Ya Bezzer!

You mean we've not signed, with no money, good players in their prime years? I'm afraid finances dictate we need to catch good quality players either at the end or the beginning of their career so that's hardly a big surprise. There will be the occasion find like Ojamaa or Anier but in reality those players are hard to find.

Why? In terms of size of the club we are probably a Top Six team. Accies, Inverness, Ross County, Partick Thistle, St. Mirren, St.Johnstone all smaller sized clubs than us. Kilmarnock are roughly the same. I said it before but if all these teams are cutting their cloth then we should be aiming at a Top 6 place as a matter of course. If Rangers and Hibs re-establish themselves that puts us a few places further down again but we have as much in the way of resources as any other provincial professional club in the country. I've never seen Motherwell relegated in 30 years of going to Fir Park and although we escaped on technicalities a couple of times one of them was down to, hopefully, a one off event in administration and the other was in a 10 league team at a time when the 7 city clubs dominated Scottish football, something that isn't likely to happen again to quite the same degree. We are in big, big trouble this season and I think some people are underestimating how big that trouble is but if we escape relegation this term then I don't see why we should view ourselves as some sort of doomed club when half the teams get smaller attendances and have less money coming in. Everything being even Motherwell should be a mid league team in the SPFL and I don't see why if we are properly run on and off the field why that should change dramatically. I don't see why we "bare the hallmarks of a Championship level club" or why "we'll most likely be looking at it within the next few season". We've been shocking this season but our last poor season saw McGhee come in and turn the team around and bring us a long period of high finishes. That's what we should be aiming for instead of writing the club off as another Morton.

If you can bring in maybe 3 players and your best player this season has been the current goalkeeper I'd say you probably wouldn't be looking to get a new goalkeeper as a priority - even if you aren't that happy with him. Will be interesting to see if Cerny even starts matches at Hibs, they extended Mark Oxley's loan till the end of the season.

His last match was in a 5-1 humping off Dundee Utd.

St. Johnstone have only conceded 3 goals once this season and that was in August to Celtic. Looking through the results there is a bit of an ominous trend. St. Johnstone haven't lost away to a bottom six club this season - 4 wins and 2 draws.

Right now we ARE the worst team in the league. That's quite apparent just from looking at results. Contrast Ross County's defeat to Celtic against ours. Their heaviest defeat since way back in October is 3-1 to Inverness Caledonian. Our last 3-1 defeat was being held up as an improvement, which it was, on 0-4, 1-4, 0-5 defeats. St. Mirren have picked up 4 points out of 9 and that's with some absolutely atrocious refereeing that has cost them points and a fairly recent undeserved defeat against us. They are clearly a better team since Gary Teale took over whereas you couldn't exactly say Baraclough has had a similar effect with us. As for David Clarkson, he might have 0 goals in 8 but he also has 7 goals in 13 starts. If we'd had had someone come in and score 7 goals, not only would they be our top goalscorer this season, we probably wouldn't be in our current predicament. St. Johnstone have won 4 of the 6 matches in which James McFadden started, previous to his red card against Hamilton. That's only one less than we've won all season in 23 league matches. We aren't stick on for relegation right now we are not heading in the right way and if you had to make a call right now....

The standard of player we are being linked with is really starting to concern me

And some exclamation marks!!!!

Can't see us going with two up front away to United in our current form. Think Erwin will play wide.

My guess. Twardzik Kerr - Ramsden, McManus - Watt Law - Carswell, Pearson, Reid - Erwin Sutton Not exactly inspiring.

Pretty amazing that 4 of the top 10 pre war highest scoring strikers played for Motherwell - Hughie Ferguson, Bobby Ferrier, Willie Reid and Willie McFadyen and three of them scored virtually all their goals for us.

I agree that's how it looks right now but football as we know is a "funny old game". There was no reason to believe we'd beat Dundee Utd after 5 defeats on the trot. When a football team goes out on to the field you can never be entirely sure what you are going to get.

Baraclough said Hammell had an operation today and would be back in 4 weeks. Seemed quite positive that it would sort out his injury problems. Also said we had another signing in the pipeline but obviously didn't say who it was. Won't go through before the weekend though.

Only scored 6 in their last home match! Dundee Utd have only lost once at home this season as well. This is what winning coupons are made of. Also see United haven't kept a clean sheet since November. Can we score in this one?

Well I think it's pretty obvious, points win prizes as Brucie would say. It's our points tally, not our performances that will determine if we go down or no and just as well or we would already probably be relegated! Perhaps worth pointing out that St. Mirren have improved since Teale took over and put untried youngsters into the team like Mallan, Mclear, Lewis Morgan and Jack Baird.

I was writing in a professional capacity yesterday so I was in full flown literature mode. I'll try to make sure it doesn't seep through on to the boards again.

