Ya Bezzer!

Games at this end of the season are difficult to predict. Will Celtic be really going for it? What kind of team will they put out? If they use fringe players will they play out their skin or will their lack of games show? There's a lot of variables. Hopefully, our boys put in a performance and whatever the result I'll be happy.

Players of the Season 1. Michael Higdon - Incredible scoring exploits 2. Darren Randolph - Best goalkeeper we've had in the 30 years I've watched us 3. Nicky Law - Classy player who showed he can play at a higher level Young Player of the Season Zane Francis Angol - Started the season as a dodgy looking left back, developed into a tasty looking left midfielder. Goal of the Season Kallum Higginbotham - Probably goal of the decade! Signing of the Season James McFadden - Great to see him strut his stuff again at Fir Park. Class.

Agree. From the waist down it's good. For me the 'real' Motherwell strip includes white shorts so I'm happy to get them back and I always like hooped socks. The top is disappointing because it could have been great with just a couple of alterations. It seems like they were just throwing design elements on to it when they should have left it alone. I don't mind the arms so much but the neck design is poor and why are the side panels there? Designers need to keep things simple. There is no need to have claret side panels there and no hoop going all the way round. Not the worst we've ever had but I feel like a few adjustments it could have been a really good kit.

I think Leigh Griffiths will be favourite. As well as goal scoring I think, whether you like him or not, you'd have to concede he is technically a better player than Higdon and as someone else said, Griffiths has been playing in a much poorer team for most of the season. Gary Mackay-Stevens would be the obvious pick for young player of the year but he's not actually played that many matches due to injury. Wanyama has been hot and cold and has probably faded a bit as the season went on - I thought he was pretty poor when we beat them at Fir Park.

Niall McGinn and Johnny Hayes have been terrible signings for Aberdeen this season. Only scored 22 of their 38 goals this season. As for Hibs their team this season has pretty much been - Williams, Clancy, Hanlon, McPake, McGivern, Wotherspoon, Claros, Taiwo, Stevenson, Griffiths and Doyle. Out of that 11 the only player they signed from another SPL team was Tim Clancy from us.

Neil Doncaster already admitted this on radio. The whole format change was nothing more than a wee bit of skirt lifting for Sky. As I said this time last year with the whole Rangers debacle, Sky is a villan in the shadows here. They never make statements, they openly criticise or support initiatives but their influence on Scottish football is completely noxious. They have chairman of football clubs like Aberdeen running around like lickspittles, trying to please their 'masters'. I will repeat it again and again. Until Scottish football turns its back on live football and re-adjusts its finances accordingly we will be in a permanent state of crisis.

"The resolution at the meeting in this house last year was to take everything out of 11-1 and make it 9-3 and there is no way in the world that Aberdeen and also Hearts, Hibs and Dundee United would ever take home gates [home clubs retaining all gate money] and one or two other items out of protected status." This doesn't make any sense. 9-3 was not considered because 4 (probably 5 if you include Celtic) would never accept less than 100% home gate money retention? So just vote it down, using 9-3 with a considerable margin, if it were ever to come up for discussion, which I've not heard any one actually mention. If this is the reason 9-3 was not put in place it's a bullshit reason. I wonder what these other one or two items were?

Allan Preston, who is also an agent of course, said he heard Randolph was on his way to Nottingham Forest.

Fuck! I think I just tried to convince myself that I had three games left to go to this season instead of just two. Oh no! Just two more games.

My initial reaction to this thread title is "OH NO NOT AGAIN!". Dundee Utd at Fir Park is the stuff of nightmares. However, perhaps 120 minutes of high tempo football at the weekend will mean they are a wee bit leggy and we will have a bit more in the tank. By the way Dundee Utd are the only team to beat us at Fir Park in the league since Hibs beat us on 26th October 2012. Unfortunately they have managed it twice.

Hopefully common sense applies now and we get the good reforms with the bad tossed out. SPL playoffs, stadium restrictions lifted, financial pie shared more fairly, etc.

I think there are some genuinely altruistic reasons for this reconstruction because professional football out with the top division is becoming unsustainable but at the end of the day I can see this descending into farce if it gets the go ahead. We are fooling ourselves if we think by desperate fire fighting every few years we can maintain Scottish football at it's current levels. I'd compare it to gardening. You have to prune to get new growth and that's what Scottish football has to do. Football clubs must learn to live on money that they generate themselves and not be held hostage by television companies. If that means lower wages, capped squad sizes, part time football, one year contracts etc, etc then that's what we should do. We need to be in a position where clubs can actually invest in their infrastructure and we cannot do that when we are hanging on grimly for survival. The key is to ensure every club is profitable. Slicing the pie so that clubs artificially survive on hand outs from governing bodies is fundamentally flawed. The crisis now is a financial crisis, it is not one of set up. We are trying to fix a headache with a bandage.

