welldaft

We lack the quality to make a difference. Simple as. We have been in many good positions and lack the skill and nous to do anything with it. As a Well fan O Donnell is OK but too many poor passes when in a good position.

100% this. He pings in 30 yarders v us in finals but I do not see it in the Scotland squad. Seems a waste of a jersey and has largely been anonymous and I think Armstrong is a better player for this type of game. I would love to be proved wrong.

I am keeping calm and trying to go down the road of if it happens it happens....wont last for long. Serbia all told are a better side but not by a big margin. That they are at home is an advantage but less so without the crowd. They have had some fairly average results over last year or so. I guess it depends whether they are stronger or weaker as a result of the pressure. I just do no want glorious failure. Would rather lose comfortably than 1-o from a dodgy penalty in 119 minutes. I do think it will be a long night and we will need a fair bit of luck to go our way. But Clarke has a habit of shitfesting his way to results so more of the same would be just perfect.

What is going wrong is they are not playing Motherwell every week. If they were they would qualify for Europe ! Not bitter u understand.

You may well be proved right Desp and the evidence of the past would point to your comments above being fairly accurate. However there are a number of circumstances that may well differ this time around. For one he is back home and fairly settled in his life. Two he seems to be enjoying his football and the company of his teammates. Seems like a close knit squad for the most part. Three Robinson has proven in the past he can get players to play better than they have at other clubs. Four even he must know that at 26 he needs to play consistently well to stay in the team and actually look back on his career with some consistency of success. Playing in Europe and having he potential to do so again may keep him motivated. If you are right then there would be nobody at all surprised. But I am willing him on (I know you are also) and hoping that he will be an important player for us over the next year and a half.

Good analysis as always Capt. What I remember most about the Thunderdome era with Robinson (apart from getting to 2 finals) is how most of the fans, myself included thought the football was eye bleedingly awful to watch. That was the constant theme from a lot of posters back then. It is fair to say that changing to a more positive footballing side means that we are able to match up and often beat all the other sides in the league but that as you point out that does not wash when the Old Firm come to town. It is annoying constantly losing to the gruesome twosome but I would rather we had a better product on the park in terms of footballing ability and more pleasing on the eye. Which is what we have right now. Beating St J, Aberdeen, Livi and Ross C without conceding a goal is in my opinion better for us than scraping a draw or narrow win v Old Firm and losing more games to teams around about us. It is unfortunate for us we only had 2 winnable games before playing Celtic instead of the 4 we were due to have. Had we won both of those or taken 3 or 4 points we would be in 5th place. As much as I would like 2 x 3-0 wins awarded I suspect the SPFL will not go down that road. Those games are more than likely to be re-scheduled but it has not helped with our momentum. Hopefully we will find out this week as I believe the disciplinary meetings take place tomorrow or Wednesday ?

If you cannot take it don’t dish it out ya fuckin walloper.

At least we had a go after HT. Hard to be harsh on the players after that. They were clinical with 4 goals from 6 on target. Felt the big goalie could have done better for 1st and 3rd goals. But I guess there is a reason why he was available on a free. Would give Archer a go v St Johnstone. See who is better of the two whilst we wait for Carson to return in the New Year.

Give it time.... I will just be glad when the two of you self combust when Rangers stop u winning 10 IAR. Don’t want those chunts to win either but you two are annoying me more today. PS - Celtic gave us a our record transfer fee for a player that cannot even get on the pitch. Has anyone actually mentioned the massive gulf in resources yet. If not they should do.

This. Choosing same team and formation as we did v RossC and Livi was a huge mistake. Celtic have the freedom of ML1 on either side. We should have dropped a striker for a midfielder. Celtic would probably still win but we would have made it tougher for them.

Just listened to the customary 20 minutes on Celtic current situation On BBC Sportsound and the one time they mentioned Motherwell was when they mentioned the game tomorrow. I would love Motherwell to win if only so I can get angry at the post match analysis which will consist of 59 minutes on the crisis at Celtic before they say “ we must not forget about Motherwell...oh that is time up for today...thanks for listening. I get the Old Firm are the two biggest sides by some distance, but they really take the proverbial pish with their coverage. Should call it Glasgow Sportsound.

The most surprising stat for me is that Maurice Malpish has a higher win % than any other Manager. I demand a recount. On to the game tomorrow. Would dearly love for us to win or even come away with a point. But history tends to show that when there is any expectation or hope that we can cause an upset then it dissolves fairly quickly after KO. In many ways there is no pressure on us - it is all on Celtic. That can be a good or a bad thing. We need to start well as I expect an onslaught and Celtic to try and go on the front foot from KO. We need to be composed enough and have belief as a team we can take something from the game. As always we will need luck. Giving away soft penalties or a soft goal early on will set the tone. As for the team line up and formation. I would be tempted to go 4-5-1. Goalie and Defence as last game. Watt up front. I expect Grimshaw will be added to midfield to give us a bit of bite and energy. Rest of midfield would be Campbell, Polworth, Maguire and Lang. I have seen this movie too many times before and usually leaves me crying. Every now and then you get to see a happy ending. Fingers crossed for one tomorrow come 2pm.

