MJC

According to Wikipedia, he had a loan spell at Partick Thistle in 2014/15, so has some experience of Scottish Football. I don't remember him though. Good to see us getting our summer transfer business done early doors.

See, this outlook is something that drives me up the wall and all the more so that so many people, often intelligent people, fall for it. It's a very narrow minded outlook that is so prevalent in this part of the world, that if you dislike Celtic then that equates to being pro-Rangers somehow. It's utter nonsense as the two are not mutually exclusive and as I've already said, it comes down to personal experience. To suggest that someone who shows dislike of Celtic is pro Rangers is an example of West of Scotland, Celtic influenced brainwashing. I personally had the opposite experience from yourself growing up when it came to which lot I was surrounded by, given I attended a school where the majority outwith the handful of Motherwell fans supported Celtic and had that shoved in my face regularly. Their attitude was that if you weren't a Celtic fan you must be a Rangers fan and, to this day, I still get 'acquaintances' who support Celtic who can't get their head around someone who is of Catholic background not supporting Celtic/supporting Motherwell. All of that made me immensely dislike them from an early age and my hatred of them has only intensified over time. I hate them for their psuedo-pious, holier than thou stance on everything, their 'politicising' of football, their faux-victim mentality which they use to excuse their supports behaviour and their general arrogance. I will happily belt out "We fucking Hate Celtic" and such like whenever we play them and make no bones of the fact that I hate them far more than Rangers. That is all perfectly reasonable to me, just as it would be perfectly reasonable if someone said the opposite, but the difference is that there is a core of people in this part of the world who frown upon showing an open dislike of Celtic, as to them this is somehow pro-Rangers or even worse, anti-Catholic, which is, to put it mildly, utterly ridiculous.

Of course it isn't, but that doesn't stop some coming out with it, especially online. Anyone who has read forums like this, steelmenonline, FPC over the years will have seen it posted regularly.

There was plenty of 'pretend' Motherwell fans at the home leg of the Playoff too. Yip, it's pretty embarrassing but it's nowhere near the levels that it used to be 10/15/20 years ago. The minter of all minters that whenever it's sung. It was bad enough losing a Cup Final and listening to Celtic fans 'political' party tunes and demonstrations but for some of our fans to come out with that garbage just put the tin lid on it. As I said it's died down alot over time, but back in the 90s and early 00s in that section it, nothing sung or shouted would have surprised you. The most cringeworthy thing I've heard in recent times apart from Flower of Scotland are the chants about Jimmy Savile and paedophile stuff whenever Celtic are in town. Just leave it out ffs! As far as the wider discussion goes, I've yet to meet the Motherwell fan who has a genuine liking for either of the Glasgow clubs, but there are some who through personal experience will, maybe not so much 'prefer' one of them, but definitely find one or the other more or less tolerable than the other or hate one more than the other. I certainly fall into that category and have never made any attempt to hide it, but that doesn't mean that person is more of or less of a Motherwell fan. It's human nature, everyone has their own outlooks and everyone has their own experiences and there is no common ideology when it comes to supporting Motherwell as far as I'm concerned, the only thing common is that you support Motherwell. I therefore never have and never will subscribe to the theory that as a Motherwell fan you must "hate both halves of the Old Firm equally" and in truth I struggle to believe that anyone actually does.

I think there's shades of Paul Slane a decade ago about Hastie here. He bursts into the first team, does well, shows alot of potential but interest from elsewhere has turned his head very quickly. Only time will tell if this is a good move for the player but that's not our concern anymore. Personally though, I wish him luck and am glad it's Rangers and not Celtic that he (looks like) joining.

Good to see us getting business done quickly. We've got a big, big summer ahead and it's important that we make the right signings and from what I've seen of both Gallagher and Polworth, they could both potentially be good acquisitions so long as they are used correctly. Welcome to Fir Park to Liam Polworth.

I think Rangers fans have a bit of 'previous' with Gallagher. He was bamming Morelos and a few other players up earlier in the season after they spat the dummy out and refused to shake hands or something like that. By the looks of those tweets some of them are still struggling to come to terms with it.

