Ya Bezzer!

We need to start looking at this as won 1, lost 1. So far Black has done better than expected to be honest.

Inverness - You can't expect to go up to Inverness and win at any time but especially not when they have been very good and are undefeated at home and we have been very poor. If you think we should have won yesterday when you need a big dose of reality. I said during the game that I'd bite your hand off for a point but it wasn't to be. We should be judging this team on it's performances against fellow strugglers not teams that are joint top of the league a week shy of December. The Clarkson and McFadden decisions - Clarkson should have been signed. I said it at the time, no hindsight required and I think McCall's decision to actually leave the club was partly down to that bad decision. Not entirely but I think it weighed heavy on McCall's mind. Managers have to make good decisions and when Clarkson scored against us and basically sunk us a couple of minutes into a very important match I reckon McCall's confidence in his own decision making was effected. McFadden was not the McFadden of old last season but he would easily deserve a place in this team and I bet we would have more points than we do now if he had been playing this season. For me the McFadden decision was a money one. He didn't deserve and we couldn't afford to pay over the odds for him but if he'd been willing to play on a reduced wage then I would have kept him. You can point out he wasn't great last season but there are people out there who aren't willing to acknowledge McFadden's contribution last term which wasn't insignificant. He contributed to 10 goals in the league scoring 4 and setting up 6 just for a start. The squad is worse off without him especially as he wasn't replaced. Dom Thomas - If he is as good as we are all hearing he should have been played before now. I saw him against Fulham and I thought he showed up quite well making his debut in a match where we were comprehensively beaten. We've been crying out for a left winger for a couple of seasons which makes McCall's decision not to play him even more baffling. I don't know if Dom Thomas is the answer but that's kind of the problem. No one does because he's never been given a chance. Even the players that have like Lee Erwin have been played out of position. The Dom Thomas situation is just part of the complete pigs ear Motherwell have made of youth development over the last few years and whether you like it or not that coincidences with Stuart McCall's reign. Meanwhile Dundee Utd have actively tried to develop a player like Aidan Connolly, even though there are several players in his position ahead of him in the pecking order, and he scored yesterday. The fact is our youth development has gone backwards by a long way and has turned into some kind of Walter Smith 1990's dinosaur stuff. Wonder where that came from?

St. Mirren seem to be in free fall but Ross County are battling away. We need to roll up our sleeves with these important matches coming up.

Inverness are undefeated at home this season, won 4 out of the last 5, this was always going to be a tough match to get anything out of.

I don't know for a fact but I'd guess that's probably about correct. I've read from a decent source that £800 a week is about average at Championship level (excluding the big teams down there at the moment). Assuming that's correct you'd have to assume we are paying roughly £1100-1200 to our average pros and more to the high earners.

Malky Mackay plus South American consortium. Headlines in the making there....

This. And I don't want him anyway.

Our last financial figures stated turn over of almost 6 million pounds. I fully accept that running a provincial football club is no easy matter but surely if the club is turning over 5 or 6 million pounds a season we should be able to run a reasonably successful Premiership level team? I'm speculating of course because I don't know what our players get paid but I've suspected for a while Motherwell player have been on nice little earners over the past few years. However the days of bring players up from the English professional leagues or bringing in marquee singings are over and I think we should really be focusing on strong scouting in the lower leagues in Scotland and in youth development. If we do that, and control our player wage expenditure, perhaps by offering lower wages but on longer contracts, I don't see why we can't do relatively well, and by that I mean continue as a Premiership level team, on our existing revenues. We have 13 first team squad players out of contract at the end of the season. I think the close season will be a good time to realign our wage and bonus structure. As Hamilton Accies and Inverness have proved this season, you don't need to pay out huge wages to build a good team that plays decent football.

I'd be surprised if the bookies had any real information on the recruitment process. You can understand at a bigger club where things can leak out but at Motherwell it's a pretty tight knit group of people who will know what's actually going on.

He retired as a player 9 years ago and doesn't seem to have any serious coaching experience. A non starter in my opinion.

Adams would be a disaster. He ticks none of the boxes I want to see ticked. Who are all the Ross County youngster that have been developed by Adams over his relatively long period in charge at County? That's right there are none. What is his long term strategy to team building? Every year bring in dozens of cheap foreign players with absolutely no continuity season after season and having to rely on January transfer window investment to dig his teams out of trouble. What is his relationship with the press and football world? Poor, conducts himself in a very unprofessional way and is not liked in Scottish football and if the rumours are to be believed his relationship with his own dressing room was poor. Contacts? Poor, seems to rely heavily on agents for players. Style of play? Dull. Record in the top flight? Mediocre, this season, even worse than us. As for Calderwood, I'd take him as a short term measure until the end of the season. You might not like the man but his record is there for everyone to see.

