Ya Bezzer!

Just on the misplaced passes yesterday. It'll be interesting to see how we deal with winter pitches with this style of football. Its inevitable passes are going to go astray. I mean Fir Park has a great surface but winter means it will inevitably degrade even if it's not that obvious to the eye.

OK, everyone knows we are 6 clean sheets in a row. But I was looking at our home record and we've only conceded against Falkirk in the last seven home matches going back all the way to September. Aberdeen 2-0 Falkirk 1-2 Dundee United 2-0 Hibernian 2-0 Hearts 0-0 Livingston 3-0 Dundee 1-0.

The referees are fucking horrific. They literally can't even walk or run about properly. I've never seen referees get in the way, block off passes, bump into players, get hit with the ball and all that sort of stuff more than this season. Never mind making decisions. There was one game earlier in the season when the absolute dumpling in the middle got hit with the ball about 5 times and had to restart the game every time. I don't know what sort of training they do on positioning, by the looks of it none. It's like the first thing on the application form you need to tick is 'Are you a bumbling lummox.' They used to say Gerald Ford couldn't chew gum and walk at the same time, our refs are right up there. And then every week there are absolutely abysmal VAR decisions. I mean look at St Mirren's disallowed goal yesterday or the Ranger hand ball incidents. Who looks at those on a video loop and makes those decisions?

We'll need to defend set pieces. That's a big part of their game right now.

Stephen Welsh is the best defender we've had at the club for ages. And he had a bandage round his head like an olden days centre back. MotM/

Well we got there eventually. Looked like it was going to be one of those games but even though we weren't at our best today and we definitely missed Maswanhise we still created enough chances to comfortably win the game. For me Said is far superior to Regan-Cook but maybe Said is just one of those players who's better coming off the bench. Either way we struggled in the final third first half but still should have gone in 1-0 up. Second half it was almost constant pressure on the Dundee box without anything coming off, some poor final ball, poor finishing and a few unlucky breaks. Maybe it was lucky we scored so late in the game cos Dundee looked like a different team after the goal and instead of grimly trying to hang on looked like a real threat. However I thought McGinn and especially Welsh were absolutely fantastic today.

I've not actually put in today's appearance yet so it's actually 22 (9) 11. I dunno if that strengthens your case slightly!

Stam's actual stats in a Motherwell shirt for league games are 21 (9) 11 Not really that bad. All his goals last season came from open play and penalties still need to be scored. He has missed chances but strikers will always miss chances. You'd like him to be scoring more, especially this season but I do think there is something in the style of play argument. And again 11 goals off 21 starts is really not that bad.

Created a lot of chances without really looking like adding to the score. Livingston have looked like they could nick something at times so we need to try and finish the game by getting another goal or two.

I know it’s an intensive period of the season but there has been too many personnel changes match to match. I feel like it’s affected our recent performances. Another 7 today. Let’s hope we can find some fluidity.

Hearts were a more aggressive and more physical side than Hibs were and because of that sometimes our passing wasn't as slick as it was on Tuesday but I thought over all it was another good performance and we probably deserved the 3 points. Two disallowed goals and their keeper has made 3 or 4 smart saves. Hearts didn't create much and when we were under pressure I thought we defended really well. Overall you'll take 4 points out of 6 against the teams sitting 1st and 3rd in the league but the performances have been excellent and we've been the better team both times.

I think that's three goal line clearances in a row now! 🤣

I think one of the important things going forward now is how other teams adapt to our style of play when we start playing them for the second or third time in the season. We've been a novelty up to now but usually it's harder to maintain a successful style over a full season when the opposition has experience against us and starts looking to negate our set up and tactics. I'd also say that we are heavily dependent on Maswanhise for goals and generally getting behind the defensive line.

Top notch. For me that was our best performance of the season, at least that I've seen. A goal in the second half would have topped it off but other than that we were absolutely fantastic. Brilliant in possession, defended well when we had to, didn't lose composure when Hibs tried to press us high up the pitch, some great bits of skill from Said, game management was excellent, we just looked like a team that didn't have any weaknesses and that with perhaps not an optimum starting XI. And kinda on that subject, I thought Oscar Priestman was absolutely fantastic tonight. Got to say he hadn't shown me much in his sub appearances but I thought he was our best player tonight coming in for his starting debut.

Hibs have scored 2 or more goals in 5 out of 6 of their previous matches. We've scored in our last 10 league matches. Gotta be a 0-0 then!

It doesn't matter what style of football you play fans like to moan. Even more so these days when pretty much everything is infused with a sense of entitlement. We put in a better performance against a better team in last year's semi final and the knives came out. It shouldn't surprise anyone. Right now we are Top 6 and got to a semi final. We are playing the best football since David Turnbull was in the side, which is 5 or 6 years ago now. The manager has less than 20 games in charge and we are a work in progress. There is areas we need to improve in but since football perfection can't be achieved by teams spending half a billion in the close season, why don't we just accept that and let the manager try to improve in those areas.

Last night I didn't want to go down the 'the ref was bad' route but..... How bad was Don Robertson in this match? There first goal comes directly from a refereeing mistake and he was just abysmal the whole match.

There was 21,277. Bigger than the attendance limit at Tynecastle, or Easter Road. No issue for me from an atmosphere point of view. As a proportion of seats there are probably as many empty ones at Fir Park most of the time.

As I’ve said before I don’t really agree with the ‘no cutting edge’ theory, we’ve scored plenty goals for a team with no cutting edge. Although there may be an issue with the centre forward though. For large parts of the game we were the better team but St Mirren were more composed, when we looked nervy. Did all the street smarts and dark arts better than us, were physically stronger and gave us a severe lesson in finishing as well as defending. We weren’t at our best in any area of the pitch today but the big issue was defensively. At 2-1 we should be right back in the match with 10 to play. Instead we instantly concede a trash goal. We really need to defend better cos asking for a cutting edge that scores 3 or 4 goals is a big, big ask.

We’ve played alright but St Mirren have given us a lesson in finishing.

Celtic have spent about £16 million on Trusty and Nawrocki. I know Nawrocki is out on loan also but you assume they would be the priority.

Quietly confident the likes of Longelo, Maswanhise and Said can do something on the wide open steppe. Also the chips are good at Hampden.

I saw that. Hopefully there isn't hundreds of folk with the same issue.

Only if my ticket actually appears in the app!

I thought I posted at half time but apparently not. We totally dominated possession in the first half but I honestly thought it was a snooze fest. Luckily we got the goal just before HT. Longelo coming a few minutes before gave us so much more attacking impetus. Second half was much more enjoyable even though Dundee Utd put us under pressure at times. The game opened up and we had the space to play into and sudden we looked a lot more threatening even though our dominance of the ball was gone. Thought we defended well tonight, although we got a stroke of luck when Dundee Utd hit the post when they should have scored. Thought going into these two games we needed 4 points just to steady us a bit and we've taken 6 so that's great. We've also kept a clean sheet and extended our lead in the second half when earlier in the season teams we're pegging us back. Pretty happy.