Ya Bezzer!

Funnily enough tonight was the night Vigurs would have been handy. He can actually strike a ball from 20 - 25 yards. Carswell, Lasley, Lawson, Francis-Angol, not so much.

An absolutely disastrous result for Motherwell FC. Leaving the ground all I heard was anger and disillusionment. This is the sort of result and turns fans away from supporting the club. It will be interesting to see what the attendance is at the weekend because I think a lot of fans, fairly or unfairly were sickened by what happened tonight. I'm going to make three main points. 1) Aberdeen are just better than us this season and I think before we go any further we have to accept that. They attack better than us, they defend better than us, they have a better goalkeeper than us, they have more height and strength than us, they have more pace than us and they have more goal threat than us. 2) Today was the worst refereeing performance I have seen in a very long time. John Beaton should not be anywhere near refereeing top level games. He was utterly, utterly inept. Which brings me to Motherwell. 3) The sending off was probably was worst thing that could have happened to us. I thought we started well, had a goal disallowed that the linesman didn't seem to flag until about 30 seconds afterwards and generally looked like the better team. After the sending off we seemed to have no idea how to break down a team that had everyone behind the ball. I accept that when a team plays like Aberdeen did tonight it can be very difficult to break down, especially when they have a physical advantage over us but our attempt to break them down was completely wrong headed and inept. Can ANYONE tell me why on multiple occasions why the ball was played wide to a winger who then proceeded to pump an easily defend able ball from virtually the half way line into the Aberdeen box? Could we make it any easier to defend? It was bad enough that Ramsden was doing it, but for a supposed winger, why the hell was Ainsworth doing it? Why do Motherwell seem to sign wingers that have some kind of aversion to the byline!? You get to the byline, you play balls going AWAY from the goalkeeper and defender and TOWARDS our attacking players. This is school boy stuff and yet time after time we do not do it. It is simply not good enough when players who should know better behave like amateurs. I have a feeling that Nielsen will be getting some stick tonight, especially over the first goal. My thoughts are that I thought the corner from Aberdeen was a superb one that made it very difficult to defend however, putting that to one side I thought Nielsen had a stinker. Every time Aberdeen put a ball into the box you were just waiting for disaster to strike. He showed no authority or command of his area. Hollis can't come back soon enough. Finally Stuart McCall. I've often been a critic of McCall but overall I think you have to be fair and say he has mostly down a very good job. However tonight he let Motherwell FC and it's support done badly with a negligent performance as manager. He made an adjustment at half time but that was not good enough. It was clear we needed to make tactical adjustments at 60, 70, 80 minutes and what we got was Anier taken off for McHugh. There are guys on here who have it in for McHugh, I am not one of them, but that decision does not cut it as a managerial decision in possibly our biggest game of the season. Stuart McCall was hiding tonight behind status quo because he didn't know what to do. I totally understand that we have a small and limited squad but as a manager Stuart McCall has to have a Plan A, B, C, right through to Z. He showed tonight he doesn't have them, just as in the past he didn't have them. It's a huge flaw in his armour and as a result I think it is unlikely we will ever win these really big matches when it really matters. We will trundle along in the league well enough, provided our confidence doesn't nosedive after this defeat, but actually win something under McCall? Sadly I just can't see it. Tonight seemed to show there is a ceiling on Stuart McCall's managerial ability.

I don't know, you make a joke and everyone gets upset these days...

It's probably immaterial since they all have a national, rather than provincial, profile and most likely aren't available at short notice - even for something as prestigious as a golf club presentation.

Apparently it's a malleolar injury. That's ankle to you and me.

He has done the square root of hee haw this season. However if he's not any good he must be lucky because we got 4 wins and a draw with him in the team then when he wasn't there we lose 2 out of 3. I'll have a hee haw player in the team if he's lucky.

Sadly the second section from last is usually sparsely populated. Hopefully there are enough people around for this to work!

Tough luck for the guys with prior commitments but I much prefer Friday nights to Sunday or Mondays.

The fundamentals of goalkeeping are that you keep it out the net anyway you can. Nielsen did that and the ball was there to be won in the box. Sadly, our defenders were sitting on their heels, while Stevie May was alert to what was actually happening. That goal seemed to sum up the lethargy of the team yesterday. There were about 4 balls to be won in the lead up to the goal and we lost every battle. Blaming Nielsen seems pretty short sighted to me.

We have a better chance of winning a cup than normal but I think some people are getting carried away. Results this season seem to show me that we are only third or fourth favourites to win the cup. We've been beaten pretty comprehensively by Inverness, Aberdeen and St. Johnstone this season and we didn't beat Dundee Utd. The win over Hibs, while a good result, was hardly a convincing performance. The idea that 'our name is on the cup' just because Celtic are out the competition is ludicrous. We will need to put in performances and work bloody hard to even get into the next round. I hope we do it, but I dislike the idea that the cup is just waiting for us to pick up. Most years it's not the OF that put out us out the cup and this year will be no different unless we actually get our attitude right.

