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At end of day we all love our club which we can all agree on. We all express our views differently. Basically come 5.00 tomorrow we all want to be happy chappies and chappesses and celebrate a win. It's been a hard slog this season but we need to be together ...but staff and players need to up their game also. COYW

The overall quality of players signed has deteriorated in the last five or six years in my view, the likes of Scott McDonald was technically better than anything we have now, Aldred and Hartley at the back again a different level. If I look back player by player in each position there is no comparison, Christ I would have Ryan Bowman back. St Mirren have half a team of our former players that are better than the ones we replaced them with and have our former manager who knows the level, I can’t believe their playing budget is that much higher than ours. Add in the wrong managerial appointments and it’s been a step too far.

Sadly, yes. Unless there's an outstanding candidate out there who for some reason isn't working, and would be affordable, I don't see the point in binning Hammell. With our current financial situation I could see someone like Kettlewell being given the job, and I don't see the point in replacing one manager who has had less than six months in the job and a sub-30% win rate with a manager who had less than six months in the Ross County job before being bumped when they were four points adrift and had a sub-30% win rate. I've seen so many ludicrous suggestions over the past few days from fans, ranging from bringing in an 82 year old Craig Brown or Craig Levein, to basically telling Hammell that he's shit at his job by forcing him to accept a new number two who's more experienced. It's an absolute shitshow, but we are where we are because of the decisions made, and we need to live with them now. I've constantly said that binning any manager literally days before the new league campaign kicked off was absolute madness, but that's what we did. The only thing that would match that would be bringing in his replacement, letting him approve seven January signings, then sacking him right after that. What we need to do now is stick with the plan. Hammell has been backed in the window. His new signings will need time to get up to speed, which may be time we don't have, but that's just how it is. We now live or die by the decision to appoint him. What I'd also say is that there is virtually no time in football history where appointing three different managers in one season has seen success follow. That usually brings issues of its own, and at that point you're sliding from a club having a bad season to a club that is moving into basket case territory. That kind of volatility in the board room can have a knock-on effect on which players and managers we can attract in future. We already saw one player come in on the basis that Alexander was his manager and his career basically grind to a halt. Do we want another manager to come in who possibly doesn't fancy some of the new signings we've made and a similar thing to happen? Nah, we need to stay the course now. We've appointed Hammell, we've made moves in the window. Now we need to let it play out.

Losing to St Johnstone in midweek was a morale hammer blow. I’m looking at the state of the club and I can’t believe the state we are in. For the last decade or so I’ve proudly claimed we were the best run wee club in the UK. We punched above our weight in league and cup competitions, we developed great young talent and we fought against our financial limitations to build and rebuild sides season after season to compete. We always seemed to be a place players would thrive, when they left they were a much better version of the player that arrived and we’d benefit from their development. Off the pitch our social media and fan/community interactions were head and shoulders above any other side. We had club blood running though every aspect of the club and in Alan Burrows we had what every football fan in the world wants, their club ran by one of us. Not just one of us but a Well fan who also happened to be a fantastic Chief Exec. Now the club is unrecognisable to me. On the pitch no one is thriving, players are all getting worse it’s most obvious when we bring in a new addition. Matt Penney for example, he came in and was levels above, won consecutive POTMs but before he left his form had slumped. Same with McGinn, he came in and was a breath of fresh air but he’s a shadow of the player he was 4-5 months ago. Even Kelly, whom I firmly believe is the best Scottish Goalkeeper, has gone from making world class saves several times a game to the wet paper bag that conceded the second against St Johnstone and the near post shocker against St Mirren. Who’s working hard? Who’s fighting for us or for the manager? Off the pitch Alan’s stepping down. I’m honestly heartbroken he’s going. No one has done more for our club than Alan in my lifetime. We don’t know why he’s going. I hope it’s because he’s got a massive job offer somewhere but it could be because he doesn’t want to do it anymore, that would kill me. The only way is down from here, we’ll never find another Alan Burrows. As for our social media/comms we’ve gone from fully engaged with our fan base to KGB levels of secrecy and silence. Even basic information is withheld now. We don’t hear about how long injured players are out for. I went weeks checking team sheets looking for Moult to come back from injury only to find out from Twitter that he was back with Burton. There’s nothing in the pre and post match media, it could literally be the same videos every week. Contrast this period with the month or so before Robbo resigned. Robbo was a broken man, he was killing himself to turn it round and was demented that it wasn’t happening. What do we see from Hammy? He’s ‘disappointed’ and he’s got an itchy forehead. This is the time we need to hear things like he’s given them a bollocking, that he’s going to make changes to the starting 11 or tactics. That they are having them in on their day off for extra training, fucking anything at this point. everything feels like it’s falling apart and I can’t see how we get out of this. Col