The rebuilding job this summer will be every bit as big if not even bigger than Robinson's first summer transfer window in 2017. We will almost certainly be parting company with several first team players and it is absolutely crucial that he gets it right over all, as he and we as a club cannot go a repeat of last summer's shambles. We need a left back, a left sided midfielders,a central midfielder and at least two forwards in. If rumours are to be believed we have already got Declan Gallagher tied up so that will be one defender in, but we'll need at least one more in that position and very possibly a new goalkeeper. The pressure on Robinson is massive this summer.

Despite his poor season, I like Curtis Main and always have done. I've always said that he is the type of forward who isn't an out and out goalscorer but would be a very good foil/partner to one that is. He's cut a very frustrated figure at times this season and his form has suffered as a result and it probably is time he moved on, but I would hate to see him turn out for Aberdeen. His Semi Final performance against the Dons almost a year ago was his finest moment in a Well jersey, he absolutely battered them that day.

As was Gary Kenneth due to his working with Craig Levein. Still, three wrongs don't make a right and it was clear that Reynolds wasn't good enough for that level. I liked him with us and always thought he was a decent player, but to even suggest he was at international level was just wild.

The amount of bewilderment over why Reynolds wasn't picked to play for Scotland was and still is baffling.

Ha! I remember it well, it was Forbes and Paul Slane who were going to be starring for Scotland at the World Cup one day, around the same time as folk proclaiming Jim Gannon as a footballing visionary Messiah for winning a few European games in Airdrie against utter dross. Hastie will not be a Motherwell player next season, unfortunately. I don't know where he'll go but it's pretty obvious he won't be staying with us. For all it would be nice to see him hang around and develop, money talks and he'll go where he gets the best offer. That's how it works and anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves.

Hartley has never been the same player since his injury last year and doesn't partner well with Aldred. I expect he'll be off in the summer along with Main, Hastie, Aldred, Sammon McCormack and Johnson, whom I all expect to move on. This summer will be a massive job to rebuild the squad after last summer's disaster and will be massive for Robinson to get it right because a repeat of summer 2018 for him will see him on borrowed time.

I'm a fan of how it looks, but I just don't understand why we wear it in just about every away match we play. I may be wrong here and feel free to correct me if I am but the only away matches we haven't wore it this season were Aberdeen and Hearts, where there would have been a clear clash with those sides home kits, Dundee away twice and Accies. And if my memory serves me correctly we have only won three league matches whilst wearing it - twice away against St.Mirren and away against St.Johnstone...with the only other win being against Clyde in the Betfred Cup. It's not as if it's a 'lucky' charm as we were told about wearing our away kit in the 2005 League Cup Final, which of course ended in humiliation. Unless there is some sort of contractual agreement in place that insists we wear it on X-amount of times, I really don't get why it's used so often.

Minor gripe and irrelevant I know, but why do we wear our 'away' kit in just about every away match this season? I thought the away kit was only used when there was an obvious colour clash but we seem insistent on wearing it just about every single away match we play. And to add that we've only won something like three times whilst wearing it.

Our handling of their ticket allocation was a really good move by the club and also very significant in that tie. Previous regimes at Motherwell would have been only too happy to give Rangers the full South Stand plus the North and South wings of the POD for that game with us 'needing the money' being the obvious reason given for it. For once though we stood up for ourselves, off the park as well as on it, and ensured a reduced allocation for them and rightly so. It was our home game, a massive one for us and we needed a big, vocal home support behind us, which we got and the reduced Rangers support were barely heard throughout. That was the end of Alan Burrows' first year in his new role and he'd faced alot of criticism, some fair and some unfair, throughout the year, but he did an excellent job handling that situation and really showed Rangers that he and the club weren't going to be pushed around.

The Ibrox leg was massive for us. At the time of the game we hadn't won there for eighteen years that very month and hadn't beaten Rangers in any guise for thirteen years and had lost 2-0 there in League Cup a few years beforehand when they were in the lowest tier of Scottish football. They were a poor side who hadn't been able to finish in the top two of the Championship yet given our record against them and the inferiority complex we had had over them for years then it was hard to see us doing anything that night. But for once we played the team in front of us and not the name 'Rangers' as we had done so often beforehand, especially with McCall in charge of us, and we thoroughly deserved our 3-1 win. Obviously the playoff win was huge for us as it kept us up but psychologically it was significant and massive for us as we played OUR game and didn't turn in the usual subservient Rangers/Ibrox performances and we came out well on top. The fact that McCall was in their dugout just made it all the sweeter, as he played a massive part in us being in the playoffs in the first place and had overseen many a bottle job in big games for us during his time.

