crazylegsjoe_mfc

As well as the above game, I only ever saw us play the old Airdrie once too, in their final season, where I believe Las scored a late winner for Airdrie with an OG.

My cousin supports St. Mirren and given the amount of Sellick fans there are in the extended family, I have always held something of a diddy club alliance with him, so for that reason, St. Mirren are far down on my list.

Funny you should say that, as I was thinking about the game at Rugby Park just before Christmas last year, when he came on for Hylton and it felt like we’d had a man sent off and had to see our lead out with 10 men so clearly it’s a recurring theme. I don’t think he’s in Humphrey’s league pace wise. He’s not quite as bad as Petravicius was, but he’s in a similar ilk where his pace is talked about, but I reckon he’s only reasonably fast.

This might seem a strange one, given he's one of the names most synonymous with the club in recent times, but to add to the Motherwell ones above, I'd probably say James McFadden, when he first came back. Obviously he hadn't kicked on since recovering from his ACL injury, but I still thought it something of a coup that having recently been back at Everton and at Sunderland, that we managed to get him until the end of the season. When he first came back, once he was up to speed he looked class. Ran the show in a 4-1 win against Hibs, scored a cracking free-kick against St. Mirren and inspired us to two wins against Celtic between February and May as we took second place. It was thought at that point that he would then be back down south or further afield and looking back on it, then would have been the perfect close to his time at the club. As it was, he ended up staying the following season and despite flashes of brilliance, his season was plagued by injury and inconsistency. Then by the time he came back again after a season at St. Johnstone, he broke his foot just as he was working his way back into the team. Had he not done his ACL at Birmingham, you do wonder how it would've worked out as if he hadn't, there would've been no chance he'd have been back at us at 29.

The Stoke and Reading "interest" of Seedorf is on the BBC Sport Gossip Column today and not just the Scottish version, the English one too. Surely Michael O'Neill must have realised how ineffectual Seedorf was when looking at Donnelly and Carson.

This might seem minor in the grand scheme of things, but I wonder how much the fact that there is no reserve football being played is affecting us. I'm not sure if we are able to play many bounce games - I'd imagine they'd all have to be against same division opposition, as the last I heard any league below us wasn't being tested and I guess that would represent a risk. The two reasons I think reserve football might be having an impact, is first of all that there is no unknown quantity that might save our season, no youngster impressing in the reserves, that might be ready to step up like the likes of Scott and Turnbull have in the past. Secondly, the players who we have on the fringes - Grimshaw, Seedorf, Hastie, White etc - have absolutely no opportunity to build their match fitness. So, however badly the starting eleven play on a Saturday, in most cases, the only option would be to replace them with a player who isn't up to speed. I know Robinson has got us out of multiple messes in the past and undoubtedly deserves the chance to turn this around, but as far as our current squad goes, I don't think I can see where that will come from. I think we are at the stage that there is no one who could do anything that would particularly surprise me. I think it takes something in the transfer market to galvanise us. If we are intent that O'Hara is a midfielder, we need a centre-half to play beside Gallagher. If Mugabi is better than McGinley and Lamie as team selection would suggest, that's a must. We currently have seven forwards (Long, Lang, Cole, Watt, White, Seedorf and Hastie). I would be pleased if we could achieve something like four out, two in on that front. Other than Watt, it could really be any of them to go as far as I'm concerned. Robinson himself is probably getting sick of this as well. He probably has aspirations of being a manager at some point where he may actually get to build a team and keep it. I have in the past been critical of his recruitment to an extent and wondered what his success % was, but it must be wearing having to sign so many players, gambling that some might be good, over and over again.

It's a tough one. I would just have been happy if the streams were covered, I wasn't concerned about getting the games back. Providing no major change in circumstance for me, I would be happy to buy a full season ticket again next season, but I realise there will be people who have lost jobs and also people who only saw the value/merit in buying a season ticket if they were going to get the extra games refunded back on it. Obviously, I very rarely watched Motherwell on TV prior to this season, but the experience of watching other games, be that SPFL, Champion's League, EPL has been much worse without crowds. Although, for example, my interest in the EPL has been dwindling for years, but I was delighted when I could even swap MOTD2 for the 3 minute highlight video you get on SkyGo. I can barely even be bothered with the Champion's League goals show in the background either now. It's crazy that this is how apathetic I am to having so much live football at my fingertips at a time where I can barely leave the house to do anything else. As @Busta Nut said a while back, if you were watching football for the first time now, you wouldn't keep watching.