I understand reservations about the Well Society but at the very least they care about the club. If a South American consortium came in they could change the name of the club to International de Madrepozo and the next thing you know the club colours are changed to green and white hoops because they are considered lucky in Ecuador. That would be far fetched if it similar things weren't happening at other clubs right now! I think we'd be taking a massive risk selling to these guys especially since their previous shambolic attempt at running a club is out in the open now.

I disagree entirely. Motherwell needs to start cutting its cloth to more or less guarenteed revenue streams, ie, our own fans and the bare minimium tv and prize money. Relying on someone pay your bills is not a very sensible way to go if you are looking for stability.

This is off the top of my head and I might not have all the facts right but lots of investment companies made a lot of money out of buying 'shares' of players and then coining in when the player was sold on. If I remember there was a case with FC Porto when a player was sold for big money and almost all of that cash went to third party investors who had 'shares' in the player. The investors pay money that the clubs couldn't normally afford but when the player is sold the transfer fee goes to the investors. So the investors are essentially providing high quality players for free or at low cost in exchange for a big lump sum from a future transfer deal. I believe FIFA have now made this illegal or are in the process of doing so and I hardly think that those same people who have been doing quite well out of this are going to pack up their bags and go and do something else. They will be looking for loop holes. Could it be that a club going cheap, in a fairly high profile league, right next to the greatest cash cow league in the world, would make for a decent investment for these same people? After all if they own the club, who own the players they can get round the third party investment rules. Just a thought.

Larsson, great player that he was, is something of a charisma vacuum.

Scored one and should have had an assist. Let's try and accentuate the positive the day after we got our first home win since August and actually saw a decent level of performance.

Vigurs would be playing at a much higher level if he was more of an athlete and, dare I say, it had a better work ethic. But in terms of touch, he's got brilliance in his locker.

Inverness are undefeated at home this season which is pretty impressive by the time you get to November, however looking at the results they've struggled mostly at home against lesser teams. Ross County and Dundee were the teams to get points at Inverness, when better teams have lost. Perhaps they struggle against teams that sit in. They certainly don't score a lot of goals, they've not scored more than 2 goals in a match all season and haven't scored more than 1 in the last four games. If we can keep it tight at the back like we did against United, I'm hopeful we could get something up there.

Agree. Never felt that way at the match and when I got home and put the radio on and had a look at the football forums I was surprised. Dundee Utd dominated spells of play but I don't think they created many more real chances than we did. Even looking at the BBC highlights there were chances we had that weren't shown, Vigurs in the first half for example. I actually really enjoyed the match and even if we had lost I'd have been full of praise. The attitude and work rate of the players was a million miles away from where it had been from the first couple of minutes to the last.

I thought 1 - 11 the team performed really well tonight. Everyone gave 100% effort, determination and concentration. I thought Kerr, Ramsden and Reid did particularly well and I'm going to give it to Reid.

I'd take Davies over some of the people that have been mentioned. We were his first job and he's a lot more experienced now. Probably a better manager. And he won't have squillions of quid to spend this time, so that's neither here nor there. Wouldn't be my first choice but not a "oh no what have you done" one either.

What a change. Best we've played this season by miles. Every player working their socks off, why couldn't we do that until now? Don't think too many people will be going on about fitness after that performance. Interesting to note we played the 4-2-3-1 formation and I thought it worked well. We looked much more secure, we got bodies back to defend when we needed but we also carried a threat. Ramsden has had a stinking season but thought he did well in an unfamiliar role and I thought Craig Reid was great, putting his foot in where others would have shirked it. Kerr also did well. I could go through the whole team really but the difference tonight was we worked for it. That's all you need, just hard work and effort and all that bad luck suddenly transforms. United had chances and had us pinned back on occasions but I think we definitely deserved that on work rate alone. Great sleeves rolled up performance.

They have no intentions in the first place. They get their name in the paper linked with a job that's why they do it and then make out like they withdrew from the process.

Ally McCoist is on the McBookie's list at 33/1 which completely invalidates the credibility of the whole thing.

When Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink is on MotD he looks completely mindless and all the words coming out his mouth are being coached to him through his ear piece. Might be a bit unfair but doesn't exactly inspire confidence unless it's a managerial genius that's remote controlling him. His record in coaching/management doesn't really stand out either.