Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[AnderooMFC]

15 hours ago, wellboy1991 said:

Absolutely .. there is only one person inside that 6 yard box who can use his hands, allegedly jump higher than the rest, is a protected species and able to go for any ball.

idk. I get your point, yes in Any Other Team it's the keepers to take... BUT we have Kelly. You can't defend thinking your keeper will do all that you said when history and experience tells us that our No.1 will do none of that. People blame Spittal or Paton for Kelly's mistakes because everyone and their granny knew that Kelly wasn't gonna deal with it.

 

13 hours ago, Gianfranco said:

It really annoyed me that we kept going long and high to Bair despite everyone knowing that’s not Theo’s strength and it’s very much Morton’s strength.

Feed The Bair And He Will Score!
Starve The Bair and there's not much he can do tbh.
 

6 hours ago, andrewh said:

Make Theo captain now.

Why? Do you hate him so much to give him this curse??

[capt_oats]

13 hours ago, CoF said:

Youve also got Carl McHugh who, to his credit, could see how the additional responsibility was affecting his game and gave it up. For some players, they could just do without the extra thing to think about - Kelly could be one of them. 

Yeah, I had a feeling I'd missed someone between Lasley and Hartley.

Ironically, despite him giving up the armband the season McHugh had as captain was the 2 Cup Finals.

So it went Lasley, McHugh, Hartley, Gallagher, O'Donnell, Kelly?

[andrewh]

7 hours ago, AnderooMFC said:

Why? Do you hate him so much to give him this curse??

I’m a Saints fan, making a bad joke. How well he seems to be doing is a poor reflection on Davidson. He could have been scoring for us How a player is treated and played counts, as you saw v Morton when it didn’t work. Can’t recall us having a player that the fans wanted and willed to do as well as we did with Theo.

[Well Well]

Now that I have calmed down somewhat I just want the season to end. I hope we keep our top flight status and then see what happens in the summer.

My biggest concern is we don't know who is going to be at the helm guiding the club forward with our chairman and CEO standing down and that's got me a bit concerned.

I don't know where any new finances are coming from as we have what 4 players signed on for next season and possibly a new manager?. 

A lot of unknowns coming in the close season and I truly have no idea how we will move forward. 

[Busta Nut]

Aye, Let's just finish tenth, get it over with and hope everyone is in place for may/june. That's where I am anaw.

[Handsome_Devil]

17 minutes ago, Well Well said:

Now that I have calmed down somewhat I just want the season to end. I hope we keep our top flight status and then see what happens in the summer.

My biggest concern is we don't know who is going to be at the helm guiding the club forward with our chairman and CEO standing down and that's got me a bit concerned.

I don't know where any new finances are coming from as we have what 4 players signed on for next season and possibly a new manager?. 

A lot of unknowns coming in the close season and I truly have no idea how we will move forward. 

Agree the off-field stuff by far the most important. The AGM on the 21st will hopefully give a positive update. Some good news then would certainly give us a boost looking towards next season. Bad news, couched behind whatever reasons/excuses, would certainly create the fear for next year.

Post cup debacle, the sentiment remains this season was all about survival, clearing deadwood and paying off the credit card. We seem to be edging towards that. But tolerating a transition season to something better is very different to being here medium-term because we don't have a CEO, board, direction, investment etc.

[capt_oats]

28 minutes ago, Well Well said:

I don't know where any new finances are coming from as we have what 4 players signed on for next season and possibly a new manager?. 

Others have outlined this better than me in previous pages (in fact @Handsome_Devil's post directly above does exactly that) but the whole point of this season has been to re-set.

Us having fewer players signed up presumably allows whoever the manager is a clean slate compared to recent seasons where our budget has been entirely tied up in the longer term contracts.

We have Casey, Blaney, Halliday, Paton, Zdravkovski, Miller, Tierney and Bair contracted for next season plus Obika has a year option.

Edited February 11 by capt_oats

[Handsome_Devil]

14 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

Us having fewer players signed up presumably allows whoever the manager is a clean slate compared to recent seasons where our budget has been entirely tied up in the longer term contracts.

We have Casey, Blaney, Halliday, Paton, Miller, Tierney and Bair contracted for next season plus Obika has a year option.

I'm really hoping the Obika option is from our side.

I'd keep McGinn and offer Slattery a year. Bizarrely as much as I'd definitely bin SOD the wing-back, I'm not against possibly renewing him as a RCB on a lower wage depending on how he does coming up.

The rest should go though until I see butcher, Mugabi and Kelly departed I'll be nervous about it.

Edit - of our regular players, I mean. Nicholson et al can get their fair chance.

Edited February 11 by Handsome_Devil

[capt_oats]

30 minutes ago, Handsome_Devil said:

I'm really hoping the Obika option is from our side.

I'd keep McGinn and offer Slattery a year. Bizarrely as much as I'd definitely bin SOD the wing-back, I'm not against possibly renewing him as a RCB on a lower wage depending on how he does coming up.

The rest should go though until I see butcher, Mugabi and Kelly departed I'll be nervous about it.

I had missed wee Dave off that list (edited now).

That gives us 8 contracted plus the question mark over Obika. On top of McGinn and SOD who both feel like straightforward renewals if there's a willingness on both sided you've also got Nicholson whose being here has a definite try-before-you-buy feel and the short term deal is probably dictated by the whole 'depends what league we're in' situation.