I know McGinley hardly covered himself in glory for Hibs’ 2nd and 3rd goals last week, but has he been THAT bad at left back to be dropped for Grimmy yesterday? Also, Robbo’s narrative about Lamie being “an out-and-out centre back” differs somewhat from his spiel when we signed him. “I believe he will add to our defence and can play in numerous positions, including centre back and left back. “He gives us balance to the left side and has very good Premiership experience. He’s also a good age, with great enthusiasm to keep improving, which impressed me.”

Watching our “shots” yesterday scunnered me. They’re all at passback strength, no one seems to put their foot through the ball and make the keeper work. I wouldn’t take the number of shots on target we’ve had this season of an indicator that we should have scored a lot more goals...you’d have to rack your brains to think of that many good saves that keepers have had against us. A good number of our shots on target are someone weakly hitting a ball goalwards when they are closed down and don’t have any other options.

I said 15, rather than 17, to protect myself from such responses, but that clearly didn’t work

You can come up with loads of complicated theories about how we are suffering the way that we are, but I think it’s as simple as, we’re not good enough at defending, we don’t create or take enough chances and we have a squad absolutely riddled with bang-average players. I think today maybe swayed me round from the “we’re shite but we still won’t get sucked into a relegation battle” line of thought. In other seasons where I’ve felt that, we had for example, Moult’s goals in 16/17 and Turnbull’s emergence and goals in 18/19, but I really can’t see where that’s coming from just now. But for our six default points, we would only be one point ahead of Accies and two ahead of Ross County, albeit with games in hand. That is as much of a concern as the fact that our top league goalscorer after 15 games is Mark O’Hara on 3 (2 penalties). I’ll be happy when Carson, Carroll and Donnelly are back, but I think it’ll take more than those three to save our season.

As much as I’ll always remember primarily the goal that @Busta Nut mentions above, he also hit possibly the worst ever penalty I’ve seen Motherwell take v Hearts. Fortunately, we still won but I don’t think pens were the big man’s forté!

In more recent years for Motherwell: Craig Reid signed for us in March after leaving Morton in January for expenses and bonuses and looked every inch the lower league journeyman, but somehow earned himself a two-year deal on proper wages with this sclaff that earned us second place. Kallum Higginbotham signed for us on loan in January ‘13 and was rather unlucky that the second coming of Faddy came just as he was settling in. The only thing of note he did was this sublime overhead kick. He ended up back the following season playing against us for Partick and after scoring twice to put them 3-2 up, he ran down the length of the east stand giving it the was great to see the egg on his face when McManus made it 4-3 late on

I think it exists at all levels in fairness. We've even had the likes of Hutchy, Page, Saunders, Hetherington, Cummins, ZFA, MacIver off the top of my head on those kind of terms.

I think "pining" is twisting my words somewhat, just a tad hyperbolic. I said that I thought his time was up when he left. I don't think Elliott Frear was good enough, as is reflected by him having to return to Forest Green, followed by warming Hearts bench in the Championship. My gripe is that I had aspirations of us perhaps replacing him with someone better and I'm lamenting the fact that things haven't got better there since he left. I don't think you could really say that any of Hylton, Seedorf, Ilic or Hastie have been a marked upgrade. In fairness, I do think Aarons looked like he was coming on to a game before his 'Well career was cut short a month in.

Not the best performance at all yesterday. I’m really not sure that I rate Lang. He’s not particularly quick, he’s not tricky, doesn’t seem to have many shots or crosses into the box. I’m just actually not sure what his role is? Add to that White, Seedorf, Hastie and Long have been ineffectual and the jury is still out on Cole to an extent. I think Watt has been decent and I like him, but I don’t think he can carry the burden of being the only forward coming close to performing. If I think back to any other season where we’ve struggled, our top league goalscorer on December 6th has always been a bit better than someone on 3 goals, 2 of which are penalties. I don’t believe we’ll be in a relegation fight, but mainly thanks to Hamilton, St. Mirren and Ross County all being worse than us and those nice six points we got last week. This has hints of the 18/19 season, where we ripped it up in January and went for the plan C of total football once Plan B of McCormack failed. I hope we have room for manoeuvre in terms of incomings and outgoings in January. We just have a big group of bang average players. The thing that does concern me is that under Robinson, there’s been so many players who have left us which I’ve agreed with their departure, but we haven’t replaced with better options since. Did I think Tait and Hartley’s best days were behind them last season? Yes. Would I have played them both regularly over the options we do have this season? Also yes. Was I sad to see either Frear or Cadden go? No. Have we signed a better winger since? Also, arguably no. On the group chat I have on WhatsApp with ‘Well fans, we were going through Robinson’s signings on Saturday night and there is some amount of sub-standard players in there. Is that just the nature of the beast? Do all other clubs around our size’s fans feel the same? Or are we actually quite bad at recruitment?

