Ya Bezzer!

I'll moan the face off you after a terrible display or result but to moan and slate a guy when he's just in the door is unbelievable. The future of our club is in this guys hands so let's have a bit more positivity and support please, at least until such a time that we can actually judge Baraclough as a manager and that will be season 2015-16.

However the new manager is is the new manager. I don't have a favourite and I trust the club, with much more information than I have, to make the best choice. I just want it sorted out so we can try and move forward.

Depends what you mean by must win. It's not going to relegate us if we lose these matches but if we want don't want to be immersed in a desperate relegation struggle all season we probably do need to win these. Remember we have lost 7 out of the last 8 league matches and 8 out of 9 overall. If we lost these up coming matches then it would be 9 out of 10 (or 10 out of 11 overall) and not many teams do that and stay in the league because that is rock solid relegation form even at this stage in the season. I do think we have played much better since McCall stepped down and I'm going into these games with improved confidence in the team but Ross County are also improved and St. Mirren might get a lift with Craig being punted so I don't think these matches will be a stroll by any means. I'm hopeful we can do what we need to do though.

Maaskant. If you look at his record he's never been anywhere for very long and I don't think that bodes very well. There is something not right when someone wins a championship, as he did in Poland, and then is fired when the champagne in the bottles is still fizzing. He also seems like he's upset a few people along the way, is quite outspoken and likes a bit of cash to spend. From what I understand he's left clubs that had spent money and then found themselves in financial trouble. Is he the right guy? I don't know but from what little I have managed to glean I have suspicions that his appointment would be a risky one. van der Gaag. I was a massive fan of his as a player and he usually makes it into my all time Motherwell XI along side Brian Martin at the back. On the face of it he's a decent managerial record but you just wonder if his ideas of Motherwell are 1990's ideas rather than a more modern awareness of where we are now. Also he doesn't have much experience of fighting relegation, his coaching has been in a completely different footballing culture that won't be replicated at Motherwell and he seems to have long lasting health problems. Would he be able to take the strain? It's bad enough for supporters when we are at the wrong end of the table so is this a job for someone with a serious heart problem? Barraclough. I don't know much about him but managers coming out of the League of Ireland to Scotland don't exactly have a great record of success in recent times. On the other hand he'll be used to having no money and dealing with players that aren't technically gifted. He might also have 'affordable' player contacts in the English lower leagues and in Ireland.

Give us a break. You sound like a paranoiac. When the media get whiff of a story they run it, they don't hold it back for a time that is more appropriote for the subject. Yesterdays news was almost certainly leaked to the media by one of the three parties involved anyway.

From Wikipedia. "On 23 May 2012, Groningen announced that the 43-year-old Robert Maaskant would be the new manager. He signed a one year contract. There were a lot of controversies before the season had even started. Maaskant was unhappy with the new signings. Especially Serbian winger Filip Kostic. The season was a dissapointing one for the club. Despite finishing 7th, the style of play was far from encouraging, with mostly destructive football. The fans were far from pleased. Maaskant was also known for his controversial statements about certain players. All of which damaged Groningen's reputation as a quiet and decent club. FC Groningen announced on 11 March 2013 that it would not be renewing its 1-year contract with Maaskant."

Two things about that match. The Clydebank winger Joe Robertson had an absolute stormer and I was convinced he was going to be the next big thing. Didn't turn out that way for Joe. The polis moved the Motherwell buses to an obscure location so when we came out the ground we literally couldn't find the buses and we're pure shiteing we'd either get left behind or get a bollocking off Liz Mullen for holding the bus up!

Am I right? We have interviewed a short list of 6 potential managers and they are 1. Kenny Black 2. Nolberto Solano 3. Rob Maaskant 4. Mitchell van der Gaag 5. Kenny Shiels 6. Terry Butcher

Dan again obviously. Pointless stat Most Ya Bezzer! MotM awards in a season. 1. David Clarkson - 6 - 2007/08 2. Stephen Craigan - 5 - 2010/11 2. Keith Lasley - 5 - 2013/14 4. DAN TWARDZIK - 4 - 2014/15 4. Keith Lasley - 4 - 2010/11 4. Stevie Hammell - 4 - 2011/12 If he gets 7 this season I'll spray paint an egg cup silver and send it to him.

Have you seen St.Mirren's home record this season? P8 W0 D1 L7 F3 A13 GD -10. PTS 1pt from possible 24

I think this will be a harder match than St. Mirren away. County haven't been doing to bad, excluding Celtic, no one had thrashed them since Aberdeen way back in September. Since then if they have lost it has generally been a tight one. They have also scored 6 goals in their last 3 matches where as for us to score 6 goals you need to go back 9 games. That's a bit of a concern for me to be honest. We just need to dig the points out of this one by hook or by crook.