When we went 3-0 shortly after half time it was absolutely incredible and I can remember shouting out loud to my brother who was with me "is this really fucking happening here!?!". I was expecting it all to go wrong at any moment and indeed the tension from Ainsworth's miss to put us 4-0 up to the end of that game was unbearable at times. I didn't fully relax and believe we were really winning the tie until the second goal went in at Fir Park on the Sunday, when from then on it was just one big party.

It certainly was a bizarre season and due the significant and hugely enjoyable nature of the playoffs it is often overlooked just how grim it was. From the non-pre-season and the infamous lads jolly to Portugal and the 'footgolf' which was described as a team building exercise, to the utter shambles that was the Stjarnan tie that set the tone for the season. Then we had the demise of Stuart McCall, the appointment of Baraclough and his army of signings including Straker and Nathan Thomas and that awful run from the New Year 0-5 at NDP to late February when it looked for all the world we were going straight down, then a bit of a mini revival before we ended up in the playoffs. I don't think I speak just for myself here when I say that I could not foresee any scenario whatsoever where we would beat Rangers and stay up, let alone how we ended up actually doing it. Those two games have to be the most important and significant victories for us in the last decade and only a Cup win would have eclipsed them in that regard.

That sounds about right but if my memory serves me correctly, had he not won his subsequent appeal then he would have missed the first leg of the playoff, which would have been potentially disastrous for us.

Indeed, though I was just glad that 'Dougie' petered out, as it was just daft especially as Dougie Arnott was a club legend. Some fans even used to chant 'Doou-gaay .. Doou-gaay' at McDonald. Rings a bell certainly. Also loved how Jim Gannon quickly acquired 'Jimbo' after ahout two weeks and nobody knew who he was, but already had 'Jimbo' as the Messiah, and we all know how that turned out. Then we had Brown and Knox who were 'Jack and Victor' until they left for Aberdeen when they just became 'they two auld c***s'.

He did the same when we lost at Saint Mirren in 2015 to condemn us to the playoffs.

McDonald was one of those players who you love if he's in your team but despise if he's playing against you. A real quality player who bagged us plenty of crucial goals and gave me one of my all time favourite days following Motherwell in 2005. He was a defenders nightmare as he was capable of getting something out of nothing, be that a goal or a foul. There were times though I found him frustrating when he was with us, as he was prone to throw a strop if he didn't get the service or pass he wanted and then spend the rest of the game running about with his face tripping him before getting subbed and storming straight up the tunnel. I was mightily pissed off when he openly spoke of his disappointment at missing out on a move to Rangers whilst we were in the middle of a relegation fight and obviously I hated him when he played for Celtic and inevitably scored against us every time he played us. One thing that did piss me off when he first joined was how so many Well fans simply called him 'Dougie' due to his height and build similarities to Dougie Arnott, and that seemed to stick with him for a good while.

Speaking of bad influences at the club and in the dressing room, I've no doubt that McDonald fell into that category, but so did McFadden I think. He was never a team player and whenever he played, especially in his third or fourth return, he always seemed to take centre stage for some reason, even though he was well over the hill by that time. That Scottish Cup tie against Cove Rangers when he came on as a sub and the rest of the team chucked it to try and get him a goal, which he didn't, still annoys me. I also don't think he was well received in his role as player/assistant manager either, but so many at the club were and still are utterly blind to him. Again, Robinson did the right thing by binning him in 2017.

McDonald was a quality player for us, in both spells I might add. A horrible wee nark though and very prone to spitting the dummy out. That whole era irritated me to be honest. He was one of several players to return for a second spell at the club, and in Faddy and Pearson's cases, a third/fourth/umpteenth spell. And of course McGhee was brought back as well. It just wasn't an enjoyable time to support Motherwell, not least because we were pretty shite and awful to watch, but because we had that many wage thiefs in and around the first team and the signing policy was lazy and youth development was non existent. I'll give Robinson his due, he may not be perfect but he moved us away from the 'sign any ex player from ten years ago' policy - with the obvious exception of McCormack - and made some decent signings in summer 2017. It's taken it's time, but of late we've seen just what bringing youth players through and into the first team can do for the team and the club. The support love it too, and that's the way it should be at a club like ours.