence that hibs were flying high last year but as soon as he came into the team they went down hill.

we've currently got 18 outfield players in the first team squad and 9 of them are 21 and under so it's fairly certain we're going to see a lot of young players getting a chance this season.

ladywell toi will greet if he doesn't get to hand out his award so probably best not to.

if they go to 14 teams it'll be done with two coming up and no one going down. i hope they don't because i think a split after 26 games is too early and as the team most people would describe as the 7th biggest in the country we'd have the most to lose by it coming in. we could be 7th on goal difference after 26 games and miles clear of relegation and end up with 14 meaningless games to end the season.

i'm a bit disapointed we didn't get someone in to play on the left but glad we've hung onto reynolds as two league positions and a couple of cup games will make us more than that swansea deal would have. we had our chance to in cash in on mark two years ago and we passed it up, if he ends up going for nothing then we can't really complain as we'll have got about 220 games out of him over the five years. only time will tell how this transfer window has went but right now randolph looks to be a great find, blackman looks raw but could be a success and the cypriot and casagolda remain enimgas. right now i can't help but feel that a bit of money has been wasted by signing a back up keeper while we still had fraser and the fact that sutton got the nod in centre mid ahead of fitzpatrick on sunday makes me think his 6 month deal will come to nothing. you also have to wonder if we've overpaid hateley as he's meant to be a top earner now but isn't putting in the performances to justify it yet, unless he bucks up his ideas in the centre we might have to stick him at left mid or right back and see how he takes that. right now we have no one to play on the left hand side of midfield and it'll seriously hinder our chances this season if we have to play murphy or sutton out their as our best chance of getting top six is them striking up a good partnership and sticking away 20 odd league goals between before the split. depending on how things go with blackman and humphrey we might have to give jamie pollock a run out there and see what he can do.

how exactly did you envisage him saving scottish football? maybe he's out of work the now because he's finding a cure for cancer.

what could craigan (or anyone) actually have done? it's not like he could go down and start throwing digs and i doubt a stern word would have made the odense defenders realise the error of their ways. if it had turned into a 15 man battle royale then we'd have a thread about how that had put murphy off as well.

OMG!!

not the best game but it was a better performance than the last time we played them at fir park. it's not a nice thought but at the end of the day we have no right to compete with them, they had nine internationalists starting and another six on the bench while half our 14 players were 22 and under. no one would expect a team from the middle of league one to compete with an epl team and unfortunately that's the kind of disparity in resources that is occuring when we play celtic these days. they have around 25 experienced players in their first team squad, we have 8 and we couldn't even bring a sub on when we desperately needed a goal the other night. if we are to get a result against them it'll be on a day when everything goes right and that was never going to be yesterday after playing a knackering game on thursday and with more tims than well fans in fir park. the break has come at the ideal time and our bread and butter season starts at perth in a couple of weeks.

i don't think we missed him that much. we dominated possesion, created plenty of chances and restricted their attacks. i'd say we missed keith more on sunday than we missed jenno last night. last night we did everything we had to except score. on sunday we were gash and could barely get any pressure in the final third. hopefully they'll both be playing in tamden again this weekend.

exactly. everything was perfect last night apart from the finishing, we were a bawhair off one of our greatest ever performances. unfortunatey it was the same problems as the hibs game where we did everything apart from score the goals we needed. i don't see where the criticism of lasley comes from either. his job is to win back possesion and get the ball to forwards and he did both those jobs last night.

since roy carroll had legged it to the half line the pen wasn't going to get taken until he got back anyway. blatant gamesmanship but we did it in nancy. if muprhy is going to be the taker it's down to him make sure he's prepared to hit it. there's no point blaming craigan or anyone else. he obviously just tried to do to much with it, live and learn.

the one upside of us going out is that the club won't be able to rape 20 quid out of the fans another 3 times. i heard dempster on the radio earlier on and you could hear the avarice in her voice. it was gutting to lose tonight but it means families will be at least able to put one shoe on each of their weans and serve two spoonfuls of gruel. motherwell as a town couldn't have afforded the group stage, not for the likes of us.

cannae be disapointed, we made enough chances to get through but luck didn't go our way. i'd be gutted if we went out with a whimper but the team done us proud once again. the group stage could have been great but we've had three ties to enjoy, personally i've had two trips i'll never forget and it has to go down as a good campaign. if we can keep the park in good nick and the players fit we'll destroy plenty of teams this season. i've also got a feeling wee broon might be wanting a scottish cup.

lasley for me, he was superb. he won loads of tackles, knew when to foul, used the ball well, was unlucky not to score and was everywhere. we missed him badly on sunday and hopefully it'll be a rainy day on sunday so he can put in another solid 90. saunders is the runner up for me. did everything that was asked of him and more. he'll soon shut the doubters up. murphy did well too but wasn't in the game for the first 25 mins of the second half due to us going long ball. blackman should be back on the bench for sunday. nae right foot and cannae head the ball from what we saw tonight.