Desp

Anyway, 2-1 Motherwell with a 132nd minute winner from Harry Paton. Surely Killie will have KVV on the bench at least? He'll be nowhere near match fit but would certainly be good for 10/15 minutes. Hope he does f**k all on Saturday, obviously, but he goes on to score hunners against Livi, St. Johnstone, Ross County and, of course, St. Mirren.

Quite right. It's fucking terrible. Give me a thumbs up for Peshwari Naan and we could be pals.

So would Kettlewell want to stay and sign a new deal? Things only going to get harder. If he keeps us up this season, he can leave with his head held high.

I wouldn't get too excited. Constant unfunny patter generally on curries...

I would imagine those at the club have similar ambitions with Lennon Miller over the next 6/12 months.

The player budget has been decimated because a succession of first-team managers, supported by someone who fucked off to Aberdeen, made a succession of utterly horrendous decisions. None of the investements, shall we say, have paid off. Now, unless you're made of money, if an investment goes tits up and you lose a load of cash, you don't then turn around and throw more money at another thing. You cut your cloth accordingly, hoping that over time you can grow again. That's where we are at this season. Kettlewell has had a massive job getting the budget down. This isn't for a laugh, it's to secure our short-term and medium-term future of the club. Now, you can very well argue (as most will) he hasn't used his budget as best as he could have, but for me if we're sitting today with Mika Biereth in our squad then the vast majority of punters are happy with where we're at. It could very well be at Kettlewell has decided to go with 1 up top for the remainder of the season, and feels Bair, Vale and the ghost of Jon Obika will be enough to get us through. Time will tell on that. It's been said already, but the sole aim for this season is to cut the budget and stay in the league. Reset the aims with a new CEO and probable manager come June. We're on course for that, I'd say.

After blowing their budget on an injured Kevin van Veen, me at the first Motherwell v Kilmarnock game next season...

Very harsh mate. It's well known Kyle Lafferty worked part-time behind the hotel bar when he was at Killie. £400 a hour...

These P&O Cruise holidays are going downhill, aren't they?

Kevin van Veen scoring the winner at Fir Park on Saturday for Kilmarnock would be VERY Motherwell 2023/24.

Come on now...

A 32-year old who's on big money but has experience of Scottish Football? Get him in today.

"You might think this is daft" Got it in one, Barry!

Somebody really should grab all of Barry's quotes about the last five or six Rangers managers, a couple of months after they've taken charge. I'm fairly certain it'll be the same quote but with a different manager's name. Which manager did he tout to dominate Scottish Football because he made the Rangers players wear suits to games again? Was that Beale? Barry Ferguson was a fantastic footballer but he's as thick as a Boxing Day shite.

The Chasni pies have signed on until the end of the season.

I liked Wilkinson, but no. Wrong player at the wrong club at the wrong time. Let's not rewrite history here. I've said for years - since 2015 basically - that I don't fear relegation. I'm fairly certain it will happen someday, but unless we pull something magical of our arse this month, it's very likely to happen this season.

Imagine moving to Sheffield Wednesday... on a fucking Wednesday? What shite patter is this? Massive loss. If we end up replacing him with some c**t with 4 goals for some non-entity like Walsall or Colchester Utd, we're in the heavy shit.

The East Stand will never forget

Possibly putting two & two together and getting 46, but a long shot of going for Calvin Ramsay on loan? Liverpool recalled him as he wasn't getting much of a look-in at Preston. He needs minutes, we need a right wing-back...

I've still not touched a drop this year and it's been relatively easy so far. I'm not exactly out all the time, so not going to a pub for weeks on end isn't out of the ordinary, but the wife and I do like a few drinks in the house on a Friday & Saturday night. She's still drinking but I've been quite happy with either some fizzy juice or non-alcoholic beers at the weekend. I've found Heineken 0.0% & Guinness 0.0 to be excellent and for me are as close to the actual stuff as you could possibly hope for. Never, just never, go near the Tennents Zero. An absolute abomination. I don't expect to last the entire month as I'm heading down to Yorkshire on the 27th to catch up with some family and have a day at the football, but we'll see how that goes.

I'm only going by Wikipedia here so it may not be 100% correct, but defender Willie Frame played 198 times for us (1924-1931, 1938-1939) and didn't score. In my lifetime, Simo Valakari played 119 times for Motherwell between 1996-2000 and never scored. He did, however, make a few dents in the Davie Cooper stand roof with some of his attempts. I'm pretty certain Simo then went onto score on his home debut for Derby in the Premiership, live on Sky, just after leaving Fir Park.

Sums it up.

So we don't schedule them then? We have to reschedule for these dates, in the event of a postponement. We rarely have games called off in August, September or October, so we've already lost three months of potential midweek fixtures. As for the teams playing in Europe? f**k them. It'll be Celtic, Rangers and some other mug. They should be big enough to play catch-up. Not something Dundee will need to worry about anytime soon regardless.

You could be right. The summer season is definitely too short and maybe if we played more midweeks during late summer/early autumn, it would take away the need for any mid-season break. In terms of "who's it for?", I'm sure the players would be in favour of a break in January, the average punter might be happy with a couple of weeks off from paying daft ticket prices to sit/stand in the cold at a time of year when many are skint, but there's definitely changes that need to be made to sort out the football calendar that could benefit everyone.

It won't be a busy time for contract extensions, will it? I can see us trying to keep Slattery (but he'll leave), Spittal (he'll stay) and possibly McGinn (he'll also stay if offered). The others can jog on.