sinjy

I know a few lapsed Well fans mostly in the 50, 60, 70 age group. Lots had season tickets in the past. Now they pay their Sky subscription – about £500 is it? Not much more than a centre stand season ticket for 20 games at Fir Park. For that they get unlimited football. They see stars from all over the world and get to compare the standard at Fir Park when they watch us in our five or six televised games. Comparing what they see with the rest of world football does not encourage them back. In the sixties seventies and eighties if you wanted to see the big stars you had to go to the game. I remember going to Hampden in 1965 to see Brazil and Pele play Scotland. Now Messi and the rest are in our living rooms every week. Yet the clubs want people to pay £20 plus to watch our average players. TV has killed live football. Who in their right mind would travel from Edinburgh last Tuesday when the roads were bad it was minus 5 it cost £22 to get in and you could have stayed at home or went to you local spent a tenner on three pints and been warm and got a better view of the controversial incidents. I don’t think the standard is any worse than it was 10, 20, years ago. It is just that we see all the top players now on TV and expect Scottish football to be as good.

I am not overly impressed with any of the usual suspects mentioned here. Hughes is tactically naïve. Collins will divide the dressing room. McGlynn has built his success on signing Hearts youngsters and rejects. I suspect he will not have the contacts to progress us. Calderwood has built his success on bigger budgets than we will give him. Look at the state Dunfermline are in now. McCall failed at Bradford but no doubt will be punted by some in the media due to his Ibrox connections. If it was to be any of these I would go for Calderwood only because he has shown that he can alter games with his tactical changes. What will get me interested will be an appointment of someone we have not heard of. McGhee, Gannon and Brown were all different. There appointments were refreshing and had us all guessing what their approach would be. And credit to Boyle I thought they were all successful. ( the football in McGhee's first season was some of the best I have seen and Gannon made some great signings)

For me the problems really started at the Accies game. They scored in 20 miniutes and then proceeded to stop any form of entertainment by pretending to be injured and time wasting. Then we had Mr Sincerity himself shafting us. I am sure some of the tech wizards could put up interviews where he said he did not need a contract as he was here till Motherwell did not want him, he was loving it so much and it was his last job in football. Then we had last night. One team, us, clearly hadn’t played for weeks, the other were a big physical lot who set out to bully us off the park. There was no skill on show. Then there was the ref. In 50 years of watching football it’s the first time I’ve seen a player tackling someone taking a free kick getting away with it. The ref had no clue and as for the East Stand linesman he looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. For me football is a habit. I used to go to 90% of away games. Then I stopped going to Aberdeen, then Ibrox and Parkhead, then Dundee became too far.Last season I went to one away game, Hamilton. Now my other half asks during the week are Motherwell at home this week. She knows that if they are away we will do something together. For the first time in 20 years I am considering not buying a season ticket next year. If I don’t I know the habit will fall away and I will become another lapsed supporter.