Ya Bezzer!

To be fair Airdrie fans have been pretty negative about the whole team. Some were saying it was the worst Airdrie team ever.

Mackin was getting slated by Airdrie supporters last season but he did hit a bit of form in the last couple of weeks with goals against Dunfermline and Ayr Utd (I saw the Dunfermline one and it was a nice goal, well taken) and of course then scoring in the Youth Cup Final. He is still only 19 so he's maybe still got a year or two to develop but he needs to really knuckle down this season if he wants to make it.

You love that spreadsheet don't you? Can't stop mentioning it. I'll make a special one just for you next season.

3 of his 5 goals were against St. Mirren and they aren't in the league anymore.

I thought Hall did very well last season and was fully worthy of his first team place. Obviously Brighton thought so too. Difficult for any player to turn down that opportunity, I would have been more upset about it if he had gone to Hibs or another Scottish club as was rumoured. Whether it works out for him remains to be seen but I know he'll be getting paid a lot more than me! Our youth set up should be there to generate cash for the club so I don't really have a problem with the club selling although its a blow for the first team if we are losing good players but that's something we'll just have to get used to if we want to remain in business. Chris Cadden will be next so if this is the kind of thing that upsets you you better prepare yourself.

Have to say I'm a bit skeptical about this. For me Hutchison could easily step into an Aberdeen side, a Hearts side, a Rangers side, a Hibs side. It's well known Thistle have one of the lowest budgets in the league and there are other provincial sides that will pay higher wages - Dundee or Ross County for example. If Hutchison was available and considering coming back to Scottish football I'm sure there would be a lot more interest from better financed teams.

If he goes he'll be joining an English premier league team's youth set up. Same as we signed various other people like Ben Hall from others and they go into our youths. Premier League youth team players come up here on loan all the time and a lot of them aren't good enough. Anyone remember the huge impact Riccardo Calder, Kyle Knoyle, Danny Bachmann and Luke Conlan made last season? Even the much vaunted Islam Feruz flopped at Hibs last term. And funnily enough we shot up the league when Grimshaw left to sign for Preston (never kicking a ball) and Cadden came in.

Yeah but there is short term gain against long term success. He was getting games and experience here. If he doesn't get that at which other club he goes to (probably one with more resources than us, and therefore bigger playing squads and better players) then he will go backwards. There's thousands of former professional footballers out there with no club or playing part time or low level football because they disappeared out the picture.

A mistake by Hall I think but £100K generated by youth development is always welcome.

Brill just spent a season sitting on his arse at Inverness. Given that McGhee has already said Samson will be the no.1 it seems a strange one for Brill to sign on here, you'd have thought he would be looking for games as he's generally been a first choice keeper over his career.

I'm not trembling. Who said I was trembling? Stick to what I said. I said it was the toughest possible tie in the group outside the Rangers match. Stranraer away is a more difficult task than Stranraer at home. Also tell me all about Stranraer? Stranraer went out the League Cup last season to a 2nd half OG away at Easter Road. A narrower defeat than Dundee Utd and Aberdeen took on the same ground in the same competition. They missed out promotion to the Championship narrowly two seasons in a row, they are closer in quality to Morton than they are Annan or East Stirling. It's not even close. Should we beat them home or away - yes, but it's a game that has more potential for an upset because we are playing the next best team in the ground on their own patch. The original reply was what was the best fixtures we could get, well all I'm saying is these weren't - Stranraer at home, Annan and East Stirling and then Rangers at home would have been better fixtures.

Go back, quote the post and then highlight anything you disagree with.

Disagree. The trickiest possible tie that we could have got outside Rangers was Stranraer away. And that's what we got. Meanwhile Rangers play Stranraer at Ibrox, a much easier tie for them. Stranraer have been a decent outfit over the past couple of seasons and will be one of the favourites to go up to the Championship next season. The trip to Stairs Park is the one in the group were you'd think maybe the 'big' team could drop the points. If we lose in the first match we are basically looking for a runners up spot for the rest of the group because it's extremely unlikely Rangers will drop any other points. Even if we beat Rangers we still have the most difficult remaining tie in the group and who knows the draw/penalty kicks scenario might come into play.

"A Celtic source however has told STV that the figure is not accurate and only reflects total staff costs, rather than a figure which reflects solely player wages." To be honest I'm inclined to agree with the Celtic source. I think it's very unlikely that the average Celtic player is earning almost £20,000 a week. Perhaps their top earners like Virgil van Dijk last season or Scott Brown, Commons etc will be around that figure but more likely most first team players will be on significantly less. 40,50, 60% less I'd reckon.

