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Folly!

Think that was a few years later. Their owner gave him a glowing reference: “He is an out-of-control womaniser, an Irishman without rules. He is someone who disappears for a week and goes on the hunt for women in Milan. “He has two families with six children, he never trains, he’s completely off the rails. On the field he’s a great player, because he gave us everything he had and more. “In terms of his behaviour, however, he is uncontrollable. My coach told me he cannot sort this player out, so he has to go.” Sounds like Lafferty was lucky to dodge a bullet.

AGM was online last night. It took me a bit to login so not sure what I missed at the start but basically all the board, secretary, (accountants possibly) and Graham Alexander were all present. As ever an informative hour or so the contents of which I'll try to sum up. The main thing as ever was finance. Several questions were submitted by shareholders beforehand and Jim McMahon lead straight into it and referred back to it several times. Key things were that the the current situation is currently manageable in the medium term. There is an insurance claim in and the club have applied to take advantage of the Government's 20 year interest free loan of up to £1.6m (they reckoned 11 of the 12 clubs had) so with these things to be confirmed, they couldn't be certain of how things would look this time next year, but are sure that as long as we aren't relegated and even without fans in the ground there would be cash in the bank come the end of next season regardless. The question of the robustness of the club should the worst happen and we are relegated was discussed and whilst nobody wants this they clearly have to plan for such eventualities and the phrase used was the club would "get through it". The view is the club is in a significantly stronger position to deal with it now than it would have been 5 or 6 years ago. The club haven't taken/accepted any monies from the Well Society this year or last in an effort to allow the WS to build up towards the previously stated £1.5m fund that would play a significant part in helping the club through any traumatic event such as relegation. In addition contracts are structured in such a fashion that costs can be taken of the business quickly. No regrets from the board about the Season Ticket offer of committing to the 19 games as it was the correct thing to do. They envisage more details about what will happen next season in around a month to six weeks. Staying at Fir Park is not off the table. Happy they have been able to undertake some significant modernisation and upgrading of parts of Fir Park e.g. replacement of Hunter stand seats, paintwork. Will work on contactless entry and perhaps in time and re-design of the entry points to the Hunter stand. Some brief chat about contracts stemming from a question on Declan Gallagher. View from one board member was that in general terms specifics of contracts that appear in the media should largely be taken with a pinch of salt. They did however say they have made offers to Declan but he is currently keeping his options open. On a wider point they acknowledged that it is difficult to tie down players to extended contracts with agents advising players to let them run down to consider options. The flip side to this is that get it wrong and you may find players locked into deals that are unsuitable for both (e.g. Casper Sloth). On training facilities there appears a change in thinking in that seeking to enhance what they have at Dalziel Park is likely to be more cost effective and beneficial than a new development. Plans are ongoing with a sub-group of board members and reps from Dalziel to achieve this aim at some point in the future. Could potentially see the club be an anchor tenant and based there day to day but there is an acknowledgement that what is there at Dalziel is the envy of others already and would benefit all if that could be built upon. Graham Alexander "took the floor" once the board had answered the submitted questions and spoke well, and at some length, about him taking the job, his first weeks in charge and his hopes for the future. He spoke of his and his families excitement to re-locating Scotland to be fully committed to the job. He had a gut feeling when applying for the job and when talking to the board that this was a challenge he wanted to take on. He spoke of the warm welcome given to him by all within the club and the good people he had found. He mentioned his disappointment as not having been able to interact with fans but expressed gratitude for the welcome from supporters who had sent warm wishes, letters etc. He is keen to meet fans when the time comes. He said he found a squad of players naturally somewhat dejected on the back of previous results and offered credit to all players and staff for a great attitude and how they have turned that around. A lot of work has been done but still much work to do and nobody can relax. He complemented many behind the scenes for the support in helping him implement changes and made the observation that small improvements that on their own might not seem much combined had helped things improve. He stated he had a positive outlook and preferred to focus on the positives of what he had in a team rather than concentrate on the negatives. He feels he has a way of working that brings clarity to the players about the plan they have to follow, based on his experiences as a player. The initial aim is obviously to keep the club in the division then look to add quality to the squad. He envisages working with a smaller squad than that currently. He has aspirations to see us take on and compete with bigger clubs in the division, for his team to have the drive and ambition to compete consistently. He is learning of the challenges that face a club like Motherwell but wants to see us change historical patterns and not to take a step back against anyone (the inference being the two recent Old Firm games). He wants to change the mentally of how we approach such games and create an environment where players all buy into that mindset.

