MJC

Bookmark this: We are not winning another game this season.

Disappointing but not surprising.

Kettlewell just can’t help himself when it comes to running his mouth and playing the victim. Nothing is ever his fault but the facts don’t lie. And the facts are that since he left us in January 2025 amid his manufactured grievance with our supporters who were basically telling him the team he built on its arse and the football was dreadful, which it absolutely was, he has now been sacked by Killie after less than six months in the job and now overseen Ross County’s relegation from the Championship. Maybe, just maybe he isn’t all that when it comes to management. And while all this has been going on we’ve achieved top six, are on course for a 4th placed finish with possible European qualification in a season where we have played the best football seen at our club in years.

Draw written all over it. 1-1

Or it could simply just be that McInnes taking Hearts from bottom six to the brink of the League title in his first season, McGlynn getting Falkirk promotion, top six AND a Scottish Cup Semi Final and lastly Naysmith defying the odds with Stenhousemuir are all seen as more deserving of the award than JBA? There doesn’t need to be any kind of underlying resentment or anything like that I’d say it’s more that the other three have achieved more tangible feats.

Pretty reasonable nominations. It’s impossible to see past McInnes this season for the job he has done at Hearts - taking them from bottom six last season to a few wins away from being League Champions - and I don’t see how there can be any reasonable argument against that. With McGlynn and Falkirk they have had a superb season and reached the SF of the Scottish Cup. For a side just promoted that’s pretty good going. Naysmith at Stenhousemuir is a bit of an outsider but he’s got them in a great position for promotion against the odds. And then on to our manager JBA. He has been fantastic for us and surpassed all expectations but I’m personally quite pleased he has been overlooked for this award as it might just keep his stock low enough to keep him here for a bit longer. Wishful thinking perhaps but anything that gives us an advantage as a club then I’ll take it. The reality is that Jens May very well not be with us next season but I still think there is a chance that he will be, and the less folk shouting about his credentials the better for Motherwell FC.

All about making money but as I’ve always said the people who are going to buy the kits will do so and those who aren’t won’t buy them. This season we have only worn the change kit in the away games where you would expect us to wear it, ie. Dundee Utd, Hearts, Aberdeen & Livingston which is the way it should be. Other years though we have ‘overcooked’ the away kit especially it seems when it’s a mostly Claret effort. The one from 23/24 that we wore when we won at Ibrox two years ago got a fair few outings and the 18/19 kit we wore it just about every single away game expect ironically enough against Hearts and Aberdeen because it would have caused a colour clash. I really didn’t like that. (And I say that as someone who is a massive fan of the mid 90s Claret with amber pinstripes kit that we wore against Dortmund and was delighted to see the club launch a retro version of that recently.)

I’m a big fan of this years away kit but I really don’t like seeing us wearing our change kits when there is no clash of colour with the opposition. We should be in Claret & Amber as much as possible and thankfully this season we have been.

There definitely was a mental block that ran right through the club for far too long when it came to these types of games. IMO it could be traced all the way back to Butcher and then Alan Burrows banging the “punching above our weight” drum for years and numerous managers, coaches, players and supporters fully bought into that. Before the March ‘24 win at Ibrox I genuinely thought we would never beat either OF side ever again but breaking that duck gave us the shot in the arm that we had been in desperate need of for years. On a side note and I know this doesn’t matter much to many, but it does to me…I was delighted to see us beat Rangers at Ibrox for the third year running but this time wearing our proper C&A kit. The last three league wins there we’ve been in our change kits going back to Owen Coyle day in ‘97. So Sunday must have been the first league win at Ibrox wearing our first kit since 94 or 95. 🍻

I’ve never particularly liked Derek McInnes, indeed I always thought he was an utter prick when he was at Aberdeen. But I find myself thinking warming to him and also that his beard probably smells amazing. He most probably uses top of the range grooming products on it. Fair play to him and Hearts. 👍

Correct me if I’m wrong, but is this the first season since 2002/2003 that we have beaten both halves of the Old Firm in the league?

Never doubted us for a minute tbh… That is the best result of the season for me. It was a tough, tough watch and I would have been fucking raging had that finished 2-2 having been 2-0 up but to nick it at the death like that was brilliant stuff and showed a resilience and winning mentality that in all honesty we have lacked at the crucial moments this season. 4th place is still very much in our hands right now.

Hold it this time ffs!

Shitebags gonna Shitebag. All came from us fannying about from a short corner which we are historically awful at. Almost as awful as trying to manage two goal leads.

I’d like to think we are well past this recruitment mentality of re-signing ex players simply because they are ex players and did a job for us years ago. I hope and indeed think that Jens isn’t the type of manager who would go down that lazy route too. As has already been said Allan Campbell wouldn’t fit into our current system and all he would be is deadwood like Nicholson, McGhee etc. And I say that as someone who really liked Campbell when he was with us but his time with us has come and long gone and we shouldn’t be looking backwards.

