MJC

It’s gonna be a pumping. Anyone who believes otherwise is kidding themselves on.

Our ridiculous luck with injuries this season just won’t let up. Spittal being out for any length of time is a major blow. Halliday is hardly surprising mind you.

It’s the same any time one of the Old Firm drop points just before they are due to play us. The pressure is cranked up on them and we suffer the backlash.

If they score early then we’re looking at a three, four possibly five goal defeat. To be honest I think that would be easier to take then losing like we did against them in September with the last kick of the ball.

We need to beat them on Wednesday night. At the moment they look doomed to 12th but we need to get ourselves away from 11th and we’ve got a great chance to do that against them. But I just can’t help thinking it will be the same script as usual and a draw.

It’s going to be a rough ride for us as a club over the next year or so. I don’t mean that in a negative or pessimistic manner, I just think that’s reality and we need to be prepared for it. Big changes are coming our way.

Alexander was absolutely done with us long before he eventually left. I’ve said this many times had we not snatched the late draw at Livingston and scraped top six and then somehow Europe then he would have been gone at the end of that season, perhaps before. And what keeps being overlooked is that HE wanted to go. It was him that approached Burrows to instigate the “mutual consent” after the Sligo debacle, not the other way around. He wasn’t sacked and he wasn’t “hounded out” he left because he wanted to go. And I’d have Stuart Kettlewell as manager over Alexander any day of the week.

Heard a rumour that if Obika plays 37 minutes and wins two headers against Celtic he automatically gets a contract extension until May 2026. But don’t tell anybody.

Apparently Willie Collum is referee for this one. As if Sunday wasn’t going to be hard enough. He was the referee the last time Celtic were here was he not? And of course he rescued a point for them when he awarded McGregor’s dive in 2017.

Yeah fair enough if they’ve held their hands up and hopefully this doesn’t happen again. Tbh if I was Kettlewell I’d probably a bit pissed off with the way this was communicated, or not communicated as it were. I’m actually quite pleased that we’ve decided to go for stability here. I still have my doubts over the manager but I definitely don’t want to see us become the type of club that goes through two or three managers every two seasons or so. Kettlewell is our third manager in the last two years alone so if we were to part with him now or had done earlier then we would be well on the way to being that type of club. It would have done us no favours in the long run.

The club have now put out a statement on social media confirming that Stuart Kettlewell will be here until May 2025. Firstly from Kettlewell’s point of view that’s all well and good and we need to get behind him and hopefully the board do too. Secondly though, it raises the issue of poor communication from the club. As I said, why not just announce this last May when he kept us up? His stock with the support was high back then and this news would have been welcomed I think.

So why the cloak and dagger over it then? Had that been announced last year after he ensured our safety in the top flight then I don’t think there would have been a Motherwell fan out there who would have had a problem with that, but for some reason the club choose to keep it quiet.

I didn’t actually say that nobody in the footballing world will reconsider sending a player on loan because a young guy fae Sheffield wanted back down the road for personal reasons though did I? I said that our track record with loan signings this season might make clubs think twice about sending us players in the future. After all they don’t know the reasons why these loan deals didn’t work out or last as long as they were initially agreed for. But of course, then again they might not think that. That’s just my opinion which is what the forum is for. I’m not going to say anymore on this subject because we’re going round in circles now. You’ve read my views and that’s that. Have a nice evening.

Verbal pish? Well I’m hardly going to post physical pish on an internet forum am I? 🤷‍♂️ As I’ve already said I don’t know why the player returned home or what his personal reasons were. I don’t need to know and I don’t want to know, it’s none of my business. But what is my business is what happens with the club I support and invest a great deal of time, effort and money following. And our transfers this season have been dreadful and our loan deals have “generally not worked out” to put it as politely as I possibly can.

It certainly does, and it’s happened to us a good few times this season with loan deals. Two recalled half way through their ‘season long deals’ another one cancelled and then re-loaned and now this one. Regardless of the reasons behind all of the above it doesn’t put our transfer business and in particular our loan deals this season in a good light at all.

God I forgot about Spencer! Another ‘season long loan’ that didn’t last the season.

Which is why I said “no harm to the player” in a previous post. His personal business is just that, personal and therefore nobody else’s. For us as a club however it doesn’t look good when you see how our track record with loan signings has gone this season and it certainly doesn’t bode well for potential loan signing targets in the future, because they and their clubs might look at us and think twice about sending their player here.

Yes of course and no harm to the player, it’s clearly not worked out for whatever reason but for us as a club our loan deals this season have been a shambles, as has our entire transfer strategy in all honestly. It certainly doesn’t send out a positive message to any potential loan signing targets in the future.

Jili Buyabu has returned to his parent club for “personal reasons”. What the actual fuck is going on with our club and recruitment strategy?? This season alone we have our best player suddenly recalled in January then sent elsewhere on loan, we loan in Oli Shaw, cancel his loan then re-loan him and now this boy’s loan is cancelled less than a month in. Absolute clusterfuck.

Yes and a few of them have also won silverware, three times in the last ten year in St.Johnstone’s case. I would certainly prefer that.

You ignore it so well that you quote it. Looks like you need more practice.

There is a difference between what I think will happen and what I hope will happen. I always hope for a Motherwell win but given our dismal record in these fixtures then I can’t help but think that we will do nothing other than our usual and lose. Selective reading and quoting at its finest. No one has said that “all they are interested in is beating the uglies” or that that’s anyone’s “sole ambition” to win games against either OF club. But you just go on making things up to suit your ‘agenda’ eh? And of course no doubt you’ll be getting strong powerful ‘vibes’ that Rangers are the “big team some people support” and all that regurgitated nonsense.

As pessimistic as I am about Sunday and any game against the Old Firm nowadays, I desperately hope that we can defy the odds and finally get a win against them. It would be especially satisfying to finally get a win against Celtic and that sanctimonious shark faced prick Rodgers and hopefully drive another nail into their title challenge.

I don’t think it’s one specific person or group of people informing numerous managers of that, it’s just something that has become rife throughout the club during the past twenty odd years. Terry Butcher was the one who started the “we’re punching above our weight” and Alan Burrows parroted that on here in this forums early years and the latter obviously went on to have a huge influence within the club, but I don’t think it’s simply down to him. It’s no coincidence that that mentality has grown arms and legs with the rise of social media which allowed the support as a whole to start buying into it when they hear a lot of the sound bites coming out of the club about how skint we are, how we’re punching above our weight etc. As a fan owned club it’s to be expected that that mindset then becomes rife within the boardroom as well as the stands. That numerous managers and players buy into it is to be expected. In any business if employees are told over and over again by their superiors that exceeding expectations doesn’t matter and that as long as they reach their bare minimum target every year then that isn’t going to motivate or push them to go that extra mile.

No, but I seriously doubt that he would have grasped the “we’re only a wee club, games against Rangers don’t matter because we can’t compete with their budget” outlook by that point in his tenure with us. Stuart McCall as I said totally bought into that mentality when he was here, as demonstrated perfectly when we went to Ibrox as top flight league leaders and they were struggling to beat Peterhead in the lowest league. All you got from him was subservient nonsense about how they had a twelfth man with their support and how we weren’t favourites. And we duly bent over and lost 2-0 without laying a glove on them.