Ya Bezzer!

Not seen Ferguson play recently but you have to admit he had a wee bit of quality. 34 isn't that old these days, surely worth a half season contract to see how it worked out. I wonder if those not keen on Ferguson would also have been against us signing an old, slow, fat, Rangers reserves winger called Davie Cooper!

The St. Mirren result doesn't bother me as much as the cup defeats and the home form. On the Home Form table we are 11th this season, only Dundee are below us. That's basically the problem. We might be 3rd in the league, we might be doing reasonably well OVERALL but 85% of our support have been watching a struggling-against-relegation season.

St. Mirren have now only lost 1 of their last 5 matches and that was to Celtic. 2 wins, 2 draws and that defeat at Celtic Park so there not actually in bad form. Something has to be done to shore us up defensively. 3 clean sheets in 26 matches just isn't good enough. We've also conceded 2 goals in our last 4 matches, again not good enough, especially when you consider 3 of those teams are Bottom 6 teams. I'd have Saunders back in as soon as he's ready but even then you can't expect him to come back from his bad injuries and make everything OK in an instant. He's going to need games to get back up to speed.

Probably going to go to this so there goes our away record!

I think with low bids for players we do have to look very carefully at it but especially at this time of the season there is a need to get cash flow into the club that can sometimes influence the decision as a short term one, rather than a long term one. Also I feel a bit sorry for Murphy. I suspect he doesn't really want to leave but as a sale-able asset there is a bit of pressure on him to sacrifice his own wants for those of the club.

Pretty much agree with this. Looks a lot more comfortable in forward positions. Not sure of him as a left back though.

To be fair we are in a very unusual and perhaps unprecedented situation here. 2nd top of the league, 1 defeat in 8 with 5 wins - great. But also, out both cups, only 2 home wins all season and generally woeful performances at Fir Park. I think it's silly to suggest McCall should go because you have to look at the bigger picture but there are actual issues here that should be addressed and if it was based purely on home matches I think there would be a case for McCall's dismissal. I'm a pay at the gate fan this season and when I hand over £20 plus to get in and I'm served up the performances we've seen at home this season then I think it's perfectly understandable to be annoyed. Away form is great, but McCall HAS to do something to turn around the home fortunes. If he doesn't our already faltering attendances are only going to get worse and worse and that is going to have repercussion next season when we are going to have to replace a lot of playrs and the cash isn't there.

Aberdeen were playing 5 across the back with a bank of 4 in front of them after they scored. Very difficult to break down. They also hold a straight line defensively which is something we completely fail to do with players getting caught out of position (especially Hateley but they all do it) all the time. Towards the end Aberdeen played with 6 players in a line right across the back.

McCall seems like a nice enough guy but I don't really rate him as a manager. I could sit here and type out a list of what I think are legitimate complaints about Stuart McCall, I think his transfer record is patchy, I think he's released players that should still be at Fir Park, I think he is tactically limited, I think he is a negative coach, I think he is not a manager who dares to dream. However you can hardly be taken seriously to suggest Stuart McCall's time is up when we are sitting third in the league, after finishing 2nd last season. You can't sack a manager for losing a cup match. Overall we have done pretty well with McCall in charge. Like I said, personally, I have my doubts about him and think a significant number of factors that have lead to that relative success are outside of McCall's managerial ability but that's just my opinion. I think we could struggle badly next season if we lose a significant number of our better players but until we are actually struggling badly sacking McCall shouldn't be an option. It does worry me that the appalling home record could drive fans away when we desperately need bodies through the turnstiles but you have to remember our home form is only half of the story.

Fans are entitled to criticize players/managers if they don't feel like they are performing, especially consistently over a long period. However, you don't like to see people go over the top as has happened on occasion, for instance during Billy Davies time as manager when things got really poisonous for a while. However I'm quite interested in your post above because you seem to be saying you think you should be entitled to be able to have free reign to criticize players but at the same time are moaning about other supporters criticizing you at matches. Isn't there a bit of hypocrisy there? I'm basically for freedom of speech but that applies to everyone and different supporters see their role differently. Some think they pay their money and they can say what they want, others think supporters should always support, I'm kinda in the middle of those two positions but you can't really complain about being shouted at if you are dishing it out yourself.

Randolph - made about 5 great saves tonight.

Especially since the League Cup isn't even concluded. They should play the League Cup in the first half of the season (like they used to) and the Scottish Cup in the second half. But this being Scottish football straight forward common sense doesn't get a look in.

It wouldn't be that different if it was just one player. Nicky Law wasn't playing tonight and look at us! A shadow of the team on Saturday.