I thought Aberdeen beat us pretty convincingly back in the first home game and the fact that we seem incapable of beating any of the expected Top Six teams this season I find a bit worrying. Aderdeen, Inverness, St. Johnstone, Celtic....I see a theme developing here, almost the opposite of last season when we had a very good record against the good teams and dropped a lot of points to the struggler. On the positive side our recent home record is very good, Aberdeen match aside.

Lot of truth in this. We've seen this kind of thing before. I said in the chatbox earlier that they always say in football that they will 'take each game as it comes' but we certainly don't.

Agreed. If I had to pick a MotM, and thank god I only pick them for games I actually attend, McHugh would be one of the contenders. The midfield was absolutely shocking today and so was the defence. A goalkeeping howler was inevitable today due to the conditions. Maybe if we'd put them under as much pressure it would have been their guy instead of ours.

Maybe it's because they have one of the best home records in the UK, including a comprehensive win over us last time at their place.

This could be our biggest game of the season as I'd put winning a cup higher than a runners up spot in the league. Even though they needed two penalties to beat us last time I thought they were impressive and thoroughly deserved the win. They have height, pace and experience and are the best team I've seen this season. I think this will be a tough match, especially as Aberdeen have an extra days recovery time which will probably tell in the latter stages but hopefully we get that little bit of luck that seems to have gone against us lately versus Aberdeen, especially in the cup. A penalty for absolutely nothing would be a start!

You can get a non peak time ticket that is only about £14 or something from Queen Street. The £28 one is the any time ticket. Burd used to live up there so I know all about trains to Perth.

This is the case. Anderson is a long term injury case and Wright got sent off last weekend although I'm not sure when the suspension kicks in. Gary Miller has come in for Anderson and I suspect Tam Scobbie might play at centre half if Frazer Wright is out. We have bad memories of Tam Scobbie playing centre half with Falkirk! St. Johnstone have a very good home record over the past couple of seasons so I think this will be a tough match where the key will be getting the first goal. St. Johnstone have scored 7 goals in their last two league matches and have already beaten Ross County and Inverness 4-0 on their own patch, so we will have to be defensively strong.

I can't get rid of it. It's 'stuck'. EDIT. OK, fixed it!

Ramsden was talking about the team spirit in the match programme. It's good to see and I reckon a big part of our recent success. Guys like Hammell and Lasley are gold, not just on the field but off it as well.

We haven't played as well as at the end of last season but I'd say we are playing better than we started last season. With quite large scale changes to the team during the summer I think that's pretty incredible. After the first round of matches last season we had 16 points. With a game still to play this term we have 19 points. With confidence and more games, I'm sure we will gel better and play good football more consistently instead of in patches as we are currently but even if that doesn't happen we'd have very little to complaint about if we maintain the same level of form.

With this being a Sunday match at an odd time, on live TV and at St. Johnstone who have been struggling to attract fans I suspect the crowd could be pretty sparse. Maybe even in the 2,000's.

Is 13p of 66p on the opposition excessive? Personally I rather like reading about opposition teams as it keeps you up to date on the other sides in the league and gives you a different perspective.

There is usually a grain of truth in what Steelboy says even when it's not popular on the forums and its true our big summer signings haven't performed as well as we'd all like. However there is something fawlty about his attitude. We came from behind today to win, again. We have now won 6 of the last 7 league matches at Fir Park and have only lost 2 in the last 19. We also have young players coming through this term who look like holding down first team slots. The reason Lawson hasn't played (and therefore can't really be judged) is because of the excellent form of Carswell. To a lesser extent Francis-Angol has also challenged Vigurs for a spot. Also slating Vigurs after probably his best 45 minutes of his Motherwell career seems a bit bizarre. Sure, he has flaws but today I felt he showed a touch and range of pass that was better than anyone else on the field. If he can build on what he showed today in the second half he'll be a very good player for us. We are looking like a Top Three team this term. Fir Park is becoming something of a fortress, we are scoring goals and even when we go a goal behind we are not only coming back but winning. The fact that our summer signings haven't done as well so far would be a good point if we were struggling but we aren't we are doing well, it's almost as if Steelboy can't deal with the fact that we are a pretty good side these days. ENJOY.

Lasley for perspiration, Vigurs for inspiration. Difficult choice but went for Vigurs.

Thought the first half was quite poor, neither team looked to have much quality and chances were few and far between. We probably had the best of it in terms of possession and opportunities on goal but we had to rely on Nielsen making two very good saves right before half time. Apart from that though I don't remember him having very much to do. Second half was much better, Vigurs started to play and with his touch and vision he gave us something extra that we hadn't had before. We had about 4 good chances before the inevitable happened and Hearts scored with I think their only shoot on target in the second half, a deflected one at that. Have to say I feared the worst at that point but cue Craig Moore and his amazing introduction. On about 15 seconds and hits what will probably be our goal of the season! Absolutely superb strike. After that the momentium was ours and although Hearts looked dangerous on the break, mainly down to our own defence getting stretched out and some poor passing, I felt the winner was coming. Though Anier and Francis-Angol were disappointing today but others stepped up to the plate. Lasley and Carswell were excellent and Vigurs probably had his best half so far. Also lets hope Moore shows more of the same. We have now won 7 of the last 8 league matches at Fir Park, touch wood we can continue that excellent record.