A defender. Is it too much to hope he’s a centre half?

As Ive said before. I dont doubt his ability, and whilst we had no alternative replacement, it would have been madness to take our only goal threat out of the team. Maybe Im being harsh, and maybe he deserves another chance to show what he can do with someone alongside him, but Id be making it very clear what was expected and challenge him to show me the player that we saw in his first game against Hibs. He's by no means the only one who falls into that category, but he is the most visible culprit due to his body language.

No I wouldnt. As a senior professional, I would be leading by example, running my ass off, putting myself about and shouting encouragement at my team mates, telling them exactly what was required. Not throwing my arms in the air and blaming everyone for not being as good as me.

Exactly Obika winning the balls and KVV kicking them in the net we can all dream lol. 100 percent two up front for me all the forward options we have.

I agree his ability can't be doubted or the goals, it's the body language and lack of effort at times which on wed was evident. But I said on an earlier post, stick obika up front with him and we hopefully see a different beast. Let's do this

That's a really good point, so for all sorts of reasons , a big performance is required tomorrow

Thought it was a bit of a strange comment, does he mean the players haven’t been backing him until they had a chat, the performance mid week tells you our players/ set up is shit, or they are not buying into him 🤷🏻‍♂️

I still think holding on to Hammel and allowing him to sign seven players was a mistake, he should have gone after the Hibs game.

We are wearing our bright o light kit tomorrow and Aberdeen are also playing in a one off charity kit. Anyway it's a case of the two charity cases, Hibs, St Mirren and St Johnstone were all on terrible runs, but we have gift wrapped victories for each. We have missed out on pulling away from Killie when they had a double header against the Old Firm and midweek we could have brought St Johnstone back into the relegation mix but again we put in the poorest performance I can remember in recent times. These wee scenarios have kept presenting themselves but we keep blowing it, I suspect tomorrow will be no different. Wednesday was a watershed moment, while we can argue new additions still need time to bed in, it is still massively concerning the performance that was put in. Apathy has set in for me, decided to give this a miss.

I agree with most of that. But we need to see improvement from both Hammy and the team. If he gets his new players on the field and they are given time to bed in and there is no improvement, or even worse they do an Aberdeen and down tools and throw him under the bus, then unfortunately the board cant just stand by and watch the inevitible happen without trying everything in their power to avoid relegation. Lets hope that it doesnt come to that though, because I do agree changing manager again is likely to have a poor chance of success.

That is interesting and would explain a lot on the SOD front. Just goes to show how much speculation occurs on message boards without knowing the full facts. Its the kind of thing we would have known 2/3 years ago, but fhe clubs position on these things has clearly changed and that has been covered elsewhere. Given McGinn had been tried there previously and hadnt looked comfortable and our only other option was a new signing who had just walked in the door, the decision to play SOD on Wednesday might have made sense from Hammys perspective, however, I wouldnt expect to see it again on Saturday.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/local-sport/motherwell-boss-steven-hammell-held-29124046 fair play to Hammy and the club, this is exactly the type of comment I was hoping to see. I want to see the team fight for the win like their lives depend on it. If we don’t see that we know the players just won’t do it for Hammy.

