weeyin

Did you get kicked off for calling it a boat?

We need to follow the same recruitment strategy as last summer.

They could beat us 4 - 0 and I still wouldn't be embarrassed. You need to try and separate other people playing football from your own self-esteem.

Most of the summer leagues are trying to avoid their unplayable winters. Ireland is the exception, but they wanted less competition from their more popular sports. I remember on a different thread I put together a list of all the challenges of playing a 10+ month season with off-season being the winter. I won't repeat them all in this thread, but a big one is the ever-expanding Euros and World Cups taking place every other summer. So teams with international players are going to be deprived of key team members for 5 or 6 weeks in alternate years. If the intent is to be more competitive in Europe, the Conference League for example, has ties scheduled in December and February. The Europa League has ties scheduled in December, January & February. So any level of success would mean a 12 month season including winter. Logistically it might be easier if there were less games in our season, but I don't see clubs voting for that either.

It's being broadcast by SolidSport apparently. Not familiar with which countries they operate in, or if that means it might also be on MotherwellTV, but it might help locate a stream. https://solidsport.com/motherwellfc/games/g/b3deb2au EDIT: I just created an account on there, and it says I can purchase the game for 12 quid. But no hint to any geo-restrictions.

Don't like.

There's all sorts of challenges that would need to be overcome in Scotland with a 10+ month season. From pitch repair and remediation in months where the grass doesn't grow to preseason in mid-winter. That, however, is for a different thread.

I'm on board in theory with the new stadium idea, I'd really want to see the numbers, though. I like the idea of having office space, conference and event facilities etc. for rent, but we'd need to approach the finances of that pretty conservatively so we don't end up with, to mix my metaphors, a money pit of a white elephant.

I'm OK if we even just keep it close at home, because I think we'll be much improved for the 2nd leg. Depending on the exact fitness of some of our squad, I think we should be good.

Grizzly's jokes starting to spread like a virus here.

Having 2 left backs in the squad might be a new, bold experiment from Alfred. (Of course, Wilson might be second choice, but I suspect he might be out on loan again soon).

Watt was playing for Burton Albion at the same time as Williams. I wonder if he shared some inside info.

I think we'll win the second leg against HB. What we do in the first leg is they key.

Lack of involvement in what? 90% of any player's professional life is training. Even more than that pre-season. If he'd picked up an injury while scoring his second goal in a competitive match, I'd be much more surprised.

I predict 2 more signings before the HB game, both on the subs bench. Just guessing, not ITK.

I thought the POD seat upgrades were a UEFA requirement for the Euro games. I don't think we'd have been able to build a new stadium by next week.

That works for me. I'm OK with white too.

I'm sure everybody at the club is aware of where the gaps in the team are, who is likely to be leaving, the extent of the injuries we have, and who our targets are. It's literally their job, and their continued employment depends on it. Unfortunately, the one thing we can't control as much as we like is the timing of the signings. The window not closing until September doesn't help, and the World Cup has slowed business down a bit too. While it would be ideal to have a complete squad in the middle of July, in today's game that is unrealistic. If SOD, JK and JT hadn't been injured, we'd probably be more comfortable heading into the HB game, but these things happen and we just need to deal with it.

I agree, but that's a different argument. I don't think there are any teams in our division where we need a change kit, and I'm pretty sure we have played all of them at one time with neither side changing. If we are going down the change kit route, however, to avoid a "clash" then sticking with the same major colours in the away shirt seems pointless.

You're making my point here. What managers say to the media who love to twist everything and try and concoct controversial stories, and what managers say to players behind closed doors are two different things. Prime example, JBA discussing his tactic for targeting Hanley. You could write the script for every post-match these days. One for the good games and one for the bad games. They've all attended the same training on that score, so it tends to pretty meaningless. The only thing that matters is how the team is performing, and no amount of talking with Scottish journalists changes that.

Alfred seems very upbeat. I can imagine that win, lose or draw, his media interviews are always going to accentuate the positive and focus on the progress we make. That will definitely annoy about 50% of our fans.

The good thing is that the window is open until 1st September. The bad thing is that most leagues start before then, although ours is earlier than many. So you don't really get a chance to assess the squad for the season until a few games in. Just another reason to dislike the window idea, or at least its timing.

Which one would we wear against Hearts?

Lucky it's just a friendly then.