MJC

Well that was disappointing but we can’t complain about losing. The positive from today was a very good goal which was well set up and well taken. The negatives unfortunately were all too common. Bullied in midfield and weak defensively. We were inviting pressure onto our backline from the minute we went ahead and that was always going to end badly. Results and performances like that are going to happen, that’s something we are just going to have to accept going forward with the current squad we have. We just need to pick up as many points against our ‘peers’ as we can to avoid relegation/the playoffs this season.

Been coming unfortunately.

We need a second here, if we get that then we’ll win.

Superb pass from Spittal and a really good finish.

I notice our next two games against them are after scheduled European matches on the Thursday night so both will be moved to the Sunday.

If he can play left back and is a genuine left sided player then you’d like to think this is an improvement on what we’ve got. With Carroll and McGinley injured, having to rely on right footed S’OD as our first choice left back wasn’t an enticing prospect. Hopefully this lad will help solve that issue.

Matt Penney confirmed on loan from Ipswich. I know nothing about him but the official sites description would suggest he is a left back or can at least play in that position. Welcome to our club Matt.

Thoughts with you all. Fingers crossed he turns up safe and well soon.

I reckon if Snodgrass was going to sign for us he’d have done it by now. I know, I know the transfer window doesn’t shut until the end of the month but this has been rumbling away in the background for about a week now and there has supposedly been some sort of offer made to him. This sounds like his agent trying to engineer more offers from ‘bigger’ clubs in my opinion.

0-0 is a good shout in this one I think. Two sides that lack attacking quality cancelling each other out.

That’s my feelings about VAR too. Every single goal you score you are going to be diluting your celebrations to an extent to wait to see if it’s actually going to stand. Even yesterday our goal was a penalty, but Efford had encroached into the box before van Veen actually struck the ball, so in that scenario VAR would have intervened and ordered a re-take. Obviously it’s going to be a good feeling/a good GIRUY to the opposition if the decision goes our way, but that definitely takes some of the enjoyment out of the game.

That was a typical Livi game but I thought we actually managed the game well and matched up to their physicality. We lack that creative spark though and that will cause us problems if we don’t address this, though we looked better when Efford & Morris came on. KvV put himself about well in the 2nd half and took his penalty really well. 3 goals already this season. Absolutely delighted for Hammell to get the win in what was his first official home game as manager and the support as a whole stayed to show their appreciation at the end. Three wins in less than a month. It took us nearly five months to manage that in the second half of last season!

The tannoy not working due to a lightning strike. That has got to be the most ‘Motherwell thing’ ever.

McKinstry on the bench today.

He’ll score 20+ goals for that Hearts team this season.

Listening to Hammell’s take on games before and after has definitely been a breath of fresh air compared to the “black is white” guff that Alexander came out with most weeks However we shouldn’t get carried away. Talk of top six with this squad is wildly optimistic unless we somehow get the same amount of fortune we good last year.

I wasn’t suggesting we should have tried to sign Shankland, I know he is way out of our price budget. I was more replying to the above posts on a few weeks back saying that they didn’t rate him. He will do very well for Hearts in the domestic game up here.

On a non-Motherwell issue, Lawrence Shankland has now scored three goals in his first few(don’t know how many exactly) appearances for Hearts including a penalty tonight to put them 1-0 up against Zurich in Europe(though as I’m typing they’ve just been pulled back level). I stand by what I said, Shankland will do very well for Hearts this season. A proper ‘goal machine’ and someone who will get plenty of goals to go down in Gorgie folklore.

Well only time will tell and it would be something of the ‘fairytale’ stuff if I was and this team under Stevie Hammell finished top 6/qualified for Europe this season.

I’m not going to argue about my contention that we were lucky last season, I think we were. Any team that wins three league matches between December and May, scrapes draws thanks to last minute equalisers and plays as poorly as we did in that spell yet still qualifies for Europe is lucky. I’m not really bothered about the sides that finished below us and whether they were ‘lucky’ or ‘unlucky’. From what I saw of my team last season we were lucky to qualify for Europe, end of story. Anyway last season is now, thankfully, behind us and we can look ahead to this one with a new manager in place. It will not be plain sailing, anything but and imo anyone who thinks this team will be challenging for top six and Europe again is dreaming. If we avoid relegation and play something better in the way of football than we did last season then that will be good enough for me. With a new, inexperienced manager in charge having inherited what he did on the eve of the season, the I think it’s downright wild to expect more than that.

Finishing top six last season was down to a combination of sheer luck and other sides around us cutting their own throats. Sheer luck with us having Tony Watt’s goals in the first half of the season to get us results that we weren’t able to get in the second half. Other sides cutting their own throats with us scraping last minute levellers at St.Mirren and Livingston and the rest basically showing no consistency. A team playing as poorly as we did and winning only three league matches from Boxing Day and the end of the season yet qualifying for Europe is down to luck, nothing will convince me otherwise.

I think it’s downright unrealistic to expect this team to be finishing top six this season. We have an inexperienced manager in his first ever managerial appointment who has inherited a largely poor squad from the previous regime. There will be ups and downs this season and while there are most definitely reasons for optimism for us since emptying/mutually consenting Alexander and the Stuart McKinstry loan which is certainly something to be optimistic about, we still have the majority of the team that played so poorly last season. For me Stevie Hammell gets a ‘free pass’ this season, regardless of what happens, even if the worst happened and we were relegated. I’m not saying that I think we will be but it’s definitely a possibility and if it happens then that’s on the board for allowing Alexander to sign some of the absolute dross that he did and that that same dross that won three league matches in 2022 last season would do for us going into this one. But as I said, there is definitely cause for optimism. Certainly more than there was this time last month because we were basically sleep walking into the lower leagues with Alexander in charge.

If we win this one then we will have won as many league matches in less than a month than we won under Alexander from December ‘21 until May ‘22. It’ll be tight and it’ll be scrappy but I think we’ll shade it 2-1.

Likewise, this is an exciting signing and not just because of his potential but because we are going to get to see one of our academy graduates grace our first team this season. One of the most frustrating thing in modern day football for clubs our size is that we lose our best young talent without them ever playing a game for us. I am genuinely looking forward to seeing McKinstry play for us.

McKinstry confirmed by club Twitter. Welcome home Stuart.