I spoke to SOD about Mikey Devlin, when Alexander was in charge, he said he put a word in then, as they are mates but no joy, I’d take a punt on him for 6 months, decent at Accies, worth a gamble.

a played wi him all through boys club levels, lovely cultured player with a bit of dig probably what we need the now a quiet assasin

On O'Donnell; Carrying a long term injury which needs surgery, and has been put off but it's now at the point where the surgery is essential. Which makes the decision to play him out of position with very little match sharpness even more baffling. He also rejected the chance to leave in January with his contract paid in full, preferring to stay and try and help the team out the mess we're in. Performances certainly not where they should be, but there's no doubting his commitment. Via a Motherwell friendly journalist....

Good salesman though

Social media output is the least of our worries

The club doesn't miss much with player announcements, with posts across all social media and on the website, so not sure what else can be expected there. It has been discussed previously regarding injuries, this looks like a deliberate stance from the club, and could be related to player privacy and not telegraphing our lineups. Return dates aren't guaranteed either, so you'd get folk whining regardless. Not sure what other clubs do in that regard. I don't think the social media and marketing stuff needs to be at the expense of anything else, it's a different department from the football side and will have a budget that is dwarfed by that. Marketing the club and players well is imperative to any club, and fan engagement is just as important. Having some connection the players outside of the match day can help ease tensions and also build anticipation for games. Every now and then it gets us recognition from outside of our bubble, which may just entice a few more people to fir park. Our previous media team did end up getting carried away with themselves and became insufferable. It became more about them than the club, and they became disconnected from the fans, and more interested in their CV than serving the club. The current group seem to be delivering the bare bones, probably due to lack of numbers. There's no engagement at the minute, and I can't remember the last time we had any content about the players that isn't a pre match interview. That can add to the feeling of being disconnected. However, when results aren't going our way, everything gets picked at. No one would care less about the media output if we were winning.

I think relegation was always inevitable for us as a club. When you look at other clubs that have been relegated more than once in the near forty years we’ve been a top flight club, clubs bigger than us, then it’s a quite incredible feat that we have managed to stay in the top league for so long regardless of our luck with league reconstruction and clubs not having adequate stadiums for the top flight. However I do think that far too much emphasis has been placed on our social media focus and our standing in the community over the past decade rather than the team on the park and we are now reaping the rewards of that. Yes we are not a ‘big club’ and yes we are doing the right thing by reaching out to the community, something we didn’t do enough of in the past. However that should not take the focus off of what we are, and that is a professional top flight football club and the fortunes of the team on on the park should be our number one priority as a club. I feel that over the last few years our ‘on the park’ fortunes have been shoved down the pecking order in favour of our social media standing and our desire to be a ‘pillar in the local community’. And let me be clear, I don’t think that there is anything wrong with either of those, but they take the focus away from what should be the most important thing for us as a football club…to be the best we can be on the park and give the support a team they can be proud of.

I think we are all digressing and focussing on one goal. At end of day performance over whole 90 mins was shocking. The starting line up on Saturday better have about 4-5 changes or fans will have had enough. I would start Johnston Cornelius and McKinstry at least. Lads that at least have an affinity with the club and will give you more effort than some of the pathetic attempts last night from some

Totally agree with you Dave but I'll be surprised if it happens the people running the club are part of the problem. They never acted quick enough to get rid of Alexander, and compounded that by giving him a ridiculous contract extension which ultimately cost the club financially. Then they took the no work required, cheap and easy option to appoint SH another big mistake, sanctioned very poor recruitment to bring in the likes of Morris, Aarons, Moult, Ohjala, Solholm so since December 22 the club has been in freefall. The situation we are in now is salvageable, 15 games and 45 points to play for but only if we get an experienced manager in ASAP to get the squad playing. But for me the Current board seem equally as clueless as Hammell and if they don't man up and act now we are heading for championship football next season.