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Featuring not 1, not 2, but 5 (FIVE) Motherwell players!

The cosy clique that is the SFA dont give a toss how bad it looks, they are all far too busy organising their expense account trips to the USA over the summer. The whole set up is a shambles full of freeloading chancers who care more about their benefits and committee positions than they do about the clubs and fans. Will it change, i doubt it, the turkeys never vote for christmas, the member clubs have the power to change it but again self interest comes first, not whats best for the game. So for me fair play to michael stewart for calling them out, more people need to do the same.

My point about a deteriorating product relates to poor officiating and VAR undermining the matchday experience, not the quality of football on display. I’ll still be renewing my season ticket, but with fans being asked to pay more each year, it’s reasonable to expect the club to advocate on our behalf and address the elephant in the room.

That's just crazy and all merited

Scottish Football is incredibly frustrating. VAR is awful (being polite). Having likes of pundits being banned for sharing an opinion which is no different to that of the paying public is a joke. @wellfan called it - a circling of wagons is accurate. Add to that the recent treatment we've been singled out for appear to be 'put Motherwell back in their box' Recent decisions have been staggering and can't help but feel there's an element of showing who's boss. Slattery's suspension wouldn't have happened to any of the top 3. The non penalty for TW against falkirk Hearts penalty decision. The general everything a Well player does must be a foul or a dive. How dare Motherwell do something as bold as play great football and start challenging at the top end of the league. I simply hope that's an end of the poor decisions for now and we can get some enjoyment back for the final 5 games.

I was with you until the last sentence.

Some interesting comments from Lee Wilkie in today's Dundee Courier. "I would scrap VAR in Scottish football tomorrow. The technology affects the game far too much in a negative way and we saw the very worst of that in Dundee’s seemingly endless game at Kilmarnock. Of course, we want to help referees get really close calls correct but the technology gets involved far too much. And it affects the way players play the game, too. Again, not in a good way. I think players dive even more now than they did before. I’m not talking about blatant dives where there is no contact. I’m talking about situations where the forward feels a hand on the back and hits the deck. They do that knowing the Video Assistant Referee is watching and they might get a penalty out of very little. For me, that’s not what football should be about. It is a technical game but there should still be the physical aspect of battling for the ball with someone else. When VAR reviews a decision, they only look for contact but crucially not whether that contact is enough to constitute a foul. You will see strikers running into the box thinking more about initiating contact with a defender than actually scoring the chance. VAR in Scotland has not had many successes to shout about and Saturday at Rugby Park certainly wasn’t one of them. An eight-minute delay doesn’t help anyone. Spectators don’t want to be hanging about that long and, even though Dundee eventually got the penalty, it didn’t help them either. It doesn’t look good for our game. The SPFL and SFA are probably breathing a sigh of relief that didn’t happen in one of the title-deciding fixtures coming up."

Just checked in here this morning and I can't say I'm surprised at Stewart's treatment. He at least isn't afraid to court controversy, unlike the usual bland commentators and, as you say, he has praised us for our football this year. I'm afraid cancel culture/censorship is always a sign that the organisation employing it doesn't have valid or credible arguments to use in rebuttal so has to get the sledgehammer out. This problem has spread far beyond the world of sport these days and I feel free speech generally is threatened. It's somewhat ironical that the BBC itself suffered from it via the Traynor ban, of course 😁.

Yep, and as I’ve suggested previously on this forum, we’re now seeing the wagons circling to protect the clowns.

Was just reading in the BBC gossip column that Michael Stewart has been banned from Hampden for his comments about referees. I remember Jim Traynor doing the same to the BBC at Ibrox in his role as Head of Communications. It seemed perfectly in step with that particular club given the control they like to have of the football narrative in Scotland. It seemed a very petty approach at the time. It is really interesting that the SFA themselves have chosen the very same approach. I am not a huge fan of Michael Stewart as a football personality but he is an articulate, intelligent reporter (and he LOVES Motherwell this season). It seems like a slippery slope when an organisation starts to sensor the voices it does not want to be heard.

From a quick look on his wiki page hes had about 205 apperances for 9 different clubs and a few international caps in the last 10 years, scoring 65 goals. Thats just over 6 a year average, so he not exactly a prolific scorer, with the vast majority of them in the Aussie leagues.

I still think that AP as a penalty box striker goal score was not up to it . Most of his goals were penaltys .He seemed to me that he was always a yard or two behind where he should have been to anticipate where the ball was going in front of goal. He also missed a right few chances. Being away seems to have made him a better player than he actually was . Best for him to remain in Aussie.

It’s the inconsistency in decisions that’s actually doing my tits in. You can say what you want about Slattery, but the St Mirren player turned and actually swung at him. We were all debating afterwards if he’d caught him, it’s a red all day no question, but I always thought the intent was enough. Same as when a player flies in two-footed (like Lee Lucas did) but still misses, players know VAR is watching now so its a waste of time feigning things. Slattery still got utterly vilified, yet Cantwell was pretending he’d been elbowed in the face a few seasons ago at Fir Park, ironically against Slattery, and that just gets brushed off as per, no meltdown. Then you’ve got that 7-minute spell against Falkirk last week. The ref was atrocious - gave them a free kick when McGinn was fouled first, let a blatant foul on Just go without even a word, and then the coup de grâce: the missed penalty and the sending off. I say 7 minutes, but the whole game followed the same pattern. Even in one of Willie Collum’s reviews, he talks about a similar incident where no penalty was given when a player’s head was clipped at knee height, and the reasoning aligns with putting himself in danger. You just know he’ll be inconsistent again the next time he’s on. After all, he was greeting about the Balmer decision last season against Killie where the player was entitled to challenge for the ball, but Kofi wasn't. It still boggles my mind that we had 100 world class appilcants and he's the one for the role. Back in the day, when wrongful red cards were quickly appealed I think 8 or so from Collum was successfully appealed over the piece, whereas others were 1. Honestly, what is the game coming to when players are getting sent off for DOGSO on the halfway line? Or even reading Kevin Clancy's description of the Celtic incident. I would love to be optimistic and say it's going to get worse before it gets better, but I'll just stick to it's going to get worse. More changes around the World Cup will happen as per, then you have Arsene Wenger's offside rule currently getting tested, then that will be implemented no doubt, but it will still contain the same old annoyances. Apologies for the moan but I can seldom muster up the strength to post on here nowadays, so thankful that we have been playing the way we have been. It would be nice to see more emphasis put on it; they did a questionnaire in the summer and released the results, and most people who voted wanted it rid of. I think they even started a petition or something on change.org, I'm positive I remember that being at 1.5k signatories.