Ya Bezzer!

Even though we went out in the first round of the cups last season we must have brought in a decent amount from the games, probably even more than we would on an 'average' cup season of getting through a few rounds. We got Rangers away in the league cup and Aberdeen away with a home replay in the Scottish cup. We also had European football. That amounted to 39,990 attendees for domestic cup ties and 15,321 for European cup ties, for a total 55,251 attendees at cup games involving us last season. Obviously the domestic cup gate money is halved and I assume we keep our own money for home European ties. We could easily progress through many rounds of domestic cup without getting anything like 39,990 coming through the gate depending on the opponents. Obviously there is prize money for going through the rounds but I'd be surprised if it's a lot of money, especially in the earlier rounds. The 39,990 is equivalent to nearly 8 matches with a crowd of 5,000 for instance. This season Ross County went out of both cups in the first round with a total of 2,428 (215 v Stranraer, 2,213 v Hibs) at both games and an away trip to Stranraer, the longest trip in Scottish football. Obviously this is a financial disaster for Ross County and they would probably have lost money but it puts into perspective our figures from last season and I think shows they aren't actually that bad in terms of revenue generated from cup matches.

There was a palpable atmosphere when Hollis took the no.1 spot and you sensed the fans didn't have much confidence in him and were ready to leap on him given the opportunity. Hollis then went on, did quite well, didn't make any howling mistakes and all that hostility more or less dissipated over the course of 2 or 3 home matches. Nielsen has to do the same but the only way he can do it will be to do much better than he has. Catching a ball isn't too much to ask of a goalkeeper. If he can't catch it pushing it away from goal would be the next step. They are basic errors that he's made more than once, so it's no wonder people are getting on his case. Goalkeeping is a specialist position and it requires a certain type of person because it's not an easy job. Nielsen needs to show he has the mental toughness to get through a bad spell where people are pointing the finger at him, if he doesn't have that then he's not going to be good enough.

I think Aberdeen are a bit better than us this term. I've seen them three times and I felt they out performed us three times. That's not a fluke. Also, a glance at their squad shows they have a lot more quality and quantity than we have. They've struggled for a centre forward but I think the signing of Adam Rooney is a real coup and they will push on now. I'm not writing us off for second place but I think if we do do it this season it will have been a much bigger achievement than last season.

Do you think it was unreasonable for people to want an international goalkeeper to start the season in front of Hollis, who hadn't really impressed up till that point? I don't think anyone was saying we should play Nielsen in perpetuity no matter how he performed. Having seen both keepers over a similar number of games I think most would place Hollis ahead of Nielsen but if we hadn't seen Nielsen perform there would be no yardstick. Nielsen looks weak on crosses but how many goalkeepers these days actually deal with crosses? Goalkeeping in general is at a low ebb. Even top clubs have pure haddies between the sticks. What concerns me more about Nielsen is a lot of his poor mistakes aren't ability linked, they are decision making mistakes. Maybe this guy just isn't mentally tough enough when the pressure is on. I don't think it's helpful for anyone if fans get on players backs, especially a goalkeeper, but Nielsen has to show some improvement instead of making the same stupid mistakes over and over. Palming a shoot back into the middle of the goal is schoolboy stuff.

He was one of the better players in the first half but he faded out of things in the second.

No one is going to be able to touch the Big Five but there nations out there that have the potential growth to form a second tier of leagues that are significantly more developed than the others. Poland, with a population of 40 million, has the potential to be one of those and become a major European force in football along with places like Ukraine, Russia and Turkey. They are ahead of us as it is but with the amount of investment they will be able to generate and the potential support that's there they will only get further ahead of us. Ten years from now I doubt there will be any comparison between our league and the Polish one.

The two wide midfielders just didn't work hard enough. Maybe we can get away with it against poorer sides than Aberdeen but not today. Aberdeen bossed the midfield for most of the match and Lasley was left to do all the donkey work again. Not really on when it's the 34 year old guy that's running his legs off and much younger guys aren't putting in the same level of graft. Didn't think Carswell had his best game today but at least you can't mark him down on effort.

Thought Hutchy was superb today, was a bit worried when he got booked early but he coped very well. However I have to give the award to Keith Lasley. Magnificent player, you'd think he was a teenager today the amount of running he did.

Nothing about Willo Flood flattening Lasley then? Didn't even get booked for it.

