HanoMaSano

There were some amount of long balls punted up the park by Craigan and Reynolds to a slightly bemused Gow on his own. I can't imagine that was the gaffers plan, unless he brought Gow in for that legendary Aerial Ability.

From the groans and abuse I heard last night I think I may be on my own on this one, but I thought Forbes looked very promising in that position. He played four or five very clever balls, some out wide, one through the middle for Gow to set up his jinking run, and a number of simpler ones slid to Blackman. Unfortunately Blackman had a bit of a shocker in the wider position and took every opportunity to run straight into his man. If given a run in the team in that position in the hole behind the striker(s) Forbes will really come on to a game, the only problem being if 2 or 3 of his passes don't come off the crowd start losing the plot. That was my highlight of the evening, comedy gold. I think it looked like Lasley came over to keep the peace as Forbes and Hately were arguing over who took the free kick. Taking the initiative Keith told them to set it up for him, only realising at the last minute that he didn't have a clue how to take a free kick and tripped over the ball. Seeing as we were 2-0 up at the time it was genius, if we'd have been chasing the game I'd have been raging

If the odds are the same then surely you put money on the win in 90 mins.. We can not go through if we don't win in the 90. We could however win 3-2 and still go out on away goals.

In case anyone was wondering what the hell I was on about, they have now fixed the time on the official site to say 7:30. Good news

Does anybody know for sure what time kick off is tonight at Forfar? The official site says 7:30 under fixtures, but now is saying 7:15 on the home page. Forfar official site has it as 7:30. I was pushing it to get up for a half past kick off, but 7:15 may be pushing it a bit too much. Cheers if anybody knows for sure.

1800 to Hamilton earlier this season. Pick and choose my away games nowadays, for many of the reasons posted here. Its not just Motherwell that this is happening to. The main reason, from what I can see, that our home crowds are down is the reductions across the board in all teams travelling support this season. It's time the diddy clubs all banded together and provided each others fans with a more affordable away package. Not sure exactly in what form this could be, but something has to be done. IIRC we used to have a deal with Killie that each others season tickets got a discount on away games? Which lead to us always taking a decent amount down there and them bringing more than the couple of hundred that make the journey up from Ayrshire nowadays.

The thing is we always seem to struggle against Falkirk and they will win a game at some point this season. I'm normally captain of the happy clappy brigade but I'm not filled with confidence going into this game. Fingers crossed the boys can prove me wrong. PS. Big McLean's bound to score

I think this is the case, if we remember Porter's first season he looked like he was never gonna score until the Gretna game where he claimed a goal with the ball bouncing off his arse. After that there was no holding the big man back. I think Lukas just now looks to be trying too hard, but when he's up and running and got a bit of confidence I think theres potential there to be effective in this Motherwell team.

Good feelings around Fir park just now, we're all excited to have a new man with new ideas in charge (and not just myself and the fellow happy clappers!) and with a team of talented young guys who are going to give their all every game for the well. And for once, the relations between the fans and the club are pretty good. We generally moan that "The more things change, the more they stay the same." but I have to say that Leeann Dempster has done a great job so far and things are moving in the right direction. The best decision the club has made in years IMHO is to give us back the Cooper, and it's up to us to show Mr Boyle that it was the right call. So get everybody you know told that they should come along on Saturday, get the place rockin, claim back our own stand in numbers and inspire the boys to stuff this Weegie scum!

Not wanting to sound too harsh, but if they don't get their visas in time then they have absolutely nobody to blame but themselves. Flamurtari have known for 4 weeks or so that they were coming to the UK this week (to play either us of Llanelli) to have only put the paperwork in on Friday as has been reported seems amaturish in the extreme.

Yup, and also he looked very poor. Despite the fact he had about 6 inches on Craigan, Craggs beat him in the air pretty much every time. Their main tactic was punting the ball to that boy, which didn't work. I'm always the optimist, we're gonna pump them down there!

45 and Counting

3 of us. That's 6.

Evidence of this fact is the goals McCormack has scored. For Motherwell 36 SPL games - 10 goals. For Cardiff 32 Championship games - 21 goals. A player who was good in the SPL is a standout down there. I've said it more than once. Just because the Championship has huge amounts of money these days does not automatically make the quality of football soar. The main effect of the extra money is on the asking prices and wages of average, second tier English footballers. Don't get me wrong, there is quality in the league, but only really among the top few sides. After his loan spell at Blackpool, teams down there are lining up to offer money for Charlie Adam FFS.

Not that it makes too much difference but minding that the 90K is in euros, about £75K for each round.

Maybe, but I wouldn't have thought so. If it was then surely: Doesn't make sense as obviously the 200,000 for getting to the knock out stages would be on top of the 1,000,000 for getting to the group stages. I would imagine that they'd show the early rounds in the same fashion, ie. the the prize money for getting to each stage individually. EDIT: I'm not sure what i've written makes sense, but I knew what I meant!

Not sure that can be accurate. I remember the discussion last season about how we couldn't expect to compete with Nancy because they got something in the region of €35 million (can't remember the exact amount) worth of TV money for coming 4th in the French league. Even the winners of the SPL don't get as much as that.

I'm pretty sure I read that it would be Tusday or Wednesday next week before we would find out. It would seem that it'll take until then for the SPL/SFA (or whoever it is) to decide who they want in europe and fudge the results in that direction.

Just an update, After his cross for Murphy's goal at the weekend Stevie has moved up to number 4 in Scotland for assists. This makes him number 1 outside the Old Firm in number of assists, and overall number 1 in terms of assist ratio (providing 18% of Motherwells goals this season.) A good defensive display on Saturday as well! Linkage

I may be wrong but I was pretty sure that the regionalised early rounds have been scrapped this year with the draw only coming from 2 pots, one for seeds and the other for unseeded teams.

It's like you scooped the thoughts out of my brain and slopped it all down in a post Couldn't agree more.

To be fair he was a bit, but it is a position I reckon he could play well. The St. Mirren game was hard to judge it on seeing as McGhee decided to play half the team out of position.

Having a look at the teams we would be up against in the first qualifying round: Europa League 2009/10 I fancy this mob: Juvenes/Dogana Sitting in the San Marino sun watching the 'Well (hopefully) stick 5 or 6 past some farmers/schoolteachers/postmen.

Yup!

Defending is only a small part of what's required from a modern day full back. Look at Alan Hutton, he can't defend for sh!t but got a move to the premiership for 9 million quid because of the danger he poses going forward.