Does it? Last season the top five non OF goal scorers scored significantly fewer goals (Jon Daly 19 Francisco Sandaza 14, Steven Thompson 13, Garry O'Connor 12, Dean Shiels 12) so would you say that signified a much stronger league last term than this term?

Did a bit of research with the help of some folks over at Pie and Bovril. Here's a list of non Old Firm players who have scored 20+ goals in a season since the the beginning of the Premier League. 1975/76 - Willie Pettigrew (Motherwell) 22 1976/77 - Andy Ritchie (Morton) 22 1979/80 - Doug Somner (St.Mirren) 25 1982/83 - Davie Dodds (Dundee Utd) 22 1984/85 - Frank McDougall (Aberdeen) 22 1985/86 - John Robertson (Hearts) 20 1987/88 - John Robertson (Hearts) 26 1987/88 - Tommy Coyne (Dundee) 33 1992/93 - Duncan Shearer (Aberdeen) 22 2004/05 - Derek Riordan (Hibernian) - 20 2009/10 - Anthony Stokes (Hibernian) - 21 2012/13 - Billy Mackay (Inverness) - 20* 2012/13 - Leigh Griffiths (Hibernian) - 20* 2012/13 - MIchael Higdon (Motherwell) - 22* * with 5 games of season remaining. It's perhaps a little ambitious to expect Michael Higdon to score 12 more goals and break Tommy Coyne's record but could he match John Robertson's 26? One more goal overhauls Willie Pettigrew's record.

I think Rangers would be more interested in him than Celtic. Celtic sign promising up and comers and sell them on at a huge margin. They couldn't do that with McFadden. Rangers on the other hand have cherry picked some of the best players in the league by paying huge fortunes in wages that otherwise those players would not have received. They might do that with McFadden. I'm not sure McFadden having played in the Championship and Premiership would want to go to that level of football but if he's offered a three year contract of 12 grand a week then that has proved to quite persuasive.

I think one more win would probably get us European football, Ross County have lost their good run and three on the trot and St. Johnstone have a very good home record but they don't win often away from home. After a wee wobble Inveress are in some good form again, the match against them post split is going to be massive.

He is not a defender, he's much better going forward. I don't mind him filling in for Hammell if he's injured but long term I don't think his future is at left back.

Few good performances, few good in patches and a few didn't quite fire on all cylinders. Thought Randolph and Lasley had very good matches but it has to be James McFadden.

Thought we were the better team today, slightly, although we weren't quite firing on all cylinders. However, it was a tale of the return of the shaky defence again, nothing much could be done about the first goal but the second one was a bit of a shocker and there were a few other examples where we were a bit lucky to get away with it. Randolph was excellent today although he didn't have too many direct shoots to deal with but the way he comes out and takes balls from players feet is superb. Someone like Graeme Smith would probably given away about three penalties in similar circumstances. What can you say about McFadden. I don't think he was even on top form today and yet he's just a million miles ahead of everyone else.

Kilmarnock have a game in hand at home, then play the bottom team in the league and and have what looks like an unassailable goal difference (unless something bizarre happens) so you'd have to imagine they are strong favourites. Hibs haven't won an away match in the league since November so 3 points at Celtic Park seems unlikely and Aberdeen and Dundee Utd play each other so only one of them can win.

To be fair to the naysayers there was a time, this season, when Higdon's effect on the match was negligable, our home form rotten, exacerbated by a toothless attack, and we were sitting about 8th in the league. I've never been a critic of Higdon, at least overall he did has some individual stinkers, but at least in those circumstances there was some logic to the criticism. Now I don't see how anyone could criticise him and to be honest I've not seen anyone do so. Just as Sutton's game developed a lot over a couple of seasons and he was contributing a lot more than just goals to the team latterly, I think Higdon's game has come on a lot since the beginning of this season. Earlier in the season if Higdon wasn't scoring he wasn't doing anything. Now that's not the case and he's consistently one of our better players in general play, even putting aside the goals tally. Right now I'd rate Higdon more highly than Sutton, so in that respect I've changed my mind, but Sutton was good over a longer period. I'd like to think Higdon will be here for another season and this time next term when comparing the two it will be a none contest!

I remember Ian Ferguson doing that. Maybe Brown did it as well. Or maybe I'm confused.

We struggled against a poor Dundee side of earlier in the season. Now that they have picked up a bit with Brown coming in maybe the opposite will happen and we'll thump them. However Dundee have drawn three of their last four and I can see a similar result at the weekend.

Always gets good comments during Open All Mics on Radio Scotland from whoever is watching the game.

Randolph came with the best reputation you can have. The fans of his former club were disgusted he'd been allowed to leave. It's not true at all that Randolph had no reputation before he arrived here. He was highly rated when he was signed.