Ya Bezzer!

At the end of the day if something is hugely beneficial and possible it will happen. The fact that Motherwell will be playing next season at Fir Park and the season after that and the season after that proves that such a move is either not hugely beneficial or not possible. Someone mentioned it earlier but right now there is a sort of 'Hysteria of Change' around in society as a whole, where everyone wants instant change in everything without actually looking into the real and practical problems that changing something actually entails. For a realistic look at what moving from Fir Park would actually mean forget about St. Mirren, St. Mirren got an unbelievable, once-a-life-time deal on their land which won't be replicated by the sale of Fir Park. Think instead of Falkirk. Falkirk got £9 million for the sale of their stadium, probably at least twice, if not three times, what we would be likely to sell Fir Park for. In that time they have been relegated from the Premier League into the 1st Division and are currently in a perilous financial state, barely able to support a squad of 16 players. The stadium which was started in 2004 is to date still not complete with 3 stands built and one temporary stand. For a number of seasons two sides of the stadium were open. The ground has required bail outs by the local council, the company that runs it has been rumored to be staving off liquidation and the club do not own the ground themselves which means they have to get approval for any plans they want to develop, leading to huge delays and financial mismanagement. Put it simply the club is now in a very serious financial position because of its move, which was more necessary due to the condition of Brockville and at least initially better funded than any move we could realistically hope for. We live in the real world not Sim City. Any plan to move away from Fir Park carries with it huge financial risks that could take 10, 15, 20 years to remedy. If that's what you want for a slightly less scuffed plastic seat, fine, but at least accept you'd be leading the club down a razors edge.

I agree with this to an extent. Outside of the Old Firm and Hearts there is very little to fear for us in this league, I don't see any reason why we can't finish Top 6 again or higher. To me the only team outside the top three that I think are any good are Dundee Utd and they have lost some very important players (Gomis, Buaben, Conway, even David Robertson) so it will remain to be seen how well they do next season - the rest are in the same or a worse position than we are. Of course I'm not so arrogant to think Motherwell will sweep all before them because there isn't huge margins between most of the teams and a player or two can make all the difference but right now Aberdeen and Hibs, teams you'd normally expect to be Top Six don't look any better than last season and the Calderwood saga makes Hibs look a total shambles right now. Inverness have lost their top scorer Rooney so I'd expect them to struggle a wee bit since he got most of their goals. Kilmarnock have lost most of their first team from last season and the rest Dunfermline, St. Mirren, St. Johnstone, etc, are nothing to fear, we are just as good as them if not better, last season suggests we are better. Of course a few injuries could put a spanner in the works but most teams are in the same boat with very small squads and all things being even they will suffer injuries too.

If Motherwell fans had done that the ambulance services would have been over run with slipped discs and hernias.

Bit worried about that last bit with the prospect of an offer coming in for Murphy. I suppose if the offer is a good one we can't really afford to turn it down but in my opinion Murphy and Randolph are the players we can least afford to lose in footballing terms. I'd say our chances of bring in a player of Murphy's quality in the transfer market are slim to none, we either bring those players through the youth system or we don't have them at all and we are already struggling for creativity, attacking mentality and flair, without Murphy we look a bit barren on that score. I've not seen Law yet of course but excluding him I'm struggling to see any player in our squad beat a defender by technique.

This is true. Even before property prices collapsed it wasn't worth much, either in terms of area or location. Other clubs were able to sell land to supermarkets and get a well above average price, that wouldn't happen in our case. More likely it would be sold for housing in which case it would raise much less money. There are large areas of land which were sold for housing close to Fir Park on which barely a house has been built because the market is completely depressed. It's entirely possible the land wouldn't even find a buyer or would have to be sold at a fraction of its 'worth'. A good deal for the land would be something in the region of £2 million pounds if local land prices and a guesstimate as to the total area of Fir Park is anything to go by. So even in the best of all possible worlds the sale of the land would only cover a percentage of the total cost. And a soulless 'flat pack' stadium would cost roughly £10 million pounds requiring the majority of the cost of a new stadium to come from another source. Quite where Motherwell would find an extra £8 million pounds I'm not sure. To build anything more ambitious, than a generic Lego stadium cost much more.

It's fun to think about what you would do if you actually owned the club but in actually reality I don't think I'd want to stop being an ordinary fan sitting in the East Stand. I'd probably donate £1 million pounds each season as anonymously as I could. Oh, the proviso for the donation would be white shorts for the home strip!

For me a year contract is worthless in terms of getting a fee for something. Jennings is a good player but not so good that other clubs will be so desperate to get him they will pay at Christmas when they can get him for nothing in June. He can negotiate a pre-contract with 6 months of his contract to run, if I remember correctly so I can't see us making anything out of this. Just a decent player signing up for another year.

Not trying to be negative but I've seen a few people say this and I don't understand why. It's basically the same squad as last season except it's smaller, has fewer experienced players and we've lost Sutton and replaced him with someone who on paper scores fewer goals, and we've brought in Nicky Law who I've read a lot of mixed reports about (not physical, got talent but goes missing in matches, twice in Division team of the season albeit a lower level than SPL). Far from being the best squad we've had for a long time to me it looks slightly weaker than last season unless Nicky Law makes a huge impact and becomes a star player or one of the younger players does a Faddy/Reynolds.

By this logic we should already have changed the badge because it features a 'Telstar' style paneled football which is no longer used and of course Ravenscraig steelworks!

