Ya Bezzer!

Yeah but we have two new centre backs who have been miles better than who was there before. O'Donnell and Slattery who have both been imposters are rightly warming the bench. And we are actually playing two up top. All those things make a massive difference. Especially on our defensive performance which was really the thing that was holding us back all season. The truth is there isn't much between 12th and 3rd in this league. Just having players who are confident is probably the difference between Top 6 and being in a relegation spot.

Remember when you used to enjoy the football? Getting a massive blast of nostalgia for today's performance! Best performance in ages, a clean sheet, couple of goals and spanking the hated Hearts. We won midweek but today was a big step up for me. We showed much more composure this afternoon. If our final ball had been a bit better it could have been a big win and one for the ages. Excellent performances right down the spine - Kelly looking confident again, Butcher & Casey great, thought Spittal put in probably one of his best, if not the best, performance in a Motherwell shirt, Obika and Van Veen both caused problems. If we play like that next week we can make our season a lot more comfortable but it goes without saying that we need to keep up the recent momentum and not get lazy again.

Yes. He's been enormous for us since he came in. I'd be reluctant to put him in midfield now.

I actually meant the last home match cos I don't go to away games anymore. My fault for not clarifying.

Teams win and lose but it's usually narrow margins. Last time out against Hearts though I thought there was actually a noticeable gap between the teams. Hearts haven't lost against anyone outside the OF since October so probably looking like a win would be a unlikely result but if we can win, with results going our way today, we'd go 6 points clear of Dundee Utd with a decent goal difference advantage. One can hope.

I had to go straight to bed after the football last night so..... The thing I was mostly thinking about was if a board of the top tacticians and coaches in world football was assembled, asked to watch the match last night and then asked to draw up a report on it. I'd be very interested in what they had to say! I mean I'm not grumbling about 3 points but it was more akin to pinball-on-speed than football. We showed some vim in the opening stages but as soon as St Mirren got the goal we just sort of slowly deflated to the point we were hanging on at the end. Johnston's goal was fantastic but overall you can't really see the 'revival' continuing through the weekend if we perform like that. It's that old broken record but the standard of Scottish football is comically bad. 22 wind up toys bumping into each other.

I was thinking the same. Any new manager coming in needs to address our pathetic defensive play so it makes sense to go 3/5 at the back and match up against St Mirren.

I've been critical of the board but to be fair to them no one with any reputation is going to touch this job with a barge pole so they have a difficult choice picking out the least worst of a bad bunch. The standard of the names linked with us are bordering on terrifying. It's wall to wall failure.

4 results in a season against the OF and 4th place in his one and only season = 'doesn't exactly have a resounding CV'. Also look at where Dundee Utd were pre Courts and post Courts. What calibre of manager do you think we are going to attract? I'm not even sure Courts would come here with his not resounding CV. He might feel 4th place Dundee Utd to 11th place Motherwell might be too much of a step down.

I'm not sure if Tam Courts is the manager we need right now (ie relegation dog fight) but I'd put him above either of the others. And the difference between Tam Courts and Hammell is that he did quite well as a manager including good performances against the OF (3 draws and a win) and finished 4th in the league whereas Hammell, eh, didn't.

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Jack Ross has been a rip roaring shite show in his last two jobs where he had far more resources than he'd have a Fir Park. Jim Goodwin has never had a Top 6 finish in his career. Again he had way more resources at Aberdeen than he would have with us and the way they totally collapsed towards the end was even worse than Hammell's demise. Tam Courts did a reasonable job at Dundee Utd. He improved them over the last manager, both in results and style, and showed a willingness to play youth players.

One of the problems now is who are we appointing? Someone to save our ass? Someone who's progressive going forward? Someone who can keep us trundling along in the top level. Someone that can get us up next season, if relegated? Most likely it's the first one, which means going forward we might not have the right guy in anything other than the very short term.

It's easy enough to see who fails every time when they come in or contribute nothing over a long period of selection. I feel sorry for Hammell cos I think he was put in a very difficult position but, well, the fact is he picked O'Donnell yesterday, and that's almost a sacking offense in itself. Let's stop trusting guys who have let us down time and time again.