The absence of Hutchinson has been exaggerated, we conceded horrendous amounts of goals last season as well, we conceded 3 or more goals in 11 leagues matches last season. The difference was we were scoring goals. As for the team, I'm afraid it is the worst team in 30 years. Our performances this season have been abysmal in every regard, from heavy defeats, lack of goals, no quality play or performances, the defeated posture of most of the team, even most of the 17 points that we've accumulated were ill deserved. We've taken 10 points from St. Mirren and Ross County and deserved none of them on quality of play. Perhaps the last time I felt any where near as bleak about Motherwell was in the latter days of Alex McLeish and a lot of that team finished 2nd in a much more convincing style, in a much stronger league than those above. However that didn't make those seasons any easier or the performances any less terrible. You get judged on results, performances, even attitude and so far this season is by some distance the worst I've ever seen. The fact that we finished 2nd last time only underlines how badly those players have let us down this season and underperformed in a completely unacceptable way.

Lasley has missed two games and we've lost 8-0! As for the formation, it's just meaningless numbers if you don't play in lines. Every time I watch us we are a ragged mess with players out of position all over the place. I think its unfair to place the hopes and prayers of the club in the hands of inexperienced kids and it isn't propitious for their development in the future but maybe dropping some more experienced players for a couple of weeks might, and I stress might, be the kick up the arse some of them need. Having said that it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't make the slightest bit of difference.

The thing about relegation is that it would bring uncertainty to the future of the club. People say they find the Premiership boring and dull, the same old teams time after time, but that gives us a secure base to work off. With relegation that secure base would be gone and the future of the club would be very unpredictable. We might fall down the league like Dunfermline have, a team similar in stature to us who are now struggling to get out of the third tier. Or we might become a new Falkirk, a decent level team, usually challenging but never actually getting back into the top flight. Look at how long it took St. Mirren to get back into the top league and they have never really recovered as a club since, usually struggling at the bottom end. Alternatively we could go on and win the Championship and completely reinvigorate the club. There is no way of telling. In terms of budget I'd like to think that it wouldn't be cut drastically, at least for the first season in the Championship, and that we made a serious bid to get straight back up, otherwise I suspect Motherwell FC's brand would be much reduced and we might follow in the footsteps of some of the clubs mentioned above and others who were once a staple of the top league but who have since fallen into obscurity and hard times.

Tweedledum and tweedledee. Replacing one with the other won't make the slightest bit of difference.

Do you honestly think van der Gaag or anyone else would have changed that? This is a beaten team and has been since before McCall left, that's WHY he left. I'm afraid a leopard doesn't change its spots. It's now January and this team has had ample time to turn its fortunes around under various managers. I'm afraid it's not likely to happen now. We just have to cross our fingers and hope we can scrap enough ill deserved points between now and the end of the season to stay out of the bottom 2 positions and cling to the forlorn belief that two other teams are worse than the worst Motherwell team I have seen in 30 years. Otherwise this is a relegated team and if you've been watching them you'd have known that as far back as October when Dundee, Hamilton and Partick thrashed us three weeks on the trot. Three or four players in would only bring some welcome false hope that they could make up for the error prone, gutless pity party of the rest of the squad. But in the end, it's not going to get better until this team is completely atomized and cast to the wind. A dead cat is a dead cat, no matter how much voltage to blast into it, it ain't coming back to life.

First of all we haven't produced a player that was sellable asset since Mark McGhee was manager (Murphy, Hutchinson) so there is a problem right there, we just don't produce players and its been pretty clear under McCall that the youth system wasn't really deemed to be of any importance. Secondly, we've spent a lot of cash on expensive players from down south that have very little sell on potential. No disrespect to guys like Porter, Jennings, Humphrey, Coke etc but they are not players who are going to attract the attention of big paying clubs down south, otherwise they would not have ended up at Motherwell for nowt! These were all good players for us but they are essentially journey men who will float around unfashionable lower league clubs for the whole of their careers. Dundee Utd and recently other clubs have got it right. Bring young players in from the lower Scottish leagues and then sell them on. Often these guys have a lot more experience of first team football at an early age and usually go on to out perform Premiership level youth players who stagnate from not getting game time at the top level. Take someone like Erwin. He's nearly 21 but until this season had 11 senior appearances on loan at Brechin. Hendrie at Accies, despite being almost a year younger, has over 100 senior appearances. These young lower division players are also cheaper in wages than bring up players from England and have the potential to sell on for decent fees. Buying clubs are not going to spend cash on our level of footballer unless they have the potential to improve and to have the potential to improve they need to be more or less under 21 years of age. We need to start blooding young players at 17 or 18 years or age and we should be looking for players of under 21 years of age in the lower divisions.

I'm a Vigurs fan as well but let's step into his shoes right now. If you were Vigurs would you sign a new contract with Motherwell FC, given recent circumstances? I think you'd need to be a real hardcore fan to sign on the dotted line without having a good hard look at your options.

I'm guessing he's proffering it as an opinion rather than a fact.

Well Hammell has hardly missed a match in 15 years and he's been out most of the season. You can't really account for these things.