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Hope so, a game in gale force winds is just a lottery

Glad you enjoyed it, me old haricot. Willie (Billy to his family, apparently) was my hero too. Pity I missed Pat Quinn by a year; my brother and all his pals thought he was a genius. They say you should never meet your hero but I did meet Willie and his wife by chance in Glasgow before Covid IIRC, and he was a complete gentleman and his wife graceful, explaining that the 'Well forwards and HBs would work on routines in training and Bobby Ancell would generally leave them to it, once he's picked the team. He had faith in their ability. Some very talented players in that squad, evoking happy memories from a very different era.

A few of my boyhood heroes in that team.

Brilliant!! Oh how i would love my dad to see this. He brought me up with stories of that team, willie Hunter was his idol. I must try and upload photo of him and Willie hunter in main stand when it was being constructed

This is a squad photograph after Ian St John in 1961, and before Pat Quinn (the pre-Iniesta Iniesta) left us for Blackpool, who were an excellent side in those days. Our creaking main stand looks rather fresh in them days.

I think this game will be off on Sunday.

You should have told him a joke....

Arrived today and within 2 hours saw a guy wearing a Motherwell cap, I had to compliment him but didnt give my identity away as didn't want to ruin his holiday 🤣🤣

Do you have a export licence to take that old jokebook with you into another country. Hope you get to watch it on a tv somewhere. 👍

Hope you're taking her somewhere decent this time and not the shit hole you took her to last time 😄

Hearts picking up a few injuries this evening it seems. Don’t wish ill on individuals so knocks that keep 5 or 6 of them out of weekend will do.

Well that's that then. First line on the left, one cross each everyone 😂

That's probably a true assessment of how things stand at the moment. Hopefully some of the players haven't chucked it yet .

Obviously a healthy debate from people thinking he’ll work & people thinking he won’t ( nobody really knows at this point ) im pretty sure nobody would take him if they could rewind to the start of the season knowing what they know now disaster is subjective 5 defeats in a row, knocked out the cup by stenny, players regressing, players looking uninterested, no clear playing style, defensively all over the place….. to me it’s not far away from a disastrous start, can he fix it….maybe if we get scudded off hearts he’ll be under real pressure, if he can produce a performance ( not necessarily a result ) it’ll buy him time hopefully we turn up 🤞

Results are the ultimate barometer, as I said in my first post. But if it looks like he's lost his way entirely, there's a good chance he's gone quicker than he would be if there's a suggestion that he has a plan and it's simply taking time to implement. I'd personally be very shocked if the club removed him before Christmas unless we're a total disaster, which isn't the case at the moment.

In reality it goes with results plenty managers over the years have had great ideas, tried to implement different coaching techniques ( whether ur John Collins at Hibs or ten Haag at man united ) cannot keep losing whether the board like him or not

I think it depends on what the view is within the club. As I mentioned, if the board and management team are seeing a coach whose ideas just haven't quite clicked properly yet, or who has simply had the misfortune of being dealt the result of a mediocre transfer window, but who is still confident, has a coherent plan, and who the players are still fully behind, then I don't think even a few more losses will change that. Sure, fans will react on gut and based on what they see in the 90 minutes, but the board is there to be more analytical and not react emotionally. They have all the information to go on, while we don't. However, if there are signs of things cracking behind the scenes, you'd hope the people in charge would adjust their plans accordingly. I have every faith that they would.

Pragmatic approach - agree with the majority of what you’ve written . im really hoping the arse hasn’t already fallen out of it - other than mcinnes and levein not too many managers got past a 5 straight game losing streak . Some non defeats will have to come along pretty quickly - together with improved performances . Hoping Sunday is one of them

There’s too much to read there 😂 i’ll go with hopefully turns it round ( quickly ) im still of the opinion next 3 are massive for him & if the players look like their behind him

It's all reverse psychology I reckon until the part i get told I'm a terrible comedian! 🤣🤣

For me, I'd use the November international break as a checkpoint, not the point where I'd make a final judgement. Unless things completely collapse and the arse falls out of our season altogether I'd be looking towards Christmas. By then we'll have played around half a league season and he will have had a proper block of normal training weeks rather than the European schedule, travel and recovery that dominated the early part of the season. More importantly, we'll have played a good number of teams twice. That's when I think you can properly judge if the coaching is taking hold. If a team exposed a weakness first time around, have we adapted when we play them again? Are the pressing triggers, spacing, rotations and defensive structure becoming more automatic? Are the same mistakes disappearing? Is he changing things that clearly aren't working? Thirteen games can tell you there are problems. I'm not convinced it's enough to tell you whether a new playing model is going to work. Nineteen or twenty games is a much more realistic sample I'd think. The other thing is that the board and management team will have a far better idea of what's actually going on than we ever will. We see the 90 minutes. They see the training every week, the physical and performance data, how quickly players are understanding what they're being asked to do, how the manager communicates, whether players are responding to him, whether the dressing room is still with him and whether the staff themselves believe the process is moving in the right direction. They'll also be speaking directly to AJ, the coaching staff and senior players. If things look poor on a Saturday but the internal evidence says the team is progressing and the players remain fully bought in, that's an important factor. At the same time, if the results are poor and training is poor, confidence has gone and the dressing room is starting to turn, they'll know that long before we do. That's why I don't think we should try to set some arbitrary "lose X games and sack him" threshold based purely on what we see from the stands. By Christmas, though, the external evidence should also be much clearer. If we're still seeing the same structural problems, poor performances, little tactical development and poor results after half a season, then the transition argument becomes much harder to sustain. Obviously there has to be an emergency brake taken into account as well. If we lose another five or six on the bounce and become detached at the bottom, you don't wait for Christmas for the sake of it. But if we're competitive and picking up enough points to stay out of serious trouble, Christmas is about the point where I'd expect both the internal evidence the board sees and the performances we see to be pointing fairly clearly in one direction or the other. Just my take on it.

C'mon stop mincing yer words what do you really think of our wee Freddie

Well that escalated 🤣

W.T.F are you on ?