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Well, it's quite clear that man who's in charge thinks differently, so there is that.

The thing that always gets me about this type of result is that a team of semi pros can beat a team of full time pros under any circumstances. Whether it be pre season friendlies, cup games, euro ties, there should be an unassailable gulf in class between the sides yet so often there is not. Our second 11 should be better than Stenhousemuir. Squad rotation should be a viable option. As AJ said himself we are talking about elite sport, elite athletes. To put that into some context, in athletics, would an excellent club runner training 10+ hours a week have a chance of beating full time athlete Josh Kerr in the 1500m? Never in a million years. In football you have 11 full time athletes against 11 (in the case of Stenhousemuir) semi professionals mixing other commitments with their football preparation. The advantage to Motherwell should be multiplied by a factor of 11. It should be a very unfair advantage. The truth is that Stenhousemuir have more chance of beating us that we do of beating Frieburg. The gap between two pro teams is often bigger than the gap between pro and semi pro. I get that every so often freak results happen but that performance today is a concern.

And cup wins come along every other year FFS 🤦‍♂️.

Still been a great start from AJ and I would expect players would aee different side to him today. Let's remember that JBA was brilliant but in both cup competitions was poor. Once injury list clears and we get a few more in i think we will be just fine

Matty did nothing wrong.

I am raging also we are out but can fully understand where AJ was coming from. Plus hearts don't have 7 players out injured

Yes I am raging we got put out. And Hearts could also struggle on that awful pitch. But I would expect Hearts to treat the tie with more respect and field their strongest side or at least not drop eight first team starters. Plus they have better players than we do. It’s all academic now for us. Yet again we have let ourselves down in a winnable domestic cup tie.

Pitch chats awful its a shit park, it is what it is but it’s not the reason we got beat today will give credit to the boy Ross, not the level but at the end he signed a couple of kids tops etc ( I think ) & tbf to the fans nobody really took abuse for performance levels during the game ( more than fair to question it after it )

So you are raging we are put out have also said hearts could struggle on that awful pitch? I think pitch had big impact today. If grass we would have won

I watched today's highlights and taken together with the Helsinki game last Thursday, I'm concerned that we seem to be very vulnerable down the 2 flanks.

I havent seen the highlights and personally i dont want to. My point might erk a few people lol. But to knocked out today yeah its a bitter pill to take but i dont care for this cup you get 400k for winning the trophy. We can expected 1.2 mill euros for playing 2 games against frieburg 3 times the amount of money for winning that cup.. In all we should be easily id said 2 million pound for 6 games in europe. Which again is 5 times the money of that cup. We could have put out the under 19s today my focus is on thursday and next thursday can we upset the apple cart who knows but if we do we can count some good hard cash in the club

We're now several games into the new season and its clear that the squad has deficiencies. The good news is that we have to rectify them. We desperately need another attacking midfielder and striker. Maybe another left back if Longelo moves on. Loan move for Mikey Booth and maybe Ewan Wilson, if he can't be offloaded. I wouldn't lose any sleep if RCC found a new club as he's just not doing the business. We almost have a strong enough strating 11 but the fringe players are not impressing.

But Rangers and Celtic drew each other so one of them won’t be in the semis. Hibs have to go to Ross County and Hearts have Stenhousemuir on that awful pitch. Both of them will probably progress but you never know. And Killie and Aberdeen drew each other so one of them will be gone too. Us winning the competition was always a long shot but to whimper out in the last 16 against a lower league side is a real sore one.

Very true. Despite assurances from the top to the contrary, JBA's departure caused huge disruption and that has hit us very hard. I should have it said it before but congratulations to Stenny. It was their cup final and they wanted and very badly to win it. It was their day in the sun and good luck to them. Its unlikely they will repeat it.