Butcher built the success that every other Motherwell manager since has benefited from. For me he's the next best manager we've had after Tommy McLean. He finished bottom with the club in administration and a team full of teenagers and a team budget of fuck all. Well so would 95% of all other managers. But would 95% of managers then built a team that then did well in cups, got a couple of Top 6 positions and was never in relegation danger again? Even in the poor season where there were mitigating circumstances he still managed some great results during that time v Hearts, Livingston, Rangers and Celtic that still stand out in the minds of fans that have seen hundreds of matches. Butcher was probably the first manager to get us competing year after year for a Top Six place. It was him that turned us from being a struggling team that occasionally had a decent season to being a constantly good team. Like I said, everything since then has been built on the base Butcher left. He also got us to a League Cup Final, a Scottish Cup Semi Final where we were the better team against Rangers and should have won (and if we had, we'd almost certainly won the cup) and another semi final that we lost after a bad individual mistake in the dying minutes. Describing that as poor, along with the league finishes from the base that Butcher started from is ridiculous. Personally I'd rather have someone new in but if Butcher comes in then I won't be too unhappy. Hibs? That relegation was coming for years. How many managers have gone there and failed? Hibs were a club in terminal decline long before Butcher ever cast his shadow over the place.

You know those two facts might be related! What pisses me off a bit though is when Ojamaa gives the ball away there is silence but when Vigurs gives the ball away 150 punters are out their seat giving him absolute pelters.

Pretty much. It was an odd match because Celtic missed at least 5 sitters but putting that aside it's come down to two mistakes from us that could have drawn or won the game for us. Maybe I'm being unfair because I'm down the other side of the ground but the Celtic goal looked like absolutely shocking defending from Ramsden. Then Erwin has missed a chance that looked harder to miss than score. First half overall was very poor. Celtic build everything from the back and we were giving van Dijk and Ambrose all the room in the world. We should have had Sutton and Ojamaa 'marking' them, especially Ambrose as he always has a mistake in him. However we defended far too deep, didn't press them and when we did get the ball there was no out and it went straight back to Celtic. Second half we pushed up and pressed them further up the field and guess what...Celtic started making mistakes and giving the ball away. Much better half and in the last ten minutes or so Celtic look pretty nervy about only having a 1-0 lead. I have to say though that I was a bit pissed off with the Simon Ramsden chants when he got sent off, the guy had a nightmare which has been pretty much par for the course from him this season. On the opposite side, David Ferguson came on and did quite well having not played so well on his debut. Will be interested to see some of our penalty claims in the TV pics. Looked like a hand ball in the first half from Ambrose and his reaction makes me think it should have been a penalty. I was a long way from the two penalty shouts in the second half so I won't pass judgment on them.

Sutton has been poor this season but who else has a scoring record against Celtic like he has? I can remember 3 straight off the top of my head.

Weren't St. Johnstone fans happy to see the back of him? Not to keen.

Mowbray's name is still cropping up in connection with much bigger clubs than ours - Leeds, Birmingham etc. I don't think there's much chance of him ending up at Fir Park.

He'd probably have Vietnam style flashbacks at certain SPFL grounds. "Tony...are you alright? Tony? TONY!"

I have a soft spot for Kenny Shiels. He's mental and a good laugh who made Scottish football a more entertaining place. Would I want him at my club though? For those complaining about the youth system at Motherwell, I think you'd have to take a serious look at him and weight that up with the other factors.

I've decided I'm wearing last seasons trainers tomorrow rather than the current ones that haven't been working out too well this season. Lucky shoes = 3 points in the bag.

I don't think it's a "really disturbing" trend. Post 2008 financial collapse our figures are fairly similar (5307, 5255, 5362, 5175). You might actually say they have held up quite well considering our biggest crowd of the season was always against Rangers and they haven't be around to boost the total. This seasons total will increase significantly over the weekend but even then it can't be meaningfully put against complete seasons although you have to suspect when it is all said and done it will be our lowest for quite some time. It will be interesting to see how many come out for the crucial matches before and after Christmas.

When did we ever beat Celtic when we expected to? We've as much chance of winning this next match as any against Celtic. To win against Celtic you need to get stuck in, you need a slice of luck and Celtic to have a bad day. Well we are surely due a slice of luck some time soon and Celtic might have picked up in the league recently but they are still inherently inconsistent and defensively vulnerable. We probably won't win or even get a draw but that would be the case at any time. Like I said, we have as much chance in this match as any against Celtic, a small but definite chance if various factors come into play. We can't control the luck and we can't control Celtic players performances but we can roll up the sleeves and give it a go and if we do, then I'll be happy. Now's the time when Motherwell supporters should be actually supporting the team and they are all drifting away or going into despondency mode. Folks need to give themselves a shake, there is a fight to be fought.

He didn't defend it but Watson (six one) is probably going to beat ZFA (five eight) for a header 9 times out of 10 anyway. If we wanted to avoid conceding that goal we didn't press Townesend and stood off him so he could put the cross in.

I agree. I'm actually quite heartened by the improvement since McCall left. It's been night and day but right now you just have to accept that teams like Inverness and Dundee Utd are a long way ahead of us and that quality and confidence is going to see them through. If we put in performances like we have done in the past 3 weeks or so I'm fairly confident we can win the important upcoming matches against the other strugglers. Contrast yesterday with the performances against Hamilton or Dundee where we came out the tunnel looking like we were already 5-0 down.

It was no surprise because Motherwell FC in their infinite wisdom took it off the season ticket and asked people to pay £15 on a Saturday in the run up to Christmas.