MJC

Justice was done for Hearts with that last minute penalty. They were awarded one at the end of the first half and VAR somehow found something wrong with it so United and their fans booing and whinging about the late award need to just suck it up. Not great results for us today but Hearts last gasp leveller certainly helps our cause.

St.Mirren beating Aberdeen and Hibs currently cruising against Livi sees both of them open up a bit of a gap on the bottom four. And Dundee Utd are level with Hearts at half time which if it stays the same would see them move to within five points of us at the bottom, albeit with a much worse goal difference. Its all getting very edgy.

10th was always going to be the best we would have got this season. Some of the chat of top six early on in the season from some on here was absolutely bonkers. We won’t get a whole new squad in January but to be honest we don’t need one to be safe this season, we just need one or two players in key areas and we should be able to do enough to avoid the drop. Whether we get those types of players or not is another matter altogether.

Neither am I sadly. Though I’ve heard rumours that Lionel Ainsworth has been spotted having a lunch meeting in the Moorings with Hammell and Burrows so perhaps a glorious return is on the cards for our 35 year old former hero. And then we’ve always got King Louis to return soon. Probably. Possibly. You never know.

Waiting until Killie got it back to 2-2 to make a change would have been bad enough. Waiting until 85 minutes to make changes was absolute lunacy. 2-0 can be a dangerous scoreline (it always has been for us anyway) so you need to try and manage it properly and we/SH didn’t do this last night. We didn’t look in danger at 2-0 up but at at the same time we didn’t look comfortable either and the sending off for them seemed to throw us a bit. Once they got it back to 2-1, own goal or not, they were always getting a second because we had completely lost momentum by that point. I’m not blaming Steven Hammell for an o.g and poor goalkeeping, but I am blaming him for his game management last night. Put it this way, if we had Derek McInnes in our dugout last night we would not have lost a two goal lead.

Correct and if we do go down this season then Burrows should seriously consider his own position, which I think he would to be fair. For far too long we have been run like a tinpot, seaside league outfit when it comes to player and management recruitment and that will come home to roost eventually if it hasn’t already. You look at the managerial appointments under Burrows. Baraclough(lower English-league Manager brought in in the hope he would be Gannon mkII) McGhee (clearly an old pals move that) Robinson(already at the club having been asst in a previous failed regime) Alexander(out the box for a change but another English-lower league manager with no experience of Scottish football) Hammell (the youth team boss parachuted into the job two weeks into a season after we’d allowed the previous manager to assemble our worst squad in recent memory) Then you look at our ridiculous policy of re-signing ex players. McFadden, Pearson, Ojamaa, Moult, Aarons, Hastie, McCormack. And some of the absolute GARBAGE that we have brought in at the same time; Hylton, Seedorf, Clay, Lucas, Ilic, Manzinga, Sloth, Morris, Shields, Sammon and more all brought in by several different managers. Our player recruitment and scouting is absolutely dire and has been for far too long and that is something that goes way beyond whoever the man in the dugout is.

Dreadful result last night given we were 2-0 up and they were down to 10 men. I’m sorry to say but that is all the hallmarks of a poor team led by an inexperienced manager and frankly anyone who doesn’t think that we are in serious danger of relegation or at least the playoffs this season is kidding themselves on. I love Hammell but last night was on him I’m afraid. Poor game management cost us three points there.

Well looks like I was wrong then. Well done to everyone involved in getting things sorted this week. 👏👏 Looking forward to getting back to Fir Park at last and hopefully we can get the result we badly need. Three points tonight will be a massive boost.

Nice new look it has to be said. Very fresh 👏👏

I see there is a ‘Shelters #Nohomekit’ thing running this weekend highlighting homelessness and home team across the country will be wearing away or 3rd kits this weekend. So a debut for our new charity kit tomorrow?

I can see where you’re coming from but we need to start picking up points and momentum. Before the WC break we looked to the home double header of StM and Killie as a good chance to get back on track. Now we’re down to just one home game (if we’re lucky) before the turn of the year. We’re getting nothing at Ibrox, that’s pretty much a given(and yes, I do remember that we drew twice there last season but we’re not going unbeaten there three times in a row, it just won’t happen) and then Livingston away will be a tough one, albeit we’ve done okay there in recent times. I’d rather play Kilmarnock first and get the chance to get the win.

What about switching the game to Airdrie? I don’t know if that would be a realistic possibility but it’s something we’ve done before when Fir Park was out of use. Not ideal of course but certainly preferable than having Rangers at Ibrox as our first fixture after 6 and a half weeks off when we badly need points on the board.

It’s a prediction which is what most members who post in this thread will be giving. Hopefully I’m wrong though and I’m sure every effort will be made to get it on, though from the pictures and videos posted the other day you’d have to say it’s a big ask.

Motherwell P-P Kilmarnock

St.J level at Ross County which works in our favour. edit: now 2-1 up which is even better for us.

Jordan White has just put Ross County 1-0 up against St.Johnstone which if that stays the same they would go above us in the table tonight. On a plus point though the Jambos are doing us a favour by beating Kilmarnock at Tynecastle.

BBC Scotland were never going to pass up on the chance to show their beloved Celtic live. That’ll be like Christmas come early for Liam McLeod.

Absolutely no chance of that going ahead I reckon which now means that our first fixture back will be away to Rangers. Given the run of fixtures we had before the break we really didn’t need this.

Certainly makes for grim viewing those videos. I hope our insurance completely covers that because that is some amount of water and damage.

No doubt you’ll get replies to this along the lines of “what ye on about, Dundee’s game is off too, so is Livis, have you seen the weather this week?” But you certainly have a point about the number of times this has happened to us at Fir Park. I love the old ground but by God it certainly can’t handle any sort of adverse or inclement weather conditions. Having seen Burrows tweets of the damage it looks absolutely horrendous. The Cooper toilets and the Gym are badly flooded. I’d be very surprised if Friday nights game v Killie goes ahead.

Livingston v Dundee Utd now off as well. At least Utd can’t now gain any ground on us today but we really could be do with Hearts and St.Johnstone beating Killie & Ross County to keep both of them below us.

I agree we basically need a whole new team as this current lot would struggle to be mid table in the Championship if we were in that league right now. However that’s unrealistic to expect that in January so we need to address our weakest area, which is up front. It’s very fine margins in this league and whether we are involved in the relegation battle or actually relegated or not will likely come down to us picking up wins at the right times. For that to happen we need better attacking options.

You can definitely see KvV is hugely frustrated most weeks at the lack of support and service he gets and this absolutely must be addressed in January as a priority. There are other areas of the team that need improved but if we can start scoring more goals that may well be enough to keep us from the drop this season. Stevie Hammell needs to be as fully supported as he possibly can be in getting the funds to get recruits in during the window.

Yes I see what you mean and I’ve got a lot of patience for Stevie Hammell and would love nothing more than to see him succeed as Motherwell Manager. But we have a poor squad and our forward options outwith Kevin van Veen are hopeless. Because they either have limited ability or have limited match fitness, with Moult fitting into the latter category. I doubt there is a Motherwell fan out there who wouldn’t want to see Moult come good for us, but we can’t afford to keep looking backwards, as we do all too often as a club when it comes to ‘cult heroes’. We did it with McFadden when it was obvious that he was way past it and had little to nothing more to offer and he even managed to get into the position of player/Asst Manager. We need to look forward as a club and rather than re-sign the McFaddens, the Moults we should be looking to try and sign players who can offer us the same as those players did when they were at their prime, rather than trying to get a tune out of them when they are well past their best.