MJC

van Veen wouldn’t work in Kettlewell’s current set up. There’s no Spittal anymore to support him so he’d be completely isolated upfront. Besides that he has had his purple patch with us and peaked. We wouldn’t get the same van Veen back as the one that we last had in May ‘23.

The last minute levellers against County, Dundee and St.Johnstone along with coming back from 0-2 down in Perth early November kept him in a job last year. And to his and the teams credit those results showed that they had a bit of spirit about them to come back and get those draws. But we appear to be a team set up not to concede a goal rather than score one ourselves and then when we do concede we are more effective when chasing games as opposed to scoring first and defending a lead. That’s no use in the league we play in and it’s not going to get us anywhere in Cup ties.

A drab draw was the right result today between two mediocre teams. We are no better or stronger than we were at any point last season, if anything it’s the opposite as I said earlier. There is nothing to indicate that we are going to have anything other than a turgid, eye-bleedingly poor season again this year, but this time we might not be so fortunate to scrape so many points with last minute equalisers.

The proper football? Today was a League Cup tie, that is proper football. It wasn’t a pre-season friendly it was a match in a major tournament. And in that match we struggled to a 0-0 draw against a Championship side and created very little before losing a penalty shootout. Alarm bells are ringing loud and clear ahead of the start of the league season for me. And SK is going to have a full squad to pick from next week? Is he really? Or are the injuries to Slattery, Paton, Nicholson and Seddon going to miraculously clear up between now and next Saturday??

He won’t do. I’m sorry but he just won’t. His tactics, lineups and general attitude is awful. I want to back him but I just can’t because he is taking us nowhere. Time to go. #troll #pantywetter

Yer a troll! Ye couldn’t wait for this opportunity bla, bla bla. On a serious note your concerns are completely valid.

Full time 0-0. Disgraceful stuff.

We are worse than we were this time last year. I defy anyone to say otherwise.

Kettlewell doing his best Steve Clarke impression here today.

Halliday just won’t do I’m afraid. He’s too slow, too old and is basically done. If we are relying on him being a regular going into this season then we have big problems.

Poor, poor stuff so far. We came more into it as the half wore on but we’re lucky not to be behind. Even if we do qualify we will go no further than the last sixteen with this team.

Let’s be clear about this. Anything, ANYTHING less than us being in the draw for the last sixteen after today’s game will be completely and utterly unacceptable and would be a major black mark against the manager and the players. I think the seeded spot is beyond us but we cannot go out of the League Cup at the group stage.

That and ‘trolling’. You know people have no argument or constructive contribution to make to a discussion once they start accusing someone telling it like it is or how they don’t want to hear it of being a troll or knicker twisting/wetting. Concerns about the squad are perfectly valid right now. We have a crucial Cup game tomorrow and the league season begins a week today yet we have lost our two best players from last season, one of which we knew six months ago would be leaving, and failed to replace either. Once again we are riddled with injuries leaving our already shallow pool of players decimated even more. If that makes me a troll or a knicker wetter for thinking and saying that in some peoples eyes then there’s nothing I can do about that, but I prefer to see it as saying things as I see them as opposed to nodding my head like a donkey and and warbling on like a parrot.

We’re almost a parody of ourselves with the amount of injuries we have at any one time.

Not looking good so far. Thistle already 1-0 up and our record in ‘must win games’ doesn’t inspire any optimism.

Lee McCulloch must have been on decent money with us too, especially as we knocked back a reported bid of £1M from Hearts in late 99. It’s scary looking back at the money we were throwing about at that time and in reality we got very little in return for it.

Possibly I don’t know but that’s beside the point. I just didn’t rate him as a player and his fondness of a night out and his ability to get the womenfolk of Motherwell falling at his feet bought him a lot of leeway.

I’ll throw another name in here. Richie Foran. An absolute wage thief and a lazy imposter of a player who got away with it because he liked a bevvy and could pull the birds down the Mega Bar back in the day. Some Boi eh?

Well that’s up to you, but personally I can’t view anyone who openly disrespects the club like Boyd has with anything other than contempt. You know, like walking around Hampden pointing to his Celtic badge and thumping his chest towards Motherwell fans before a Scottish Cup Final almost twenty years to the day that he captained us to victory in. Or the snide comments he made to Tam Cowan at a supporters event about how much he’d won since he left us or the disdain he’s shown our club and fans over the years. That annoys me, maybe it shouldn’t but it does. If it doesn’t annoy you then that’s up to you, as I said, but given that you’ve said on here before that you value your support of Scotland above Motherwell and suggested that anyone who doesn’t share that view is ‘parochial’ then….ach i don’t want to go down the ‘who’s the better supporter’ argument. So all I’m going to say now is…………….weisht.

‘The Don’ as he was known was seen as a far less high profile and less fashionable player during that period compared to ‘big names’ like Goram and Spencer but he had twice the workrate of Spencer and was a big part of the team that almost reached Europe in 1999/2000.

Wouldn’t go so far as to say I hated him but I never liked John Spencer and never got the hype for him when he was here. He was a money grabbing chancer who did nothing to justify his large salary. The same goes for Andy Goram. Also not a player but Mark McGhee. Great first season in his first spell but an arrogant self important weapon of a man who thought nothing of publicly disrespecting the club and the fans. ”this is why and please don’t misinterpret me here I am managing Motherwell today and not Liverpool”. Right you are ya side moothed puffed up trumpet.

It’s not simply that he was a Celtic fan that Boyd is so hated, but I suspect you know that anyway. Tommy Coyne, Stevie Kirk, Faddy, Brian Martin, Owen Coyle, Phil O’Donnell to name but a few were all Celtic fans and that fact was relatively well known but none of them are being put forward for ‘former players that you wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire’ so I think we can put any suggestions that the only reason Boyd’s name is being mentioned is simply down to him ‘being a Celtic fan’ firmly to bed. Boyd has repeated shown himself to be an obnoxious arsehole who has frequently disrespected our club and our fans over the years despite where he started his career. Anyone who saw his behaviour before the 2011 Scottish Cup Final will know what I’m talking about. The fact that he is also a Celtic fan on top of his odious behaviour does heighten my dislike for him as he represents the worst type of Celtic person for me and I make no apology for that. He has all the detestable Celtic attitubutes… arrogant, obnoxious, condescending constantly stirring shit and stoking up bad feeling and paranoia whenever he’s given a platform to open his mouth and can’t/wont see anything from a non Celtic perspective. I’ve said this before on here, whenever I’m unfortunate enough to have to watch our away games against them on Celtic TV I actually find Peter Grant (another well known Celtic fan and a player I couldn’t stand back in the day) ten times more tolerable than Boyd.

We were the better side I’m not disputing that but we could easily have conceded more and did not look comfortable defending our lead, we never do especially under Kettlewell’s management. There were positives for us as you say and the biggest one of the lot is that we won the game which is the main thing in these games but performance wise we need to see an improvement if we aren’t to see a re-run of last season.

We’ve not lost to Partick Thistle at home since January 1996. If we want to be in the last sixteen then that needs to remain the case and we also need to win. It will be tough and I expect it to be a struggle. 1-1 and the shootout could go either way.

What he said was correct, Clyde could easily have scored a few more and we were far from comfortable. Just because a post or a particular posters view doesn’t sit right with the way you want to see things doesn’t make it pish.