Disappointed with the final few minutes obviously but I thought it was a good old fashioned match with lots of tackles going in on a heavy pitch. Probably Aberdeen were the better team and I felt they over powered us in midfield for most of the match but the team played well, worked really hard and had done well to be take the lead twice. Just a shame we didn't hang on at the end. Thought Lasley was magnificent today he must have run miles and miles and Hutchy had a good match today as well. Obviously Nielsen had a couple of bad mistakes today but Aberdeen should have scored on a few more occasions so I don't think anyone can complain too much about the result. Having seen Aberdeen three times now this season I think they are noticeably ahead of us as a team, they just have a bit more quality across the team than us, so to be sitting right now with the chance to go ahead of them if we win out game in hand is a good achievement by the team.

The abuse players and fans got at that time was completely out of order. In fact it was disgraceful. Mark Reynolds was an excellent player for us, better than many people are prepared to acknowledge, who spent a long time at Motherwell and was one of the guys that was responsible for turning us into a solid Top 6 side which hadn't previously been the case and who was more or less shown the door by the club for a cheque from down south. Sure if he goes in late or scores a goal you can boo him all you want but I think turning players into hate figures, especially great servants for the club which I think Reynolds was, is completely wrong. During the 90 minutes he's an opposition player and I'm not saying for a minute he should be treated any different from Considine or Langfield, but that's kind of the point. No one will be shouting abuse at either of those players unless they do something worthy of it. There will be players who leave a club under a cloud, but most don't and Mark Reynolds certainly didn't so what's the problem? Most former players deserve respect from fans and Mark Reynolds deserves respect more than most.

Made one of the best saves I've seen this season against Partick. Hollis didn't do any wrong during his spell and while I don't think he's going to develop into one of our great goalkeepers I'd be happy for him to hang around. A manager should always be looking for better players than we already have so if McCall can find a better keeper than Hollis good, if not, I think Hollis is decent enough but probably not in the top half best keepers in the league. Nielsen doesn't have my full confidence. He's actually made some very good saves but he's also made some clangers and just generally he doesn't seem to command his box or instill confidence in his defenders. Twardzik came in did brilliant and despite his short stature I never had any fears about having him between the sticks. I'd like to see him back so we can see more of him.

Nearly, Ruddy had 14, Randolph had 15. We kept 15 clean sheets in both seasons but Fraser got 1 in 2009/10 along with the 14 Ruddy kept. Overall Randolph had 32 league match clean sheets - 7; 15; 10. He kept 40 clean sheets in all matches. The longest run of consecutive clean sheets in this period was by John Ruddy - 5 matches from Jan 16th 2010 to Feb 10th until Kris Boyd scored a late equalizer for Rangers in a 1-1 draw. This season we've actually kept 9 clean sheets so the 15 match record could conceivably be beaten but those clean sheets have been shared by three goalkeepers so far so an individual record is unlikely.

The wage bill is being cut because we have to gradually reduce our costs season on season to make the club financially self sufficient. That's a good thing and shouldn't be seen as a negative. It means we should have a team to support well into the future and not every supporter in the country can say that. And if consistently out performing clubs with much larger resources than us isn't a 'great leap forward' I'm not sure what is. I remember when the idea that we could do so was pie in the sky stuff. Today, it's almost taken for granted that we are up there or better than Hibs, Hearts, Aberdeen, Dundee Utd etc. The first decade of Premier League football I saw Motherwell play we never finished higher than 6th place and it was hard to believe we could ever break the city club hegemony at the top of the league. The top five clubs were almost always the same teams. Average attendance as it stands at the moment is 5,145 which is perhaps a little down as I'd expect it to be around 5,500 but there is no Rangers in the league anymore and the city clubs have been fairly dismal over recent years meaning far fewer away supporters coming to Fir Park. I'd like our attendances to be higher but we've not seen a disintegration of our support as similar sized clubs like St. Johnstone, Kilmarnock and Dunfermline (look where they are now) have. Maybe there isn't much excitement to be had in prudence but overall I think we shouldn't be too negative even if our priorities should be surviving rather than expanding.

That we can all agree on.

Maybe it wasn't a penalty then but I seem to remember O'Reilly doing us a favour against Celtic at some point. I don't think I'm making this up!

I'm pretty sure O'Reilly gave us a penalty in a win v Celtic so he can't be the worst! The two worst in my opinion were Waddell and Rowbotham. JPR was before my time but I'm sure he was later outed as being corrupt.

Apparently Inverness gave them a real thumping yesterday, much more than the scoreline would suggest. They have been churning out wins recently a bit like we were earlier in the season but if we can score we've got a chance. They rely heavily on not conceding and their last 6 matches have been decided by one goal, 5 times in their favour. I'd expect it to be a tight match and to be honest I'd also be looking for a little bit of luck since one or two major decisions have gone against us in the two previous defeats.

