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I just don't buy this budget argument. One of my consistant criticisms of Robinson that is he has brought in poor quality fringe players yet not used our own youth players. That in itself is a huge waste of money. Guys like MacLean, Hastie, Maguire, Turnbull, Livingstone, Scott are being paid by the club and in some cases have been ready to step up for two years now but aren't being used when we are also paying to bring in guys like George Newell, Ellis Plummer, Liam Grimshaw, Deimantas Petravicius, Stephen Hendrie, Aaron Taylor-Sinclair, Liam Donnelly, Alex Gorrin, Christian Mbulu .etc, who are hardly ever going to play and don't add anything to our squad when they do (or did). Put together all those wages of all those youth players and all the fringe players brought in (plus agent fees and the other expenses involved in 'free' transfers) and you don't come to the conclusion that our spend on players has been at all financially efficient. We are spending a lot of money on players to virtually no effect on the teams play, so if debt repayment is keeping us down why are we so wasteful with our present player budget? Then you can also point to us having multiples of certain types of players while lacking completely other types of players so there is no balance and a tactical inflexibility inherent to the present squad. If we have approximately 50 paid professional players at the club why is Richard Tait been playing out of position for more than a year? There are huge financial inefficiencies in the way we have built our squad and used our resources so it really doesn't cut it for me to use it as an excuse. Instead of being used to excuse it should be seen as a failure.

We finish in 8th in the SPL/SPFL more often than any other position. We have been relegated from the SPL twice and avoided it twice on technicalities. This season is far more typical than the seasons we finished 2nd or 3rd. Not to say we shouldn't be doing all we can to improve it - just put it into the context of our overall SP(F)L history.

Without a ball being kicked our task is immediately a touch easier given the fact Steven fucking MacLean is no longer with them to score his customary goal against us for them! Sent from my Wileyfox Swift using Tapatalk

The problem now is that Turnbull should have been brought into the team when we were in better form or playing lesser opposition. Now, if we do turn to him, he's being brought in at the worst possible time to introduce a young player. You can't reasonable expect one young player to turn around a team that is massively under performing all across the park, has won 1 league game out of 8 and seems to be in a state of disarray. You need experienced players to guide young players through the game, not the other way round. Guys like Turnbull should have played regularly in the League Cup matches and then been brought off the bench for league matches when there was less pressure on the team. Of course THAT didn't happen because of the short sighted mismanagement of our youth development by someone who's not interested and will only throw in youth in desperation when his own neck is on the line. But it's not all Robinson's fault. The people behind him need a sharp slap to the side of the head as well. It should be part of a Motherwell manager's remit to develop youth. But heaven forbid we have any kind of long term coherent strategy for the club outside of snapping up English non league players, crossing our fingers and hoping two or three coming through the mass import revolving door are good enough to sell on. The people steering the club need to get the finger out. Imagine we'd spent as much time and effort constructing a footballing strategy as we have constructing a social media strategy for a team that's almost unwatchable at present. As for McHugh, having seen the highlights and just how bad the elbow on Gallagher was I think this guy just needs ditched. He should have been sent off at Kilmarnock last week, got away with it, should have been sent off for the elbow, got away with it, and then put in about another 2 or 3 borderline yellows, got away with them, before eventually getting sent off. You can't have someone that stupid on the pitch when you are in our position; then you look at the goals he sold recently at Dundee and against Hearts one of which resulted in a team mate being injured, potentially seriously, but luckily not. You'd think when he put himself out of the game for 6 months with another ridiculous challenge it might have knocked some sense into him. And for Robinson to come out and say it was a soft sending off, well that's just proof that the guys in charge have stopped watching matches and are seeing what they want to see.

He was surely at McDiarmid Park? He would have seen James Forrest scoring four goals making positive runs from midfield. Then he probably checked the MFC Wikipedia page on his phone to see if we have any attacking midfielders.

Just for a little levity and a totally neutral commentary on yesterday’s game. This is the Alba cameraman in the Cooper just before halftime. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My expectations and hopes for yesterday's game were more modest than many on here I suspect. All I was looking for 3 points, irrespective of how we played. Sadly that was way beyond us. As it turned out it was the poorest Well side I've seen for several years. In addition to the long ball, our sole outball was Cadden and of course Livingston knew it. I'm not Frear's biggest fan but I think yesterday was tailor made for him. Maybe he was injured? Livvy could have been 2 or perhaps even 3 up inside the first 10 minutes. Our defence was shambolic with the midfield sitting far too deep. We did recover a bit after the initial period and for a short spell looked like doing something as we scored against the run of play. That bright spell soon disappeared though. For the rest of the first half and all of the second Livvy steamrollered us and pinned us back. I cannot understand how Stephen Robinson could see much in the way of positives. In everything his footballing ethos stands for we came a poor second best. Our off the ball work rate was poor, we were physically bullied and indeed intimidated and we failed to pressurise their defence. Despite the glut of midfield players in the squad they simply didn't show up and almost played in the South Stand, they were that deep in the second half. Overall, I'd give pass marks to Carson, Aldred, Hartley and perhaps Bowman. I wasn't looking for great football just 11 players fighting for the side and getting stuck in but they couldn't even achieve that. We had no Plan A never mind Plan B. The sight of a player, in the second half when we were down to 10 men, shirk two 50/50 challenges, really annoyed me as it did quite a few POD Stand punters. If I'd been SR he would have been hooked PDQ. Charles Dunne's return will help matters but our troubles lie far far deeper than that. Yesterday's failure to win was a huge blow and if we can't pick up full points in our next 2 games then I think SR' coat will be on very, very shoogly nail indeed. The fans will simply not put up with this much longer. I like SR as a person but he is running out time and the goodwill he earned last season, quickly as a manager.