The manager said "up until the first goal there wasn't much in it". That is an absolutely ridiculous comment. The first goal was at 7 minutes. I turned it off after the third goal. What a waste of 12 quid at a time when like everyone I'm scraping the barrel. The squad will be fine. They'll go home, chill and roll into training next week. Then move onto new clubs or jobs while leaving our club in a mess feeling nothing because they are nothing but a spineless shower. Not seeing anyone in the squad who truly has this club at heart at the moment. In past years we had the Lasleys, Craigans and Hammells of this world to name a few who so clearly loved this club. There is noone in this team who I get that vibe from and it shows. Even down to 10 men I'd expect more. There is a batch of individuals at this club who need to go. Managers are hounded out, why can't players be run out the same...?

Faster than Mbappe. Slower than Scott McMann.

What’s the streaming equivalent of throwing your season ticket on the park? Losing your login password and not re-setting it?

Scottish football in a nutshell. Against Celtic thats a free kick. Against Accies a penalty.

The was never a penalty

Least of our problems, I know, but McGloire doesn't look up to much...

I'm not having this nonsense of " oh they had a game in midweek". Tennis players play 2 or 3 hours at a time on their own, and if they win they get to play again the next day. They're professional sportsmen

Jim Goodwin wants players who dive to win penalties to be named and shamed: - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56046465 I'll start off then Jim, Lee Erwin. Funnily enough on that occasion you 'heard' him being fouled.

State of play shows its in our hands. We still ahead of killie. Ross county and hammer throwers! Lets do this! Playing most of game with 10 men not reflecting true game. When we see these plastic fraud monkeys relegated. I will be happy. 5 nil to well on next derby! I remember super moult header beat them. Come on ye well!

Where to begin... I didn't see it coming. Results of late have been half decent, even with the much maligned central defensive pairing of Mugabi and Lamie. Performances have been half decent (in spells of games at least). The noises beforehand seemed to strike the right note of being confident but appreciative of the fixture and what it has generally entailed. I felt positive we could keep things going. Firstly the start. Again, another lacklustre opening. This time there would be no opportunity provided by the opposition to build our way into the game. Three goals and a man down, the game finished before most of them looked like they'd brushed away the sleep from their eyes. Ridiculously bad. The first was bad enough but for a player who has played however many times for his country, who has been handed the armband in a fairly obvious attempt at tempting him with a long term contract Stephen O'Donnell has an incredible lack of awareness at times. From that shot at Tannadice in injury time to whatever it was he felt he was going to achieve in the box today, Red card, penalty. Out for the next game too. Well played Stephen! And then we wait for the obvious substitution from Alexander to attempt to shore things up and prevent a confidence sapping pummelling. And wait. And wait. And..... fucking hell we're now 3-0 down before we decide to take off one of three strikers moping around the pitch whilst Accies are now cutting through us like a hot knife through butter. It was a ridiculous decision not to react. Take the sting out of the game. Slow their momentum. Who knows you might sneak a goal and then be able to chase it in the latter stage. They are hardly the most attack minded of sides at the best of times. Instead we invited them to kill us off and are now looking back on the end of a potentially confidence sapping hammering. The second half was pretty much a write off. A training exercise for them in trying to pick off a beaten team and for us with debut for Johnston and some messing about with positions. You would have been hard pressed to believe that a derby game this season could be any worse than the pathetic performance over there at New Year, but there you go, Motherwell never cease to amaze. Thee deficiencies and weaknesses in that team, if they had been hidden or disguised in any way in the weeks following Alexander's appointment have been laid bare for all to see. In the longer term that might well be a good thing but for now its concerning how easily and quickly they were again exposed. The faith, belief and confidence that many had built up in Alexander has taken a considerable dent today. This wasn't just a smash and grab. This was an embarrassing hammering. He has a job to raise spirits/kick arses/do whatever he feels requires to be done to ensure that, at least in terms of the period since he took over, today will come to be seen as a blip - a fucking horrible blip, but ultimately a blip. Over to you Graham...

