Ya Bezzer!

It's not the kind of night were you'd take kindly to watching a rotten performance so hopefully we do the business tonight. The last time I saw us play we won 4-1 so more of that please!

Jamie Murphy is our best offensive player. I've only been to 3 matches this season so I can't really say for sure but by all accounts he's not performed as well as he can but I think you could probably say that about a lot of the players this season. I don't think he's shown the level of consistency you should require to get into the Scotland squad. I agree the likes of Mackay-Steven, Johnny Russell, Leigh Griffiths and even Tony Watt are better shouts at the moment. However I will say this 4 goals in 9 league starts isn't bad for a player who's 'off form'. Also 43 goals in 202 matches would be decent for an out and out striker. For a player that's not an out and out striker it's pretty darn good and even better when you take into account about 40 of those appearances were substitute appearances. He's not good enough for Scotland right now and possibly might never be but I would always have him in my Motherwell line up.

Not really because the league is very very tight and a couple of good or bad results effect the league position a great deal. The match against Dundee United is important, win that and it creates a wee gap again. Lose that and it's a different story.

St. Johnstone fans must really hate us!

I've not been to a game since the Inverness match due to work and I can't wait to get to a game! We are in poor form and things look a bit grim but I honestly believe supporters play a part in getting teams out of these situations so we have to do our bit as well.

I won't be putting Motherwell on my coupon but I think some people are getting a bit carried away with the old doom and gloom stuff. It's Motherwell, anything can happen! I won't be there but hopefully the fans get behind the team and we can get something from the match. St. Johnstone are favourites and I said even before their good run that they had the strongest squad of any non city club in the SPL but I'm not going to be amazed if we get a point or even a win. McCall has had an easy time up till now - now it's time to earn his corn. More than a few players need to stand up and be counted as well.

Sorry! Your theory doesn't stack up. Since Jennogate O'Reilly has officiated 9 Motherwell matches. Hamilton 0-0 Kilmarnock 0-1 Dundee Utd 2-1 Hearts 1-0 Dundee Utd 1-1 Hibs 1-1 Celtic 0-3 Inverness 4-1 Hibs 0-4 So I make that Played 9 Won 3 Drawn 3 Lost 3. Can't get much fairer than that!

There have been times in the past when we've had to rely on young players coming through and generally we've found a few gems that have injected some enthusiasm and youth into the side. I look at the current crop of young players that have come through our youth system and I have to say I'm a bit concerned. To me they aren't of the same quality as players who had come through previously. Ironically the one that impressed me most, Lawless, was released. But I look at Carswell, Hetherington, Cummins, Page, Francis-Angol, Kerr and McHugh and I don't see anyone of real first team quality. McHugh has probably deserved a better crack of the whip than he's got from McCall but the fact remains that 3 seasons after he made his debut we still don't know if he's good enough to be an SPL striker. Cummins has shown some potential but clearly isn't ready to be a first team regular at this stage. The rest, from what I've seen, I don't really rate, which might be a little unfair given their limited on field experience but it's just my general impression from having watched them. Shouldn't we be asking some serious questions about the way our youth development is being run? It seems to me that we seem to have changed the focus from bringing in young local players to snapping up youth players that have been released from English clubs. No doubt there are good players to be found that way, Shaun Hutchinson is testament to that but I think perhaps we've gone too far down that road. Also the way the youth set up has been treated prior to this season when it was more or less forced on McCall has been very shoddy. Young players have been all but ignored during successful periods when that is exactly the time to give young players some game experience when there is no where near as much pressure and the squad has an air of confidence about it. Fairly successful youth teams have been released on mass and young players given professional contracts by McCall (Halsman, McKinnon, Pollock, Smith etc.) had as much chance of getting a game as I had. I just feel that whole side of the club, one that should be pretty high up on our list of priorities given the financial conditions, has been allowed to wither on the vine for the last couple of years.

Raith Rovers equalized in the last minute with a superb free kick from Hetherston. One of the great kick in the baws, that one!

Bit pissed off about the rescheduling of this match as months ago I took tomorrow off as a holiday so I could go to the game and I only realised last week it had been moved! At least this is the last one I'll miss in the foreseeable future.

The 2011 Cup Final is an obvious one but I'd go for the 2002-03 semi final against Rangers. Not only did we deserve to win the match but I have no doubts whatsoever that if we had won that match we would have won the Final against Dundee.

I've not bought a fanzine in a while although I was more a GLF man, but I've bought OSB in the past as well just not as regularly. I guess there are two main reasons why I don't any more. The first reason was that you bought a fanzine to see what other fans thought about your team. Nowadays we have internet message boards for that sort of thing and I think the internet has completely usurped the fanzine in that role. Secondly it was something to read while the teams were warming up and you were tucking into your pie. Back in the day there was very little content in official programmes and you only really bought them because you collected them and because they were the only source of club stats in the pre-internet era. The fanzines generally had a lot more reading in them so while you could flick through the programme in 2 minutes the fanzines had a bit more to them. Again things have changed there. The programmes have improved a great deal (although at a cost) and there is much more content in them. Funnily enough the cost of the modern programme is something which puts me off also buying a fanzine. It might only be a pound but if you've already bought a programme at £3 I think you are a lot less likely to also buy the fanzine. I'm getting old(ish) now and I have a nostalgia for the way things used to be when I first started coming to Fir Park so I wouldn't like to see the fanzines go out of business but at the same time I used to buy and I don't any more.