I remeber towards the end of Alec's Aberdeen career we played them at Fir Park. Aberdeen had a bit of a keeper crisis and had to draft in a young untried goalie - Derek Stillie - to make his debut. We absolutely hammered Aberdeen but Stillie played a blinder saving everything that we fired at the goal. It was 92 minutes gone, looked like it was going to be one of those highly frustrating nights when you totally dominate but just can't score, when Big Eck back headered a cross high into the air and looped it over the otherwise impervious Stillie into the net. Three points for the 'Well! Best thing McLeish ever did for us.

Malpas trio of shite must share the prize. Just woeful, woeful, woeful. I mean Keegan was the best of them and he went on to score fuck all goals in the 3rd division! The worst season I've ever witnessed at Fir Park as well.

Didn't we give pro contracts to some of the U19 players? That could account for some of the cash even if they aren't on huge wages.

Good news about Jennings if it comes about. Less good news that we will only sign two more players. I think we need at least three but that's obviously all we can afford and we'll just have to cope with it.

I think you could say that about the majority of teams in the league.

True. It's a sad day when politicians are criticized for making the right decision but inevitably he'll get pelters over this.

I don't think we've ever sold a really key player for buttons unless his contract was running out. See the Reynolds to Rangers saga for proof, or the fact that we turned down Rangers again when they came in for McDonald. Randolph still has two years on his contract so we have a stronger bargaining position than usual.

I agree with the principle of a second chamber but there is no use in having one if it is filled with nodding dog politicians like the parliament is. That's why I think the House of Lords is a great thing since its filled with highly educated but eccentric chaps who don't give a shit and don't have to cow tow like career politicians cos they are already loaded. Most of them do so in complete anonymity from a sense of tradition and duty rather than personal gain or careerism. Provided they are only ratifying bills I don't see why its important that they are elected and as I said earlier think it is an advantage that, although they often nominally belong to political parties, they aren't any where near as party politicized as members of parliament. As for not wanting independence for Scotland because of knee jerk laws being rushed out that prove to be utter nonsense, well the UK parliament is still miles ahead. The last Labour government introduced 420 laws at Westminster that allowed powers of entry alone, including a law that enables government agencies to check the heights of hedges and confiscate fridges if they do not meet energy rating guidelines.

Scott Brown gave the best performance of any player at Fir Park in the last 15 years when Hibs gubbed us a few years back. He went off the boil when he joined Celtic and hasn't got back to that level yet but I think he is a talented player who, if at the top of his game, should walk into a Celtic team or a Scotland team.

As someone that started supporting Motherwell in the eighties my initial thoughts are always to avoid relegation and I think if the season were to start tomorrow we probably have a squad good enough to do that. I can see three or four teams struggling at the bottom, St. Mirren, Dunfermline, possibly Kilmarnock and I actually have a feeling that McInnes will live to regret not taking the job down in England and that St. Johnstone will go down. Pretty confident Hearts will join the OF as the top three. But it's still too early though to really have a good idea of how the rest of the teams will finish. Teams like Aberdeen, Kilmarnock, Hibs, Dundee Utd are all likely to bring 4 or 5 first team players before the end of the transfer deadline and you'd hope we'd have some to and its hard to predict if Inverness will move forwards or backwards. There really isn't much between them all and keeping hold of a star player or making a couple of astute signings will probably be the difference between Europe and making up the numbers in the bottom six.

I don't know if you are being serious or not but if not singing rape songs at David Goodwillie is the 'price' I have to pay for all the good things the SNP have introduced in the last 4 years I think I can live with it. I do actually have 'theoretical' concerns about this bill but if anyone is to blame then point a finger at the SFA/SPL who buried their head in the sand for long and weary and forced the government into a position where, in order to give the nation any credibility at all, it had to be seen to act, and act quickly and with authority.

I heard a few SPL scouts went along to watch him last season after taking notice of his scoring exploits and without exception their verdict was "this guys is absolutely howlin". He was dreadful at Inverness Caly and didn't look SPL quality then but I've not seen him myself since then. Anyway going by what I heard he won't be playing in the SPL any time soon.

You must know the more press a player gets and the more big clubs he is linked to, the more interest it generates in the player. Of course people in football know Randy exists but this makes him 'hot, someone people are talking about. But maybe you think Motherwell are happy to see Randolph finish his contract and give him a handshake and a wave in May 2013.

Duped? Motherwell FC's overwhelming aim is to sell their players on for money. Since we just got a giant free advert for a player under contract I don't think anyone at Motherwell will be feeling duped. In fact it was probably part of a strategy to get our players noticed and linked to big clubs. Of course fans don't like to see our best players hawked around but that's the financial reality of it.

The last few years I've put up my stat spreadsheets I keep during the season and 30 or so of you downloaded them! So I thought I'd stick up the 2010/11 spreadsheets for any one that wants to them. All the results, scores, half times, weekly league positions, scorers, referees, attendances, match line ups, substitutes, bookings and red cards of every competitive match played by Motherwell and all the other 11 SPL sides. I try to make a little improvement each season or add something in and this time I've put in a player directory of every player who made an appearance for a SPL side so you can easily look anyone up and I've put all the teams into one worksheet instead of having separate files for all the different teams, making it much more compact and manageable to switch between teams. Anyone that wants them you can get them at the links below Excel 2010 version My link (original version) Excel 97 - 2003 version My link (version for users with older version of Excel, may have a few conversion errors but nothing stands out at a glance)