weeyin

Always good to have a Plan B.

Pity about having Lennon as a manager, but also pleased to see Ox and Dunfermline get to the final. Always enjoyed my trips to East End Park.

Is it from St Mirren?

Clarke's tactics would destroy every bit of football in our players.

I was with you until the last sentence.

Sometimes players just aren't a good fit - even good ones. Paul Pogba at Man U is an extreme example. There can be many reasons, but if AP is enjoying being back home and playing well then good luck to him.

Interesting article about the demise of the Number 9 - and it's not just a Motherwell problem: Where have all the No 9s gone? Why has the striker become a dying breed? Can anything be done to arrest the decline? “It’s no longer a sexy position,” says Emile Heskey, a traditional centre-forward who won 62 England caps. He grew up watching strikers such as Cyrille Regis and Gary Lineker. “Now it’s possession-based, the striker generally doesn’t get involved in play. The striker’s job, especially in the buildup, is to create space for the No 10 or the two 8s or the two 10s or the wingers.” The redefinition of the No 9 role can be traced, in part, to José Mourinho’s arrival at Chelsea in 2004 and his success with a solitary striker in a 4-2-3-1. Pep Guardiola went further, reimagining football without a striker altogether. At Barcelona he created majestic football with Lionel Messi as a false 9: a central forward who drops deeper. On the way to the 2020-21 Champions League final, Guardiola even deployed two false 9s for Manchester City. Erling Haaland remains the modern outlier clinging to a bygone era, but even he has adapted in recent seasons, bending to Pep Guardiola’s will. The shift has changed the entire landscape of training and youth teams. René Meulensteen recalls doing 15-30 minutes of finishing work with strikers every day during his time under Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United from 2007-2013. Now, he says, beyond goalkeeping, training has become far more generalised. More matches at elite level and a greater emphasis on strength and conditioning have squeezed time on training pitches, where possession is prioritised. Strikers “don’t get developed, it’s as simple as that”, Meulensteen told the Sacked podcast. “Everybody does the same thing. There needs to be much more specialist training.”

When you're a Gen Xer like me, the Millennial, Gen Z and Gen Alpha marketing all feels like this.

It does matter, though, because when the pool is small there is no incentive to improve. With a larger pool, there might be some officials who take action to improve so they can replace the clueless refs in the top games.

I said earlier in the season that JT has not convinced me, despite his goals this season. This is one of the reasons.

When you take try and take out the subjectivity, you end up with the current hand ball rules. There are multiple issues that need to be dealt with, from refs not understanding the game to players being coached to cheat. One of the biggest challenges is the small pool of available talent and how to address that.

I don't think there's that many additonal officials needed for VAR. I think the biggest problem is the lack of people who want to be refs means there is a small pool. What we are seeing is literally the best we have available.

What's worse than losing 3 goals in 30 minutes at Tynecastle to drop 2 points?... Take your pick.

Also true.

Off the ball blocking happens more often in football these days than it does in rugby.

You can have Just or Watt for £5M - the other one stays.

in his presser this week, Jens mentioned he had a lot of input into the project, so I'm assuming it meets his needs.

Certainly not how I've used a sauna in the past.

Are saunas still a thing for footballers, or has the sports science moved on from that? I quite like the look of the plans and have zero concerns it doesn't look like a 5 star resort.

That's the spirit!

Aye, I was going to say something similar. As much as I despise the OF, it's the TV companies that the SPFL and SFA care about rather than those 2 clubs. Especially at this stage of the season.

That's not a con. That's proper football.

We tried that in 1991 I seem to recall. If we beat Rangers by 3 clear goals in our second last league game, it meant Aberdeen only needed a draw in their last game at Ibrox to win the league. We did our part, then Aberdeen bottled it.

I have 100% confident that our current board is on top of things when it comes to trying to secure our young prospects. I'm in 100% agreement about the many examples that have left too soon. I have close to 0% confidence that a youngster getting bad advice from agents and family will be smart enough to ignore it.

As always, we can't force anyone to sign if they don't want to.