Handsome_Devil

A couple of years ago someone at Motherwell (I forget whether it was Burrows or McMahon, one of the pair I think) said that with the way access to European football and the knock-on effect of trickle down income was changing, being in the league from 2022 (again I forget if 2021/22 or 2022/23 was meant) was more essential than ever. Almost to the point of an existential issue for the club as it is (full-time football, massive youth academy etc). Okay, we obviously have the Turnbull money but we've had transfer windfalls before and rarely spent the cash like we have this season. St Mirren obviously had a bit of a coup landing Brophy last year and are now speculating to accumulate on Robinson as well it seems. It's great the 'third tier' clubs in the top-flight are being a bit bolder in investing while - you hope - being sustainable fan-run operations. FWIW I really liked Robinson as Motherwell manager, at least till he ran out of steam, and with the obvious exception of not hurting us I hope he does really well for you.

He's got a job for life at Motherwell and is doing a degree to be a sports director, something he could manage as a number three with us but probably not as number two at a new club. We'll probably bump up his role eventually if he stays put. You could imagine he might change his mind if a managerial job came up and he fancies going that path but chucking what he has at Motherwell to be assistant at St Mirren would seem a mental gamble to me.

Perhaps but I don't see him leaving Motherwell to be assistant elsewhere.

Robinson will do a good job for St Mirren for sure, he more than ticks the boxes.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Even if you paid for it properly, tonnes of it is still subjective calls made by the same people who give the OF 90% of decisions anyway...all that'll happen is nobody will ever get the rare benefit of the doubt against them again. The only way we should even consider VAR is under the original premise of correcting massive game-changing errors (not minor errors, even if they're unfortunately game-changing). You simply find a way to adopt the tennis system of appeals, you get one a game, use if you're convinced you've been shafted and lose it if you're wrong. And even then I'd only do that because the direction of travel is clear, there's no way it'll be resisted for much longer.

Woolery certainly made a difference when he came on but generally speaking his final pass/shot is honking inconsistent. Shields and Efford did well in the cup so fair enough, they kept their places. They didn't do as well yesterday and someone did better so again, fair enough, there'll likely be a change at Ibrox. We've got KVV who you'd say is a true number nine and four guys who can play either side of him. All four can be fine on their day but none are especially convincing. Pace makes up for a lot - the Chris Humphrey effect - so Roberts bottom of the pile for me but you could draw lots between the other three.

Presumably. For some reason I had it in my head that in the early days of football there were slight variations and it took a while for Saturday 3pm to become standard but a quick google suggests it's based the 1850 Factory Act (!) which mandated Saturday work to end at 2pm.

We'll win in March. Whether it's early enough to save the season I don't know... Unsure of the midfield, agree there's potentially better individuals but the last two games the middle trip have been as solid as all year. MOH makes a big difference in this form.

Point each fair. If anyone deserved to nick it it was us and indeed we might have done with a fit striker. MOH makes a big difference to our midfield in that form and I thought Woolery had a good impact compared to Efford, who had a bad day. Mugabi played like he had eight pints celebrating his new contract yesterday.

Nailed it. Jammy as f**k to be fair and completely out the blue.

Aberdeen look very safe in seeing this out - we've left KVV on because we didn't get a back-up in January and there's no way he should be playing. We're utterly toothless. Agree Barron looks a top prospect.

Or maybe 2023 will be our year!

We've actually played okay but as cliches go if you miss your chances and defend like that you're in bother. KVV needs to go off at HT, he's a man down at present. And if he's out for any length our time our season is basically done.

When was the last time we named an unchanged team under GA?

Aye, there's clearly a subjective element to how much you think something should be worth, when ultimately 'what someone is willing to pay for it' is the final answer. Scottish football - according to Wiki at least - cashes an incredibly price per game from TV, relatively speaking, and is valued way higher than some middling leagues. On the other hand we clearly have more games which could be sold and some middling leagues bank a lot more than us. I agree it's highly likely the report will say there's more money to be chased through TV (and desperately trying to sell beer in grounds) in whatever form. Whether we get it or not a different matter.

Is it though? In Germany there is a real hatred of Monday games, which have been binned from the second division, but the protests over other kick-off times are largely symbolic 'against modern football' stuff. Which is understandable in a way but everyone turns up for beer and bratwurst anyway. I can understand moves to resist summer football for practical reasons but Saturday 3pm kick-offs literally date from the old working week and half-day Saturdays when attendees were almost exclusively working men while the wives and kids stayed home. If we're convinced that's still the best time to play no bother but being tied to it because that's what it's always was - as lots of people clearly are - is daft.