I've always disliked Rangers more than Celtic. My first season full season coming to Fir Park was the season Graeme Sounness came to Rangers and the start of the 9-in-a-row period which is perhaps why. I also have a bit of a grudge against Hearts having gone through that long period when we were basically Hearts bitches and John Robertson was guaranteed to score every time.

Paying £26 to have a kick at a plastic seat? Not very good at finances are they? No wonder they went bust.

Goodwillie scored 6 goals in 11 starts for Dundee Utd during his loan spell. He wasn't worth the money they were forking out because of the players on much lower wages that they had brought through their youth system but Goodwillie would still be a good player for most teams on ability.

I wouldn't say we've never had a better chance but Celtic have 9 wins on the trot and they have played well in probably 4 of them and scrapped victories in the rest of them. They have not been that convincing at home in particular. Their dominance on paper is greater than it has been out on the field and their 5-0 win at Fir Park wasn't typical of them this season. You suspect their run, which has been on shaky ground for a while now, has to come to an end soon so why shouldn't it be us that does it? Any kind of result would be a great result but we shouldn't go their quaking in our boots because despite what the results and league table says this is a poorer Celtic side than last seasons.

There is a time and a place for every thing but shepherding in itself is no bad thing. If anything I'd rather a defender stayed on his feet that way he doesn't get taken out of the game. Shaun Hutchinson could learn about shepherding instead of making the tackle every time because he often misses and end up 15 yards behind the play. Mark Reynolds was overall a very good player for us although towards the end you felt he was stagnating a little and needed a move away. In a way he was hoist on his own petard by coming into the team as a rookie and being absolutely magnificent. His first season was probably his best season and fans therefore didn't see enough development and perhaps even detected his performances going back slightly but that didn't mean he wasn't good. Central defence is one of the hardest positions to play and depends on match experience more than other areas of the park. Right now Mark Reynolds is only 26 years old and has maybe another 7 or 8 years at the top level in front of him. With additional experience I'd expect him to get better and better. He should be one of the first names down in the Scotland squad, especially since we are not over abundant in central defenders. I don't see him every week now but he has been excellent when we've played Aberdeen and Willie Miller, a genuinely world class defender in his day, absolutely raves about him every week on the radio. No doubt that won't dissuade his critics but I don't see any many other Scottish central defenders at Reynolds level.

Ramsden has been a very good signing. A real steady eddie in a couple of positions. Carswell has been up and down but he's certainly a trier. I got into trouble for my opinion on Steve Jennings a while back but I think Carswell is similar in that he's not a creative player and isn't likely to excite too many scouts or journalists with his technique or vision so he's never going to get the same attention as a Gauld or Mackay-Steven. However ever team needs a player like that in midfield so I don't mean to denigrate him in anyway when I say that. As a regular at the top end of the SPFL I think Carswell should have been called up by the U21's especially when players are in that squad that aren't even close to first team football but at the end of the day it's up to Billy Stark to pick what he thinks is the best team.

My offical worst XI. GK Graeme Smith - So dire he got dropped on multiple occasions for Colin Meldrum. DF Alan Sneddon - Quality mouser, shit player. Came to us very much at the end of his career. DF Karl Ready - A player I don't mind calling a complete scumbag and wage thief. Did I mention he was a scumbag? DF Ange Oueifio - One of those occasions when a park level player somehow finds himself playing professional football. DF Gary Bollan - He's fat, he's round, he's....just fat and round. MF Andy Dow - One of those players I'm actually glad had their contracts ripped up when we went into administration. MF Paul Keegan - As Lady Catherine Lamb almost said "Sad, bad and dangerous to watch." MF Kevin McBride - His nickname should have been Kevin 'White Feather' McBride. Biggest shitebag I've ever seen. Could probably make him faint but bursting a crisp packet. FW Andy Roddie - So bad he actually transcended abuse and became a sort of funny likable clown in a Motherwell shirt. Oh Andy! LOL Another miss from half a yard, whit ye like! FW Khaled Kemas - They called him Hammerfoot after a terrific volleyed goal. Unfortunately before and after they mostly called him Shitefoot. FW Trevor Molloy - The Malpas season in a nutshell. If that nutshell was a really crap Irish footballer with the word footballer in inverted commas. Subs. Colin Meldrum - So bad he kept letting Graeme Smith get back into the team to fuck things up. Eddie Forrest - Airdrie bawbag and crime on the eyes. Gunni Jonsson - Gave away a goal with a slack pass back, scored an OG, gave away a penalty and then got sent off in one match. His 2nd and last match. Joni Lehtonen - Or as he should have been known Joni Who-let-him-on. Mario Doerner - As far as most people are concerned the 2nd worst Austrian of all time.