Basically this...... Worst result for us tonight I am afraid. Celtic are there for the taking but I think they will try sooooooooo much harder to get a result than before. I can picture all Well fans excited come 12 noon on Sunday only for the ref to give a soft as f**k penalty within a few minutes. followed by our dreams crumbling. I am a realist and this was bad ju ju for us tonight. I hope I am wrong but this will be like Groundhog Day,

Sparta Prague at home. To be fair Celtic second string could easily beat most sides outside top 3 or 4. I listen to Sportsound podcast on my dog walks and have been interested hearing the likes of Packy Bonner and Media pundits waxing lyrical about Celtics achievements in potentially winning a quadruple treble. Now I admit even given the gulf in resources that would be quite an achievement....but....I rarely if ever hear those comments with any context. It is almost as if Celtic have achieved all of this with the same budgets and resources of all the other teams. When Celtic get beaten by PSG or Man City we get reminded of the fact that they paid a squillion £ for one player. When Celtic or (now) Rangers beat another team by 5 or 6 goals in the SPFL it is rarely mentioned in the media. The reality is I hope we can give Celtic a game this weekend but if we are beaten comfortably by 3 or 4 goals it is like us beating Brechin City by the same margin. To actually make it fairer then Celtic should start each game (bar Rangers) on -3. Then we would potentially have a competitive league. Anyway I hope we can give them a fright right up until the referee awards them a penalty for something innocuous that we would NEVER have been awarded at the other end... same old same old.. Mon the Well.

Because he is a fucking twat.....

Awful news. Far too young.

Celtic squad cost £50m Lille cost £100m And yet we expect even games or possible upsets v Aberdeen, Motherwell and Hibs next few domestic games. Or the media does. Would like Celtic to win but also enjoy seeing Celtic in the position of most Scottish sides. Defending for their lives.

I am amazed that you still have anyone who thinks they can make money from Scottish Football. Only by getting into the Champions League would that ever become reality and I hate to break it to Ogren...... Boyle lost £10m on Motherwell and we still went into Admin. At least he was a Well fan. A wee look through history and he should have run a mile. What made him think I will buy a Scottish Club where I have no affiliation, are not even in the top flight and this will work out just fine and dandy ?? Some people with lots of money lack common sense. Arguably they could sell Shankland + Siegrist and still have enough to stay up but a slide down the table cannot be ruled out after this debacle. And then there is what Mellon makes of it all. I have no axe to grind with DDee United. Quite like them actually - but this has been badly managed however you look at it.

Essentially Livi have priced themselves out of the market for those fans that are undecided. If the intended outcome was to only protect the interests of Season ticket holders then fine and something I understand. But if it was to also raise revenue or a little more from away fans then I am 100% convinced this is backfiring. I paid £12.50 for St Mirren (even though it was cancelled) as it was good value. I appreciate it is only £7.50 more, but more importantly £20 is only a few pounds less than watching live. As such I will not be paying and judging by twitter and friends nor will many others. Also on BBC Alba at 6pm.

Motherwell have been making some redundancies and cost cutting despite taking in an extra £600k for finishing 3rd in league, £750k for run in Europe. Those are before bonuses and expenses. But also circa £4m+ on transfers in 2020. My point is we could see this clusterfuck coming. I expect that those Well fans that have bought season tickets (as per Random Guy) will be offer3d the option to have a discounted season ticket or not. We have sold 4000 season tickets. I would expect that 50% would waive any rebate / refund. I will buy again next season and not expect a rebate / discount. I accept I can afford to whilst others cannot. Be interesting to see what United were planning with season ticket holders for next season ? Back to the Arabs. If those wages being quoted are in any way accurate then seriously WTF. How does someone sanction that when a matter of weeks later they need to make drastic cuts to the wage bill. That is business suicide and fairly incompetent to boot. Almost as if that person making those decisions did not know the financial status of the club. Just bizarre.....

Who is setting their expectations high. Most of us know he will likely be injured in a few weeks and we will be looking for our 41st keeper of the season. As someone else said - as long as he is no Craig Samson then we are already in positive territory. ETA - Dr Manhattan beat me too it and was more amusing...

I am a HUGE fan of Polworth. Arguably he has made a difference over Turnbull as our results picked up but as mentioned above we needed to play Turnbull in order to get our circa £3m from Celtic. The key difference in my opinion is that Turnbull can create and finish. In general evidence Polworth continually creates but rarely finishes or scores goals. That effort on Saturday a case in point. Dribbles past several players and hits it narrowly wide. If he could finish then he would be elsewhere. I actually think we are lucky to have Polworth. His languid style has some of our fans frothing and maybe it has hindered his progression but he makes us tick and with so many assists is such a pivotal player for Motherwell FC.

Probably how it will turn out come end of the season. But I always felt we have / had a strong squad. A few too many injuries in defence have not helped allied to a slow start and then stop start season means it is hard to gauge. But I still feel it will be between us and Killie for 5th. Maybe a bit of a fluke that we won 3-0 in Aberdeen in that they had just sold McKenna, but we have been the better side in the two games v sides looking like finishing 3rd and 4th. If we can string some results and games together then I am still hopeful of a comfortable top 6 finish. To be fair I think Random Guy has said similar in a thread about likely league table a week or so back.

That was a sitter and a warning to Motherwell.

That we can agree on