This will be heresy to some - and would have been to me pre-pandemic - but we should absolutely bin the focus on Saturday 3pm kick-offs if it can bring in a more heavyweight broadcasting (television/online) deal. It's just not how the world works any more. You can watch virtually every game on a stream yet the fans who want to go to the grounds still do. You'd need to be confident it would bring in the cash rather than everything being lost to hooky online sites and find a balance against the club television channels. But if that's the case go for it. If marketed and priced properly it would take advantage of the fact more and more people are meh about the Premier and Champions League and that their interest in Scottish football is not based exclusively on the quality of it. You could open it up to fans well beyond Scotland as well. Tin hat on, I'd make the weekend kick-offs Friday 1945, Saturday 1230, 1500, 1730, Sunday 1230, 1500...and yep, a couple of years ago I'd be volunteering to be first against the wall for such a suggestion.

Those performances were indeed excellent. When I talk about style of play being an issue, it's not that I want to see us look like 93-95, McGhee mark I or McCall but with something worth watching beyond passively getting men behind the ball* - pressing aggressively when we can and hitting with pace and direction is absolutely fine. But we frequently don't attempt that and you can only do it effectively against a team willing to play possession to begin with. * unless it works. The result absolutely justifies the means, my point is that I doubt we'll have an outcome at the end of the season where people will say 'yeah, that approach was worth it'.

If we shitfest our way to Europe or - ha! - a cup under Alexander I'll be absolutely thrilled. But giving him a contract extension when there was no need was mental, especially given we could well follow his usual pattern elsewhere of stabilization, stagnation and collapse.... It's not the style of football in itself I have a problem with, it's that his style of football is all he seems to aspire to. A good team grinding out results is a positive sign, setting out to do nothing but grind a different matter. January to May he got a free pass because of what he inherited but there were grumblings even then that if this continued when he wasn't piecing together a car crash he'd be questioned. If we played like this because he said we were developing something, be it a system, youth players or a couple of prospects signed then fine. I don't have high expectations, bumbling along in eighth or ninth and having a go in the cups is enough for me so long as I can cling to the fantasy it's part of a journey. Matches off the top of my head - Accies away v 10-men, Pittodrie and St Mirren at home this season - were (generously by accident, I think by design) three of the most appallingly negative Motherwell performances I have ever seen. Yet we won the first two and were unlucky to draw the third so fair enough. But I just don't see his approach as sustainable for any length of time. If you boil it down to pass/fail, you need to sneak way more games than average (or remarkably string them four or five together in a cup) for it to be worth it and that just seems highly unrealistic to me. And as has been said multiple times, if results are your be all and end all, the second we hit a bad run, as every team does, the fans go tits and he's under massive pressure. That's the main thing but when you then have team selections that seem picked as a tombola, his constant bookings and whining, giving out team news which must be verging on downright lies, I don't think it's a surprise he's tolerated rather than loved despite a record which is more than solid on paper. Oh and playing McGinley from August and still having him as your first choice left back after the January window is verging on being a sackable offence in itself!

It's not any tactical masterplan tbf, that's pretty much the height of Alexander's ambition in any game.

Fantastic day for the giggles, it's why we love Scottish football. Joking apart, I actually reckon he'll keep Dundee up...but alienating your fans in such a way seems a, eh, minor error.

A 16/18 team league might - and it's a big might - give the best of the rest the chance to close up but over a 30/34 game season it's still a one in a hundred chance they'd finish ahead of both the OF. The only way you could revolutionise the game to cut the advantage would be playoffs - for almost everything - at the end of the season with the trick being you separate European qualification (which would come from the table at the end of the regular season, so the OF wouldn't feel their CL money was being grabbed) from the Scottish title (which would come from the play-offs). The OF would still win it more often than not but you're manufacturing jeopardy through one off (or two-legged at a push) games. However, it is such transparent and self-serving artificial excitement that contradicts all principles of league football you have to ask what's the point....you'd be as well just handing a big trophy to the third place side at the end of the season and telling them to go mental.

In general yes but I think saying there wasn't a massive element of luck in 2003 - given how we kicked on from there - is rather pointless, we were clearly hugely fortunate. The other breaks - 1986 and the play-off being scraped in the 1990s - were mid-season so there you could argue that we'd have done better if we had to. But by all accounts of our team in the first season up under McLean that's a pretty generous reading.

It's quite possible he could be arrested for injuring aliens he abducted knowing him.