I don't think they'll have a Scottish manager down there any time soon.

Dundee Utd are like us, they have a very small squad and if they are missing key players gubbings off 'lesser' teams are by no means impossible. I think they will improve again though but we have to make sure its not against us at the weekend. Hearts also have a fairly small squad this season with a lot of kids in there. Some of them look quite good like Callum Paterson but they are thread bare in some positions. I don't think Hearts are by any means guaranteed a top 3 or 4 spot. I said it before the match at Fir Park but St. Johnstone probably have the strongest squad of any provincial team this season.

I'm not saying we are going to get relegated or we are even going to struggle but are very insecure at the back and the poster has a point about the Inverness match. We created a lot of chances but Inverness could easily have score 3 or 4 as well. As long as we are conceding goals, and we've only kept 1 clean sheet out of 12 this season, then we are going to be vulnerable. We are second top now but there is only 5 points between us and 11th we could easily drop down and the one thing everyone knows about young players, young squads is when things turn against you they are harder to get back up again. We're catching Dundee United at a good time so I think it will be a test of character.

Obviously, overall McCall's record is good but I think about the story about a French officer being on the verge of being promoted to general and Napoleon asking 'Is he lucky?' I think McCall has been pretty lucky over the course of his tenure. He was lucky to take over a team doing well in the league. He was lucky to take over one of the best squads in the league. He has been lucky that the squad has basically been kept together - can any one believe Darren Randolph, the best goalkeeper we've had in the 25 years I've been going, is still here? He's been lucky most other clubs are downsizing especially Top Six clubs like Dundee Utd, Aberdeen, Hearts, Hibs, basically the teams you've expect to out perform us over a season. He's been lucky with injuries as well. He was even lucky last season Dundee Utd started so poorly or they would surely have overtaken us for 3rd. I'm not trying to take anything away from what McCall has achieved but he has never really had a crisis to deal with. He's never really been under any pressure. Of course you could argue a lot of that is down to his relative success. But I think we've just kind of muddled along in a league rift with inconsistency. I sometimes wonder what he would do if we lost key players or the squad breaks up and we have to start again (as looks likely next season). It's also disappointing that for all the good league form I have no real belief we can win a trophy under McCall. As a Motherwell fan that is your one big hope each season. I've said it before McCall is a steady Eddie. No great football, decent football. No great wins, decent wins. No great league positions, decent league positions. It's not that exciting but it's still a long way from the dark days under McLeish or the years of perennial struggle under McLean. At the same time, despite his generally good record, I have a kind of lingering feeling that we should have done better than we actually have, as if we've missed a rare opportunity. I'd say McCall is a good manager, not a great one.

Going to miss this one as I'm working - maybe not such a bad one to miss! I think it's going to hard to get the players heads up for this one after that midweek defeat. We've been beaten so many times now it must be next to impossible to get the players to believe. Last night was a huge opportunity for us to break that record and instill some confidence but obviously it wasn't taken but the important point is last nights defeat will, I think, affect our league performance. Already this season Ross County, St. Johnstone, Hibs have taken points off Celtic but it's hard to see how we possible can. Just a point. This time last season we'd kept 4 clean sheets. This season we've kept 1 and that on the first day of the season. We miss Craigan a lot and we are going to have to improve defensively because Higdon isn't going to score 7 goals every 7 games all season. I've only seen Ramsden once due to not making it to many games this season but you'd think he'd have to come in if fit. We desperately need some experience at the back. Sadly you can see someone like Tony Watt to score and their new guys Miku and Lassad to get their first for the club because we just don't look capable of defending well enough at the moment.

I got Rangers at odds of 3/1! Next best thing to a cash machine shooting notes out into the street.

Aberdeen have draw their last four home matches 0-0. Over the same period we have two 0-0 draws and two 2-1 wins. So if forms means anything you'd probably go for a 0-0 draw!

I don't see there being a great demand for McCall as a manager down south. His record in England was mediocre and once you have 'failed' down there you don't often get a second chance as what ever you do in the rest of your career you are considered 'not good enough for England'. If McCall moves on I think it will be to a bigger Scottish club - Aberdeen, Hearts or perhaps even Rangers.

You're right to think that.

I'm pretty sure the only goal Andy Roddie scored at Fir Park was for Aberdeen! In fact I'm pretty sure Andy Roddie never actually scored for us in about 60 matches. I remember the match you mention well because its one of my favourite ever Motherwell matches and Roddie definitely didn't score in it. I think Coyne and Arnott both got 2 and Billy Davies got the other.

"A magnficent goal! A sensational goal by the Motherwell captain Mitchell van der Gaag!"

Also, Stevie Hammell has one cap. The mid 90's side had a few international players - McKinnon, Lambert and Martin all played for Scotland. Coyne was a regular for Ireland.

To be fair McSkimming was a decent player when he was fit. It's just he had a lot of injuries and wasn't worth the fee McLeish paid for him. I might be wrong but wasn't he the last Motherwell player to score a winning goal at Ibrox? The other two were haddies. I'll always remember when the greatly feared Roy 'The Bear' Aitken joined St. Mirren and made his debut at Fir Park. Luc Nijholt wasn't having any of it though. First chance he got he went right into him and put him right over the advertising boards and then trotted back into position.