I think looking back on it, Dubourdeau's best attribute was simply not being Stevie Woods. A pretty similar situation to what we have with Mugabi and Lamie just now. Although, 18 years later, he still holds the record of the last person to be MOTM in a Motherwell league win over Rangers.

I guess you'll probably have a different outcome if you judge him as a Motherwell centre-half, than you would a former Scotland captain with 3 titles and Champion's League experience. I think I was just excited about the prospect of us having the latter on our books for once. It's the whole expectation/reality thing at the end of the day. Don't get me wrong, we've had far worse than McManus and plenty of them too, but, for example, I imagine when they retire on paper Stephen McManus' career on paper will look far better on paper than Tom Aldred's, but I know which one I preferred for Motherwell.

Tbf, I'm absolutely fine with that. It makes the rare result you get against them even sweeter when the local glory hunters froth at the mouth about how much they hate you.

Hate to destroy your illusions, although I've not got a Wolfetones CD collection, I am probably just what you describe. A catholic from Wishaw, who has had a season ticket at Motherwell since I was seven. Both my grandfathers were big Celtic men, but fortunately with my Dad being one of seven growing up in the 50s/60s, my Granda would hardly have been able to afford to take all of his kids to Celtic Park on a Saturday, so my dad, his brother and sister used their pocket money to go to Fir Park. My Dad and my Aunt now have their concession season tickets together still after all these years. I knew from an early age that I was a Motherwell fan and despite going to both a primary and high school that was 99% supported by Celtic, I never even came close to bowing to peer pressure. I think the thing that was different from me and the rest of the people at school was that I actually went to the football with my Dad, whereas all the Celtic fans knew football only as a TV show. The first season I had a season ticket was 1997/98, so whilst most of my classmates were celebrating "stopping the ten" from their armchairs, I still got a bit of one-upmanship by the fact that I actually attended our games in the flesh. Even at high school, Motherwell fans were rare exceptions. I think I can only count myself and two others from my year at school off the top of my head and there was only a scattering across the school as a whole. I was mascot for Motherwell when I was 8 with a guy a couple of years above me, who now claims to have always been a big Celtic man. I do take great joy in forwarding the photos to his mates when the periodic request comes in. From those I know who went to school in Motherwell itself, rather than Wishaw, there appears to be more 'Well fans than in Wishaw, but still there's an overwhelming majority to the Old Firm. I think there are quite a few teams like Motherwell, Kilmarnock and St. Mirren who do really suffer from being a commutable distance from Celtic Park and Ibrox. One thing I will say that I absolutely hate is when Celtic or Rangers fans say to me "I support Celtic/Rangers, but I do look out for Motherwell as they're the local team". Either support us, or f**k off mate.

I was buzzing when we signed McManus. Before he came to us, any time I seen him for Celtic and Scotland, I thought he looked like a good proper defender, a good leader and a threat from set pieces. However, he must be right up there with signings I've got excited about that didn't work out that well. Despite the obvious highlights like the goal at Ibrox and the winner against Thistle, it just almost seemed that whether directly or indirectly his fault, he played in Motherwell teams which badly leaked goals. I guess that you have to sympathise with him to a degree that after Hutchy left, his partners at the back were underwhelming at best and he didn't exactly play with a top-class goalkeeper, but still the stats don't look well upon him. His four seasons for us: 13/14: League position 2nd, Goals Conceded 60 (8th in league) 14/15: League position 11th, Goals Conceded 63 (Joint 10th/11th in league) 15/16: League position 5th, Goals Conceded 63 (Joint 9th/10th in the league) 16/17: League position 9th, Goals Conceded 69 (11th in the league)

I think Carl McHugh should have accepted the fact that he was a defender, he was far better there than in midfield. I think the undoing of him was probably the fact that while he was strong but not technical and Bigi was technical but not strong, in came Alex Rodriguez-Gorrin who was both.

I'd probably put in shouts for Tom Aldred and Andy Rose too (when he was fit)

I'm actually fairly pleased with our midfield. Been happy enough with Maguire and Crawford coming into cover when they have. It's defence and in forward areas I have my concerns. Hopefully, when Carroll is fit we can manage to get Lamie and Mugabi on the bench. No harm to the guys as they're clearly trying their hardest, but they're just not cutting it. Neither of our wingers (Hastie or Seedorf) are particularly cutting it and it seems that with the exception of White, all of our strikers fit the bill of a "second striker" which isn't great when you play a 4-3-3 and it doesn't look like White is good enough to partner any of the other options. The team the way it is just now wouldn't have any threat of relegation for me, but I'd be trying to get as many points as possible on the board this side of Christmas incase we do see Gallagher, Campbell and SOD depart in January.

The only change that I would make to that would be Dec in the middle and O’Hara right centre half.