The club custodians have a lot to answer for. They have thrown a club legend to the lions because they can't do their own job. The events around Alexander leaving the club showed they were spineless. Appointing a completely inexperienced manager under those circumstances was idiotic. Burrows leaving when and how he did is also very suspect. We also need to have a long and serious look at who is identifying signing targets. The vast majority of our signings have been dire going back probably as far as McGhee's second spell. There is also the fact that players have been linked with us under managers and then signed under different managers. I don't believe for a minute Hammell did anything other than OK this latest batch out of desperation. Coaching at the club stinks. Youth development stinks. Players aren't organised and can't do basics. Why do we have so many players, over four or five seasons now, THAT CAN'T MAKE A SIMPLE PASS. The players can also hang their head in shame. Guys like Kelly, O'Donnell, Slattery, Van Veen, Lamie etc, players that should have been the spine of our team are too busy crying on telly, to stand up and give us some leadership. They are boys masquerading as men. Show some fucking balls! There are still a lot of points on offer and it's important not to relegate ourselves by throwing in the towel. However, everyone over there Fir Park needs to up their game and there cannot be any further catastrophes. We have three months to get this ship back on course and there should be no further excuses for not doing so.

It truly has. A huge step backwards, which is the only way Scottish football seems to go these days. It's almost as if Rangers and Celtic can get to play their colt teams in the Lowland League and everyone else can go to hell.

Was sad to see that. Was a good goalkeeper who's time at Motherwell was kind of overshadowed falling between Ally Maxwell and Sieb Dykstra.

Ross County basically swapped their whole squad round at the January window a few years back. Our defensive record is absolutely atrocious. Last time I counted we'd lost 10 games by 1 goal and have 5 draws so if we'd done better defensively we'd be in a much better position. 1 clean sheet in 15 matches says it all. Our players go on to the field knowing they have to score two goals to even have a chance of a win. Our last four results are 1-1, 0-1, 0-2, 1-3 so they are progressively getting worse. Also a bit worrying that we've played 3 different formations in the last 4 matches for no positive effect.

He literally had blood spurting out his head!

At least we're no bottom anymore!

Half time but.... Aberdeen have conceded 14 goals in the last 3 games and we haven't had an effort.

There is no point in sacking Hammell if we are just going to have another 'Who Wants To Manage Us' open day. We need to have an actual plan. An experienced manager, with a record, who's been identified and is in place ready to go. Otherwise it's just more chaos and uncertainty. The club has made a series of terrible knee jerk reactions and the last thing we need to do is 'out of the frying pan into the fire', which, one suspects, is exactly what would happen. We laid out our season's path at the beginning of the season and it's all about finishing anywhere above 12th now.

Since Covid I've only gone to home matches so I'm aware that I'm only really seeing half the picture but I thought in the recent home matches, although we hadn't won, we played some decent football, scored goals, created chances, were relatively entertaining to watch and I could see something you could pin your hopes on. Tonight was absolutely deplorable. I've seen some shockers in my time but that was right up there. Losing goals 4 and 3 minutes into each half is unacceptable. The midfield was no existent, the defence is pathetic and the front line has chucked it. I'm looking at senior players in that team - Kelly, Lambie, Van Veen, they look lost. There is no leadership, no grit. And Stephen O'Donnell? Worse than a player down, more like having an active saboteur in your ranks. The guy should never wear a Motherwell shirt again after tonight's display. I'm not saying at this stage that the new players are worse than the old one's but they have made us a worse team. Players aren't up to scratch, a lot of them don't know the league, don't know each other and the cohesion and fluency of the football has gone miles backwards because of that. It's going to take 4 or 5 weeks for these players to gel and you don't have 4 or 5 weeks when you have 1 win in 14 league matches. It's one performance but that tonight looked like the later day of Robinson's time when the team looked like it didn't believe it would actually win a game from minute 1. And the football we were trying to play has turned into pass back to Kelly and hoof it up the park. We really need to turn this round on Saturday.

Well I mentioned the confidence factor but as usual you have us at 'already or very near rock bottom' when we've lost 2 out of the last 6 matches with 7 goals scored. I think it can get worse than that. Say, St. Johnstone who are on the worst run this season with 5 losses on the trot and an away trip to Rangers coming up. I certainly don't want us to lose to Arbroath but the context of my comment was the condition, mentioned by some, that Hammell gets fired if we don't win.

Some times though offering a longer contract is what gets the player to sign for us over similar or even better wage offers from other clubs. If you look at lower league clubs who are often completely or almost completely rebuilding their squads each season most of them struggle most of the time and quite a few of them have disappeared into non league football.