on the topic of tickets, seen a few comments along the lines of shambles, fucking joke, bit poor, I think the club have done the right thing here, what else are they supposed to do. You can guarantee the same people, if indeed they had season tickets, missed out on a ticket because there was nothing in place to prevent your average punter picking one up would be raging. Season ticket holders should get first dibs.
Also it's not possible to have not beaten a team in 20 years when they have only existed for 8.
If we refer to them as the same team/entity they were before then they win.
I was saying when I saw the lineup on Saturday that my concern was that I didn't know where a goal would come from. When I saw how the game was panning out, I figured we would only score from a worldy or a set piece. There was little evidence of the guile or movement required to create clear cut opportunities. And so it panned out..
I've been going to Fir Park long enough to have seen us lose countless games like Saturday 1-0. The fact we didn't is a sign that we are at least doing something right. That's five clean sheets in the last eight league games. We've only conceded more than two goals in a game on three occasions this season. Pretty good by Motherwell standards. I bring this up because I've read a few comments that Grimshaw had a poor game on Saturday and that a new right back is required. I would admit that he didn't have his best game against Hibs but even saying that, the mistakes that led to Hibs best chances didn't come from him. He's an easy target, perceived as a midfielder converted to full back. Is he Cafu? No, but he's part of a solid defensive unit and does a job. We've had far worse full backs and will have again...
Here's the old firm league defeats since Rangers got back into the top level in 2016-17.
6 - Kilmarnock
5 - Heart of Midlothian
4 - Aberdeen
3 - Hibernian
2 - Dundee
2 - Livingston
1 - Hamilton
1 - St Johnstone
1 - Inverness
0 - Motherwell
0 - Ross County
0 - St. Mirren
0 - Partick Thistle
With the exception of Kilmarnock, who Steve Clarke did an amazing job with getting rid of the wee club mentality, I think a trend is pretty clear.
With the hindsight of seeing the Aberdeen result yesterday this wasn't too bad a weekend at all. Yeah, an opportunity missed perhaps but another game ticked off whilst Aberdeen and Hibs failed to gain any ground on us isn't bad.
There are also the positives of the game time afforded to the likes of Illic (albeit I still remain to be convinced about what he offers at Premiership level) and the first start for MacIver who didn't look out of place. The experience will have done both a power of good. There were also a series of pretty good displays across the team and even Seedorf managed to get beyond his defender for the first time in a wee while.
On the game I thought we were comfortably the better side and unfortunate not to win. There are days when pretty much everything you hit goes in and then there days like Saturday when every other shot seemed to be blocked when it looked to set to go in.
The second half was both a worry and relatively pleasing at the same time. They had the clear cut chance that seemed to hit the post and go along the line before being hacked clear and one or two other moments where you wondered if the momentum might swing to them and they would capitalise on our failure to get in front, but credit to the team on each of those occasions they wrestled back the initiative on each occasion.
I also thought Robinson got it largely right with his substitutions. You always hope that changes make a positive difference, but as we saw against Hamilton, that doesn't always happen. I thought Robinson got it right between trying to make a change to give Hibs a different problem but not being so overly bold as to leave us wide open chasing a winner.
I've said it before already this season once or twice that I've seen us fail to win games we've played well in, and won games we've not played especially well in, and this was very much one of those.
I forgot to say this at the time but the commentary for our game against Dundee was absolutely fucking abysmal. The main commentator was okay but the guy next to him (was it Billy Dodds?) was horrific to listen to. He could barely string a sentence together. It makes a mockery of our game.
The premiership has Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher with decent insight and a bit of passion. The commentary up here is an absolute joke in comparison and the BBC need to give a fuck and fix it.