Either way it all depends on what happens with the CEO and chairman thing because right now it feels like we're essentially stuck in a holding pattern until there's some sort of movement on that front.

The AGM should be interesting because while the updates in January bought them a bit of time I don't really see that not having progressed with that stuff is an acceptable option.

Edited February 11 by capt_oats

[SteelyDosser]

1 hour ago, Well Well said:

Now that I have calmed down somewhat I just want the season to end. I hope we keep our top flight status and then see what happens in the summer.

My biggest concern is we don't know who is going to be at the helm guiding the club forward with our chairman and CEO standing down and that's got me a bit concerned.

I don't know where any new finances are coming from as we have what 4 players signed on for next season and possibly a new manager?. 

A lot of unknowns coming in the close season and I truly have no idea how we will move forward. 

Is it really just 4?

Given we have to wait till we have new chairman and all that, whoever is the manager for next season needs to be appointed ASAP after the heads are appointed in order to rebuild.

[well fan for life]

Dunno about you lot but I'd quite like to have a season where we didn't lurch from one crisis straight into another.

[Well Well]

1 hour ago, SteelyDosser said:

Is it really just 4?

Given we have to wait till we have new chairman and all that, whoever is the manager for next season needs to be appointed ASAP after the heads are appointed in order to rebuild.

Capt_Oats has clarified how many we have still in contract for next season. I also hope we can tempt Nicholson as well but it will all boil down to who is managing us next season

[ropy]

I have been out the loop since before the Killie game and have seen none of the action.  I bang on about a point a game being par so we are slightly above that, all good.  In the cup, the last 8 is par, less than that is a bad run, better than that is a good run.  Decidedly below par this season.

I note the chat about Paton, I thought we had resolved this by leaving him up the park at corners etc, he has previously been guilty of letting his man run off him or simply not marking, keep him away from our goal, it’s not his thing.  I look forward to seeing Kelly flapping at the goal, but remember Kettlewell essentially saying that you don’t drop your keeper.  The Ox didn’t look special in his outings but everyone deserves a chance, surely.

The Aberdeen game will see me in San Juan airport so it will be Tynecastle before I rejoin the fray.

St Johnstone are currently top six.

[ropy]

1 hour ago, ropy said:

 

St Johnstone are currently top six.

Back in their box although I would have taken the draw

[Handsome_Devil]

22 minutes ago, ropy said:

Back in their box although I would have taken the draw

It was amusing to briefly see the side in sixth with the relegation battle form 27 points from 25 games...deary me.

Not upset at Dundee winning. Our chances of scrambling into the top six are virtually zero, no complaints about those below us losing.

Edited February 11 by Handsome_Devil

[Handsome_Devil]

Missed out on a trip to Parkhead in the quarters...so regardless 2024 wouldn't have ended the wait but makes Friday a very expensive screw-up.

[Stevie Kirk]

3 hours ago, Handsome_Devil said:

Missed out on a trip to Parkhead in the quarters...so regardless 2024 wouldn't have ended the wait but makes Friday a very expensive screw-up.

Did Morton not get Hearts ? 

[Handsome_Devil]

5 minutes ago, Stevie Kirk said:

Did Morton not get Hearts ? 

Aye but listed as Greenock alphabetically. We'd have been Livingston's number seven.

[Stevie Kirk]

1 hour ago, Handsome_Devil said:

Aye but listed as Greenock alphabetically. We'd have been Livingston's number seven.

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

I was fortunate enough to have a prior engagement and miss Friday, which probably makes me less angry than most, having not wasted any time on it. I don't think that us losing to lower league opposition is acceptable, but unfortunately it's not that unusual.

Since I started going to see Motherwell in 1997 (ironically in a cup game against lower league opposition, which went to a replay), I've worked out we've failed to beat lower league teams over 90 minutes 28 times in 28 seasons. Of course there are some occurrences of league cup group games over recent years where the games haven't been "knockout", but still. You can obviously chuck in being knocked out of Europe by Sligo and Stjarnan over two legs as well as poor single leg results against Llanelli, Flamurtari and Coleraine which we managed to recover from, if you want to labour the point further. I don't know how that stacks up against other teams, but it seems high to me.

Ineptitude whilst clear favourites in cup ties is far from exclusive to this group of players and staff. Again, I may be speaking out of turn here as I've seen very little of Friday's game, but from what I've read, the post mortem seems to have a lot in common with the post mortem of most of those other 27 matches I mentioned. 

As desperate as I am to see us win a trophy, I've long since stopped thinking that it's something I need concern myself with this season. My two concerns really now are the money lost from a trip to Celtic Park (given all the talk about finances of late) and the effect on the confidence of the team ahead of the run-in.

There is still a bit of me that is content that we had our mare against a lower league club and didn't capitulate against a team around us in the league. We all know where not a great team and we hadn't had a stinker since county away and teams of our ilk do have stinkers now and again. We've made lots of marginal steps forward since then and whilst it's still raw and disappointing, I hope we see it in the context of a game and don't rip it up and start again. I'm not saying I'm against 2 or 3 changes to freshen things up, but sometimes for me, Kettlewell is at his scariest when he's got lots of options to choose from.