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Poor Tony . Alexander was that bad a manager that he had to start focussing on his football and scoring a few goals to get away from Fir Park.

It strikes me that, the way GA deals with the media doesnt do him any favours. He never reveals any information about injuries, and he never criticises the players individually in public or gives the media any bones to chew on. I totally respect his discipline in doing so, as he clearly feels he needs to do everything in his power to deny the opposition any advantage and to try and extract some advantage for our team. However, as a fan, I find it very frustrating as I feel a lot of our support would cut him more slack if they knew some of the issues he is having to deal with behind the scenes. As for the game, I thought we were competitive first half and played a bit more football in midfield than normal, with Slattery and Shaw showing a bit more quality in that area than we have seen of late. It was interesting in the post match interview that GA felt the need to say he would trade that for the 3 points. As much of an insight into his own thought process and tactics as we have had from him. The Kelly booking is just so typical of Scottish refereeing. Totally pedantic and unecessary when a word would have done. The first goal is a collective clusterf#ck with no one taking responsibility to clear the ball but all getting dragged towards it leaving Halliday totally unmarked. Goss looked most culpable as he had the best chance to boot it away, but in truth its badly defended as a team. I thought the turning point was Maguire going off injured. He gave a solidity that allowed Slattery and Shaw to go play, which disappeared when Goss came on. This is Maguires value to the team imho. 2nd half our press wasnt as effective and Hearts had more of the play. I still felt we looked dangerous on the counter and it would have been interesting to see how Hearts woud have responded if we could have equalised. The 2nd goal and the one that should gave resulted in a 3rd that was cleared off the line was again collectively bad defending albeit it exposed some individuals more than others. In short, we did a lot of good things, but we still have a lot to work on and Hearts still look closer to the finished article than we do at the moment.

Remember that there was a real problem before with those very same senior pros influencing things above SR and control needed to be re-established in the dressing room. I think some like Gallagher, Polworth and posiibly Watt being examples of that.

We have in players like White, Watt, Main, Danny Johnstone, Shields and I’m sure we’re still looking for the next one but on our wages it must be a nightmare. I can pretty much guarantee we’ve offered a few players a contract to join us and the’ve chosen to go elsewhere. If it’s that easy to sign a proven goalscorer why has every club in the top flight not got one ? White went to Ross County, Main to Aberdeen then St Mirren, Johnstone to Dundee. All players rated as not good enough while with us. Shields is on a 3 year contract and he’s going to need more game time unless we’re already giving up on him which would be a huge waste of money. End of the day though we get one or two poor results and we then get the usual over reaction, we’ve suddenly become an awful team with hardly a decent player at the club. We’re 4th in the league and have had a very successful last 12 months, it’s Motherwell and even as someone that’s not supported the club for decades I believe it’s always been one step forward and one back. If we could suddenly double the home support I’m sure we could sign more consistent players and maybe retain the good one for a while longer but the reality is with have a core home support of 4000 and until that changes we will keep losing the likes of Watt to clubs paying more money.

The window never just ends. It 'slams shut'.

Nah Murphy's not for me.

I'd have been OK with Aaron Ramsey

I agree with that. The manager is in charge. If he lets players undermine him, he is toast. Looks like GA isnt gonna let that happen to him.