midfield all too similar

A rude awakening and a timely reminder that we are at the wrong end of the table for a reason. Forget about anything else than tenth place from now till the end of the season, and be thankful that there are several sides in our division who are as equally sh*t* as us.

Odonnell is a fuckin liability, couldnt believe all the joy at him resigning

My problem with Polworth is he completely disappears rather than him making mistakes. We've took a hard one today but let's not forget we've won nearly as many matches in the last couple of weeks than we have the whole rest of the season. Honestly, with this group of players, I'd be relatively happy if we take a proper doing every 8th game and win 3.

This is it in a nutshell. Someone is going to have to explain why in our situation we signed umpteen players but emerged from the January window relying on the dross that go us into this mess in the first place. All we have done is increase the wage bill and the physios work.

January's just increased the number of players who are either no better than what we had or unavailable for selection, so we're relying on a team who've just reminded us how we got here in the first place. And reliable is not an adjective you'd use to describe this lot. (Here) we go again.

Anyone who managed to watch that shite to the end.

Why was Magloire yellow carded and Callachan wasn't ?

Cole and Watt certainly haven't let the side down. They are continuing to work hard and produce the only positive moments of the game for Motherwell.

credit to Cole today - worked his socks off all game

Looking at the goals again they all have the same lack of defending. We are not within 5 yards of a Hamilton player for any of the four passes leading up to the first goal. We fail to stop the cross again leading to the penalty, and we have the familiar sight of us marking spaces at the third, just unfortunate that the accies players were in different spaces. What is going on?

Brutal stuff. Accies always treat the game like a derby whereas we always seem to approach the game in first gear. What can you say about the goals, first it looks like it goes under the legs of Mugabi as he try's to block it and for the third it looks like he plays the ball off of the Accies forward, I had hoped we had ironed those errors out but just as you get a bit confident that you're heading in the right direction this happens.

Embarrassing performance so far. I’ve turned the stream off as I couldn’t bare to watch anymore. I’m off for a lie down in a darkened room.

I wish I was in centre of east stand today.....at least I wouldn't be able to see anything

Any questions regarding the long term viability of this team have been answered.

can't understand the value in having 3 up front - no point if we can't get up the park

We never looked up for it from the start,we could have all but ended any talk of automatic relegation today and pushed towards 6th spot and we come out and play like this,fucking scandalous.

This inviting teams onto us and winning everything in our box is working a treat so far.

Allan Campbell getting exposed by the Accies left back.

naw m8 ,,,,,, double jointed hahahahahhaha + a dont eat much

A few weeks ago I'd have asked, at what end? But now the question is, what time did you start?

IF that happens i will eat my own PENIS

boy would deserve it

spot on , i think long has given polworth the " stinkin am better than this attitude T shirt "

Lamie hat-trick and a Mugabi 30 yarder.

possibly correct , polworth will be ragin, serves the prick right

Thanks Andy for taking the time and effort you put in to have this report published here for the overseas fans.

The only vague mention of prospects or youth that I can recall was a reference to the U15 team, I think it was, of which they had high hopes. That this mention came following the discussion about the difficulties of retaining players given the lucrative offers available to them elsewhere perhaps also unwittingly tell the fears that lie there.

The longer I watch the highlights the more I think we thew this match. We're nowhere near any anyone the whole 90. It must be beneficial for us to have them in the league surely. For clarity, i don't believe this hapoened but fs, shite

Aye so there is, he is injured and his wife has just given birth to a son, so probably on paternity leave, real conspiracy material there, ...stop talking shite.

Where's the commentary ?????

Shut the fuck up. We have just taken 9 points in the last 17 days. Clown