And Celtic 6-2 up at Half Time in Extra Time and home and hosed. As much as I despise Celtic I’m happy with that. If St.Mirren had won today they would have been all but guaranteed to win the Scottish Cup and the mere thought of them doing a Cup double would have been utterly sickening. I genuinely think I would have chucked football altogether if that had happened but thankfully it won’t now.

Of course and that’s why I have regularly bemoaned our inability to make chances count and get points on the board. It’s been a running theme of the season and I don’t see it changing at this late stage unfortunately. Don’t worry mate, you’ll be safe from that nonsense as long as I’m around. 🤣

Even before today it was always Hibs we had to worry about catching us for 4th and nothing has changed in that regard. We seriously need to buck our ideas up but as you say it’s hard to see where the next point is coming from.

It was good to see them slapped right back into their box today. After being 2-0 up and getting all excited it ended up a bit of a drubbing for them on their own patch. 😁 (Guitar into……) # Ah-as I was walking by the Falkirk wheel I-I seen a local ragin’ Cos the Falkirk Bairns, Got skelped six-three By the Fame-uss Glesga Rainjurz #

It’s football, these things happen and they can often happen in sequences from time to time and when it does then of course that’s frustrating. And I don’t subscribe to the idea that “these things even themselves out over a season” because more often than not they don’t. But it’s when people start going down the cheating/conspiracy route that annoys me and it’s only when it’s one of the Old Firm, one of them in particular does that start getting trotted out. Put it this way, had the ridiculous non penalty incident that we got against Falkirk happened against Rangers then everyone would be up in arms and howling about cheating Masonic refs and the like. I think even the dogs in the street know that.

Perhaps my style is over the top at times but I just get frustrated by grown adults coming out with absolute nonsense and schoolboy patter like “aww the other team will get a penalty so it doesn’t matter what we do” whilst completely overlooking the fact that we have shot ourselves in the foot by failing to make advantages count. I’m not saying that it’s just you or even that that’s what you were doing with that post, but when I see posts like that I just shake my head at the idea that people actually live their lives thinking like that. As for the “Penalty to Rangers” thing, it was something that caused a lot of hysteria a few years back when every single time Rangers were awarded a penalty, whether justified or otherwise, it was subjected to a ridiculous amount of scrutiny from the media and fans of every other club. The term implied that Rangers get favourable decisions and again you had grown adults just accepting that as if it were gospel even when all the evidence was there to show otherwise.

Agreed and that’s always likely to happen when you can’t make it count when you are on top. And on far too many occasions this season we have played some nice stuff but have undone it all by being utterly powderpuff when it really matters. I personally think it was the correct decision to award the penalty yesterday but if we take even one of the chances before that it would have been irrelevant so we have only got ourselves to blame.

It’s not trolling it’s stating facts. Rangers have been awarded two less penalties than we have this season. That could obviously change between today and when we play them but maybe if we didn’t give them the opportunities to get a penalty awarded, you know like not handling in the box or wrestling the shirt off attackers at set pieces then we might be okay in that regard? We could also help ourselves by actually breaking the habit of a season and actually making chances we create count and then in the event we do concede a penalty then it won’t have much or any impact on the end result. That would be a lot more beneficial than trying to walk the ball into the net, taking one touch too many and firing wide when we should have burst the net then concede an avoidable penalty, they score, beat us and the usual dafties giving it “boo-hoo we didny win, the refs a cheat, let’s stamp oor feet 😭 😭 😭”. Or at least I would have thought so anyway. 🤷‍♂️

Aw boo-hoo. BOO-HOO. Let’s just get the pathetic excuses in early doors. And just for the record, we have been awarded two more penalties than Rangers have in the league this season so put that in your pipes and smoke it.

There is a ‘ceiling’ which shows how good we actually are. And we have shown time and time again this season that we aren’t capable of going above that ceiling. When it has come down to the crunch we have consistently fell short of showing that we can compete with and beat the stronger sides. Obviously that can be countered by pointing to the Celtic game at FP in December, and understandably given the way we dominated them that night. But to counter that Celtic were at their worst point in decades with a manager who was clearly miles out of his depth and who was sacked less than a week after that game. I don’t mean to take anything away from how we played that night but that was clearly a factor. As it stands heading into the split we are in a good position. We are in the top six and that is something that would have been seen as laughable if anyone had predicted that before the season started. But we can’t just go on what would have been “acceptable” or seen as “beyond our reach back in July/August”. The season develops and perspectives change and we have gone from getting ourselves into a great position in mid February to utterly whimpering our way to 6th place come the end of the season. And…that does not mean that we have had a bad season or anything of the sort. It’s just that we have had a season which had the potential to be so much better than it has ended up. It’s more frustrating that disappointing.