You pick a team to win a game we’ve got no divine right to beat stenhousemuir & results like that can happen….it’s the way it happened though we offered absolutely zero for 120 minutes & that’s the issue….people are looking it as a league cup or Europe….we should have been good enough regardless to cause them problems

Some good points being on here and on P &B. I understand the problems the manager is facing and expected a degree of squad rotation but today was just too extreme. When I saw the starting line up I expected a very difficult tie on a poor surface. In short AJ, and his management team, took a huge gamble and it backfired. We treated Stenny with disrespect and it cost us. Now AJ and his management team may have learnt some lessons today, but I have to ask did his assistant manager and coaches, who knew our youngsters very well, not advise him beforehand? The likes of Mikey Booth is clearly not ready for first team football and thats been apparent this season already. He's been hung out to dry. Luca Ross and Ewan Wilson are probably League One or Two standard and are not going to make it. Again who has been advising AJ? Most on here could have told him that weeks ago. In short we may have a strong starting 11, almost, but the fringe players are just not cutting it for various reasons. Hopefully a few will leave, either permanently or on loan, as soon as Freiburg knock us out of the Conference League. Hopefully AJ has learnt a hard lesson that domestic Cups are important to Scots fans and he won't repeat today's mistakes.

Much of this debate is about either or. It's both - if we beat freiburg over two legs we would recognise this as one of the best results in our history. Now to do both, he should have played the best players from the start and tried to put the game to bed. Many had to play 45 mins anyway in one form or another. So it's not worked in any shape or form. The way we play we need a lot of legs and forward thinking from our full backs as standard. Strikers need supply and we were never going to get that today. It's way to early for Booth, he's neat but creates little impact. I'm really disappointed in RCC overall. I think I am done, waiting on the transformation.

I do not believe at all there is any bad reaction at all to todays result . Everyone who is supporting Alfred and all the players still will be on Thursday night , that is guaranteed My personal take I wanted to see us get to Hampden , and win any cup . Other fans will say it is more important to win and get through in Europe Nobody is right or wrong , I want to win every game me personally , don't believe any genuine Well fan doesn't 💯

I have no qualms over the starting lineup today. With Williams, Sparrow and now Oscar on the injury list, we need to tread carefully. The bigger concern for me is how far we are away from last season’s approach. The performance against Helsinki was outstanding and everyone played really well. However, i didn’t quite buy into the narrative that we are playing total football. We are pragmatic and often direct. I don’t necessarily mind that, particularly if there is quality in the final third, but the surreal days of us controlling the majority of games were a 2025/26 phenomenon.

Well judging by your match predictions we were never winning the league cup anyway 🤪🤪

Today highlighted how thin the squad is. For me this should have been addressed sooner so we could rotate better. But it can be hard to sign the right players quickly. As for the Europe versus League Cup. Eh Euro run every day of the week for me. They only come along once in a while. So best to savour it. One thing from the game. Why as Luca Ross kept on. He was nursing a hamstring injury and spewed twice yet played on. Seemed an odd decision. Finslly well done Stenny, thought they were superb today.

Yep, me too but lets be honest, that came out of nowhere a bit too, so you never know. That was back when it was 11 Scots v 11 Scots mostly , the Glasgow crowd have got it so sewn up now. Maybe last year was our chance , you've got me agreeing with you now but Jens didn't do much wrong. Swings and roundabouts innit.?

Every club is a selling club but the players have to be good enough..no way we could've held onto just , watt or slattery they were too good. However we need money to tempt these guys in first place. This Euro run will get us a few bodies in, im sure. Anyway here's hoping for better run in Scottish Cup, might not be as congested a period in January and players back

We've ~1m in the bank from Europe this season anyway. Stenhousemuir was an eminently winnable tie. Freiburg is in essence a bonus tie which, taking off C&A specs, is practically insurmountable over 2 legs. Obviously we all hope for the best, but you need to be realistic. Its akin to Hearts beating Benfica over 2 legs.

I’ll be forever grateful that 1991 happened in my lifetime because I just don’t see us ever winning silverware ever again.