Ya Bezzer!

Not had time to really read the thread yet so sorry if I am repeating opinions. We looked leaderless, unorganized and lacking in confidence today. We need a new manager quickly and todays performance convinced me we can't afford to bring in a rookie manager unless we are prepared to completely write off the season and I don't think we can afford to do that.

It starts at 10.

I got a half season ticket for my Christmas. Is the Rangers game included on this or am I going to have to get my ass up to the ticket office tomorrow morning?

By all accounts Calderwood has changed his mind and is now desperate to get back into football. He would take the job in a jiffy however he wasn't prepared to apply and be interviewed, he wanted to be offered the position. To be fair to Calderwood you can't blame him for that considering most of the candidates that have been mentioned have done next to nothing in the game while Calderwood's record is there for all to see. I don't particularly like him as a character but I'd be fairly confident he could do as good a job as anyone else were are likely to attract and a much better job than most of the candidates that have been mentioned.

Pretty much agree with this. The best candidate mentioned so far by a mile is Jimmy Calderwood. I don't know if he has ruled himself out in the last day or so but the last time I had the radio on they were saying he was interested in the job but wanted to be approached rather than putting in a CV.

I think the single biggest factor in lower attendances is that fans don't travel away from home in any great numbers. Celtic, Rangers, Aberdeen, Hibernian and Hearts used to all bring sizable traveling supports and over a season that bumped up our average attendance. Even Old Firm games rarely go over 10,000 these days.

Lasley and Murphy were the pick of the bunch. The goal tipped it in favour of Lasley.

Not saying it was the referee BUT if the referee was in on it and Jennings was innocent wouldn't you make sure the bets were placed in the home town of the player you were going to send off? The whole situation is crazy.

If the ref was in on it the ba's burst. The fall out might even mean the season being abandoned.

I don't know what people were expecting. We hadn' t played for weeks, probably haven't even trained very much, didn't have a management team and were playing the in form team in the country. It wasn't a good performance, Hearts deserved the 3 points but given events it didn't really surprise me.

I hope I am wrong (obviously) but I think we are going to get skelped tonight. 3-0 to Hearts.

The problem for Motherwell and all Scottish football is television. Why pay £18 to watch Motherwell v St. Mirren when you can watch Barcelona on telly later that night from your armchair? Long term I can see it being virtually impossible for Scottish football to operate a professional full time league. We are inevitably headed towards an American model. There are only 32 teams in the NFL with a population over 300 million. Television roles the roost. Now in Europe we are very close to something similar. A sort of televised and media monopoly focused on the elite teams will drive almost everyone else out of business with perhaps a tier or two below them also managing to stay professional. There are also societal changes. People simply aren't as 'local' as they used to be and the idea of community centered pride has vanished. Today due to the internet and modern communications people are as likely to have friends in Chicago as Cambusnethan. People simply do not see themselves as belonging to a town or a community. They have much wider horizons than they did even in the 1990's. When I was a kid we went on our summer holiday to Ayr. Now people fly to New York to do some shopping. That sort of change of mentality affects local clubs like ours. When once someone may have supported the local club because it was locally prominent and they felt an affinity towards it, now they either don't feel the same affinity or are barely conscious of its existence. The future of Scottish football is part time - just as it was for 90% of its long history. Within two or three seasons there will be no full time teams outside the SPL. Already a number of full time teams are preparing to make the switch next season. I honestly can't see how we can avoid the same switch over the long term.

Woke up to the news. We have been shafted. Craig Brown has really made a bit of a fool of himself. He has shown very publicly that he is not a man of his word. He has also shown that his footballing judgement is suspect by choosing Aberdeen over us. I think John Boyle has been a very good chairman since the period of administration however I now look to him and ask "Why have two successive managerial teams been allowed to manage our club without anything legally binding?" In my opinion it worked in our favour with regards Gannon but this certainly does not. I had no doubts whatsoever that under Brown we would have finished Top Six. Now our Top Six finish is at the mercy of whatever managerial appointment we make. There are probably eight teams challenging for the Top Six this season and we could easily slip down if we make the wrong one. The number of managers that have been going through the club recently is unacceptable. It is to the detriment of the club and we will suffer in the long run if we do not find some managerial stability. Four managers in 4 and a half seasons is poor, very very poor.

Gannon had the lure of some money to spend. Our next manager will get hee-haw and in fact will probably have to make cuts. I don't think there is any chance of attracting a 'name' from down south, even an unemployed one.

Good idea, then we can welcome in the John Hughes Years. :wank:

I hope Brown stays and as usual a lot of our support are acting like hysterical women but I agree with the above statement. In future if you manage Motherwell you sign on the dotted line. When we can't sell any players our manager is our greatest asset. Or he would be if he didn't have a gentleman's agreement. Reading between the lines I think Brown is concerned about budget cuts next season rather than anything to do with this season. Our attendances have been poor this year, as I mentioned earlier we really have any players that you could attach a sizable cash price on. Basically next season could see us having no money to bring in any new players, offer new contracts and run with an even smaller squad.

Shit. That was 14 years ago?

Never worried about Brown going to Aberdeen, I suppose there was an outside chance Archie Knox might have wanted to be top man again and he has old links with Aberdeen but looks like Aberdeen approached them both as a team, not either one individually. However Brown won't go on for ever. Will he stay at the end of the season? Have one more after that? He has done a great job but I don't see him hanging around for an indefinite length of time. He'll step down when he thinks he's taken us as far as he can and probably Top 4 or 5 and Europe is pretty much all he can do with the resources baring a cup win.

With snow piled up on the sidelines and an orange ball.

I remember the game but haud on a minute - Harri Kampman beat Rangers? Must have been his only win!

This isn't a joke - The Sun is written so that everything in it should be understandable to someone with the reading ability of an 8 year old. It's considered one of the hardest papers to write for because its difficult for adults to actually write in that sort of very basic style.

Don't get me wrong, I've been laughing my head off at the whole McGhee/Aberdeen situation but I don't get all the serious bitterness towards him. OK, maybe he's a bit of a pumped up fud with a delusional opinion of his own merits and place in the footballing hierarchy but he did a great job with us. To turn that Malpas side round, probably the worst Motherwell side I've ever seen, into probably the best Motherwell side I've seen since the mid 90's was nothing short of miraculous. We lost some very important players and his second season wasn't as good but it was hardly a disaster, we just missed out on the Top Six, actually finished the season with more points than Hibs in the Top Six and qualified for Europe. The guy did a great job for us and even snubbed a huge pay rise from Hearts to stay with us. A lot of this hatred of McGhee seems to me like ingratitude.

If the game had gone ahead the only people at the match would have been people living within walking distance, we'd been have lucky to 2,000 - 2,500 at the match and all of them would have been fucking freezing and probably caught some kind of respiratory illness. Still, its been a while since we got the orange ball out.

Should have tried to get a train out of Glasgow last night. The Russians runs trains over Siberia, we cannae get them over a thick frost in Rutherglen!

Just got up 5 minutes ago, looked out the window and knew there was no way the game would be on. I live 5 minutes walk from Fir Park and it is currently snowing heavily with what looks like a good couple of inches of snow lying on the ground. There is no way the Police would have allowed this game to go on.