Started off OK, had a couple of decent efforts but sadly didn't take any of them. After that we struggled to create but we were hardly being outplayed. Second half, especially after the goal, we just fell apart. The defence that had coped OK up to that point just totally collapsed. Aberdeen started to over run us in midfield and pretty much controlled the match from then on, although Higdon missed a sitter to equalise just a few minutes after Fallon's goal. From then on it was down to Randolph to keep the score respectable. We were poor right down the spine of the team with the exception of Randolph. Hutchy needs experience beside him, not him being the experienced one! Cummins just isn't good enough to play at this level. The same could be said in midfield, Carswell was completely anonymous. And Higdon and Ojamaa were both absolutely shocking tonight. Time and time again Humphrey, who was probably our best outfield player, was the player furtherest forward and playing balls into areas with no Motherwell players present. It was as if Higdon and Ojamaa were playing a game of World Cup and weren't allowed to go into the 18 yard box! You need to get into the box and we just didn't do it tonight. We badly missed Nicky Law and our squad just isn't strong enough at the moment to deal with losing one or two important players. It really puzzles me that Kerr has been brought in when we so badly need an experienced player. And no offense to Kerr but nothing suggests that he completely outshines Johnny Page. Another year, another cup exit. I'm beginning to think I might never see a victory again.

Aberdeen's form has shaded recently, putting aside the draw with us at Pittodrie, they have lost 4 out of the last 6, including defeats at Tynecastle and Victoria Park. On the other hand we put the poor home form to bed on Saturday and are in decent form overall undefeated in 6 with 3 wins and 3 draws. We also have a pretty good record against Aberdeen and last season's cup defeat was a bit of an aberration, it was their only win against us since 2008. I think we should be going into this match pretty confident. All the pointers say home win.

Apart from the Panathinaikos game, yes. I thought we played quite well but no one really stood out. Could have given it to Hollis for his save at the end, I thought Hutchinson was solid again, Humphrey played well in patches but there was a long spell in the second half when he wasn't involved, Higdon got another goal, Lasley was back to something like the kind of form you expect of him but I'm giving it to Stevie Hammell.

That was my view at the match but McCall said on the radio they were carrying knocks.

Had to force myself to go along today but I'm coming home happy. Not only did we win it was an entertaining game for the most part. First half I thought we played quite well and it was against the run of play when Ross County took the lead. Absolute rocket from Rocco Quinn, Hollis had no chance, no keeper would have got close to it. To our credit I didn't think it effected the match too much, we keep our heads up and equalized, good cross from Hateley, although I didn't think he had the best games overall. Second half we scored early, far too easily from Ross County's point of view. Law just ran right through the County defence without a challenge and just passed it in. After that you could see a look of terror on most of our guys faces and it was obvious we were shitting it about losing a lead again and guess what we sat back, lost all our composure and Ross County dominated. The equalizer had been coming for a while. After that we picked ourselves up again and the game went from end to end. Hollis made a few good saves in the last few minutes to keep the three points. No real stand out players but most of the team did quite well.

Dreich day, shit home form, away team parking the bus, probably poor attendance....hard to get too excited about this one. Maybe it won't be as bad as everyone thinks it will and we actually get a good game.

You suspect Hateley will be one of the players moving on next summer. Letting Saunders go seems like it would be a bad decision.

It's kind of an obvious point that a Premier League team is mostly knocked out the cup by other Premier League teams. I'm sure the same applies to every other Premier League team.

Aberdeen hadn't lost a home match this season until their last two. Is that just a blip (one was against Celtic) or a decline in form? Hard to say but Aberdeen draw a lot at home and it wouldn't surprise me if that's what happened on Saturday. Hopefully we get some kind of result. It's going to be a massive downer on our season if we are out of both cups before the new year has turned. I think its an absolutely rotten decision to have these ties played at this time of year. The League Cup should be played and concluded in the first half of the season and the Scottish Cup in the second. Of course this being Scotland...

There aren't multiple camera views at all games though. It's not as problematic to over rule a referees decision based on multiple camera views than a single camera view. In theory I'd be happy for tapes of all games to be gone through with players being retroactively punished for bad fouls (ie, reds that weren't awarded at the time) and especially diving and cheating but realistically it would cause more problems than it would solve. Fans already complain bitterly about referees, what happens when a compliance officer goes through a months worth tapes and awards suspensions and penalties to one club and none to another? Fans would simply bitch and moan and come up with lists of things the compliance officer didn't address. It would just open up a whole can of worms as this thread shows. This case was televised live across the country and was fairly clear cut. So they punish Randolph, fair enough, but generally speaking I don't think the authorities generally want to go down this route unless they feel they have no choice. And in this case they felt they couldn't really let Randolph off. Take it in the chin and move on I say.

I said immediately after the match that I thought that Randolph had got away with a nasty one and the only thing that has changed is that it looks like he's not going to get away with it now. I don't really understand some peoples complaint about players only being punished if they are on television. It's a bit like saying that criminals that are caught on CCTV shouldn't be punished because other people commit crime and get away with it because there is no evidence. You can only prosecute people where you have sufficient evidence and obviously televised matches provide that evidence. Randolph did something that was unnecessary and potential dangerous and now he's going to miss crucial games in our season because of his own stupidity. People trying to make out that the authorities are at fault here and not the player are, I'm afraid, taking their partisan support for the club a bit too far. If it had happened at the other end of the field I'm sure the very people moaning about this would be welcoming the decision to take action against Craig Samson for nearly taking the head off Murphy or whoever.

It was a rotten game in a run of rotten games. If it was a one off it wouldn't be so bad. Four out of the six matches I've been to this season have been dire. I think something like 8 out of 12 teams in the SPL have seen an increase in attendances this season and we are one of the odd ones out who's crowds have decreased quite a bit. You don't have to be a genius to work out why.