It's highly unlikely anyone is going to give us anything for Ainsworth but if we could move him on I wouldn't be against that. I think we've probably seen the best of him and he just didn't look right all of last season. He did a good job for us, scored a few goals, set up a few as well but we are in a different era now. Dom Thomas also needs to move up a spot in my opinion or we risk wasting a player with potential. He needs more game time than he's been getting.

You think it was a shite competition because Motherwell got knocked out of it every year. Not a shite competition overall - do you honestly think it was a bad thing for Scottish football when Kilmarnock beat Celtic or St. Mirren won 3-2 v Hearts. Or Ross County beating Hibs in the last minute this year? Please spell out what you don't like about a straight knock out cup competition. What's so bad about the actual format? Maybe you'll think differently when if go out the cup on goal difference because we didn't score enough goals against Annan.

Let's be quite honest about this. The question over Moore is this - Is he good enough for Motherwell? Not, will he be sold on. Barring something incredible happening we know he's not. He's got a year to prove he can cut it in the Premiership, anything more would have been a waste of the limited monies we have now, have you not heard about the budget cuts?

Like I said - a carve up. The fact that the fixtures weren't decided before the draw like just about every other group draw tells you everything. Back to the dark, smokey room with the SPFL, sponsors and TV companies to decide who plays who where. The competition has been taken and used to maximize income for clubs over sporting integrity. Ross County, Kilmarnock, St. Mirren, Aberdeen and Hibs had all won it in the last ten years, there was no reason to change it, it was a good competition and probably provincial clubs best chance of winning a major trophy.

Cos its pretty obvious what's happened. Lower league clubs take a guaranteed pay off in the form of group stages while big clubs more or less guarantee progression. It's a carve up, a sort of dishrag Champions League.

It's new it must be good. No. It's plainly drawn out, expensive and shite. Will also reduce the chance of bigger teams being eliminated in the early stages which is a big part of cup football. Annan beat Hamilton last season, do you think they would do it over 4 matches?

Not a fan. The League Cup struggles to get attendances as it is so their solution is more games with less at stake. Just fucking stupid. Cup football should be knock out football. I also assume that these matches won't be on the season ticket and therefore represent more expense for the fans. Cynical money grab rather than progressive reform?

I was a big fan of Jamie Murphy but I think you'd have to say that David Goodwillie came into the Dundee Utd team as a more fully developed player. He made an impact almost straight away while It took Murphy quite a number of seasons to build up his confidence. He was also physically frailer and there was always a degree of confusion as to what his best position was - was he a forward, a winger, a midfielder? He settled into the wing left position but again it took a while for that to happen, there was no such confusion with David Goodwillie. Two more things, David Goodwillie was a full international as a Dundee Utd player, Murphy still doesn't have a cap and that effects your market value, secondly Dundee Utd got a great price for him because there will multiple big money clubs all interested in him and his signature turned into an auction. Again, that didn't happen with Murphy.

Well strictly speaking his great save in the last minute of extra time from Malpas did win us the cup but anyway....

What did I get wrong? Looks OK as far as I can see. Do you mean they aren't in numerical order? Squad numbers are in numerical order as of the first day of the season after which I need to add other players on at the end due to formula issues. EDIT : Oh, I see on the player directory. Must have missed that column was I was putting them in alphabetical order. Fixed it.

It's that time of year. All the results, attendances, scorers, line ups, booking and red cards, referees, weekly league positions, form, player appearances and goals for Motherwell and all the other Premiership and Championship clubs. Also an A-Z player directory for all Premiership and Championship players with date of birth, position, squad numbers, clubs, transfer and loans, season stats and career stats. I also did SPFL League 1 and League 2 this year, I would imagine there would be less interest in those but if anyone wants that workbook just PM me. It's 99.75% done but I just need to check a few things, mainly players with the same surname, playing for the same team. It would be easier if they used squad numbers in the bottom two leagues but they don't. The spreadsheet was made in Excel 2014 xlsx format, not sure how it will appear in xls format or in any other spreadsheet software but I'll stick a xls format link if anyone needs it. xlsx format (Excel 07 - ) http://www.filedropper.com/spfl20152016premchami_3 xls format (Excel 97 - 03) http://www.filedropper.com/spfl20152016premchamii