Ya Bezzer!

Since the formation of the Premier League in the late 70's, David Clarkson is our fourth highest scorer after Stevie Kirk, Tommy Coyne and Dougie Arnott. Excluding cup goals Kirk has 63, Coyne 59 and Arnott 58. Including cup goals, which Kirk had an especially good record in, he is into the 80s. I wonder if anyone will ever overtake Kirkie? We'd probably struggle to keep hold of anyone that prolific before they got near the record. In order to do so someone would have to score 15 - 20 goals a season for five seasons. Not very likely without being snapped up by a bigger club!

You've got to go into a game like this with a positive frame of mind. 2-1 to 'Well.

There is something to this but I don't think its the full picture. Take the Aberdeen game for instance which was the first match O'Brien was dropped. I thought we'd suffer for dropping O'Brien but actually I thought we played pretty well in the first half. We didn't get three points because of some baffling tactical decisions by Gannon including taking off Forbes for O'Brien which at the time was completely unwarranted and which had a big negative effect on the side. Recently I think you can also say that generally we've started matches fairly well but suffered second half collapses and O'Brien has usually come on in the second half. But I agree O'Brien was probably our best player this season up to being dropped and is one of the more important players at the club when he's on form, I just don't think he's so important that you can explain the recent dip in form on his exclusion from the starting eleven.

From BBC "Motherwell could be without Giles Coke and Shaun Hutchinson for the Boxing Day encounter with St Johnstone. Midfielder Coke has a knee strain while Hutchinson is suffering from hamstring problems and faces a fitness test. "

Falkirk have been trying to do something similar to Gannon for a few seasons and it just hasn't worked for them. Lots of nice passing, hardly any goals and bundles of defeats. Even John Hughes admitted that in order to survive in the league he had to change the tactics in the last part of the season and go more direct. My fear about Gannon is that he isn't tactically flexible enough. He gets an idea and he goes with it even when it doesn't work and he won't change his stance. I'm also a bit worried about him using the club as a sort of experimentation lab where he can test out his footballing theories regardless of where it leaves the club. Gannon must not lose sight of his priorities which should be in the following order; 1) to win as many games as possible, 2) to entertain the fans. Anything else should be a byproduct of the first two.

I was going through some old stats and saw the name Andy Smith. I'd completely forgotten about him....and no wonder.

Various Uncles all supported various teams (Rangers, Hamilton, Motherwell) and would take me to games once in a while but when I was old enough to go without adult supervision I eventually plumped for my local team. As you can see I clearly made the right choice.

Especially this week! The Vadocz thing as well....seriously....the guy hardly kicked a ball for us. The period that Vadocz came to the club we miraculously got even worse than before. Yeah, great player! My Team of the Noughties GK - Gordon Marshall - Went downhill fast but had an excellent season and a half and gave probably the best single goalkeeping display I've seen in a 'Well shirt in the League Cup semi final. RB - Martyn Corrigan - No contest. DC - Stephen Craigan - Most capped international player in the clubs history and a great 'Well man. This first season back from Thistle he was outstanding, as good as anyone even the hallowed Martin/Krivokapic/Boyd etc DC - Eric Deloumeaux - Only at the club for a season but he was quality. For all those who go on about defenders needing to be giants he was 5' 9! LB - Stevie Hammell - He is taken for granted by some but that only proves how important he was to us this decade, it's hard to imagine a Motherwell without him. RW - James McFadden - My favourite Motherwell player ever. A genius, a god among men and every goal he scored was brilliance. Every one of them. Well, about 93% of them. MC - Scott Leitch - A fan and he played like it. I mean that in a good way! MC - Phil O'Donnell - Every highlight of my time supporting Motherwell O'Donnell was there, the Scottish Cup, the great mid ninties side, the League cup run, the brilliant football of McGhee's early reign. A legend. LW - Ross McCormack - I'll always remember his displays against Hibs, Aberdeen and Dundee United as among the best displays I've ever seen in a 'Well shirt. We destroyed teams like I'd never seen before, and possibly will never see again. AC - Scott McDonald - After Tommy Coyne probably the best striker we've had at the club in my time. Not very popular these days but just think to THAT day... AC - David Clarkson - Tough choice between Clarkson and Porter but I think Clarkson offered a bit more versatility. Also scored 50+ goals for Motherwell which is not to be sneezed at.

Pretty much agree with this. I'm pro-Gannon generally but actually, despite the mockery, there is at least a grain of truth in most of the points made in the original post. Frankly, Gannon hasn't done much right in the last two months but he's treated like some kind of sacred cow because the rest of the league are so bad they've taken two months to catch up with a team with four league wins at Christmas with the last one in October. If there was a couple of decent sides outside of the top four in the league, which there isn't, we'd already have been further down the league. A more realistic point of view is that we have been acceptably mediocre so far this season given our pre-season fears but that could change in the coming weeks and months either in a positive or negative sense. We are entering a crucial stage of the season. The next three league games and the Inverness match will give us a better idea of just how good Gannon is.

The St. Johnstone game is our most important game of the season so far, it could define the whole campaign for us. Gannon's experimentation with formations and young players hasn't worked and we can't afford to take any unnecessary risks in this one. I think Craigan should come back and we need to keep it tactically simple, i.e a 4-4-2 or 4-3-1-2, the three centre half tactic has to be ditched right now to avoid any further embarrasements, it simply doesn't work. GK - Ruddy RB - Moutaouakil DC - Craigan DC - Reynolds LB - Hammell DMC - Hateley MC - Jennings MC - Forbes AMC - Murphy AC - Jutkiewicz AC - Sutton

People let the result get in the way of their analysis of last weeks match. It was 3-2 but Celtic could easily have scored seven. Rangers weren't so easy on us. Craigan needs to come back next week and so does Sutton.

The signs have been there for weeks that things were unraveling. Fingers crossed we can draw a line under this and start again against St. Johnstone but it doesn't work like that. The next game could define our season, if we lose we are back down there in the pack. Fuck, another goal.....not good enough, not good enough by a long way. Shameful actually.

Game over. Big match coming up on Boxing Day.

It's a bit unfair to pick out one player like that but I went for Hateley who I think can develop into a really top class player. Ruddy and Jutkiewicz have also done well, the jury is still out on the others. I voted 7th place. If we finish there or above you have to consider that a decent season. I'm not terribly confident about Jim Gannon staying for any length of time. Like any other manager he'll go as soon as he gets a better offer and I think he's done well enough to attract bigger clubs than us down south.

You think? The days of Boyle putting in his own money are gone. We have a total income of about 4 million, we have a club to run and about 80 staff to pay with that money. We are not going to spend £250,000 + plus wages + signing on fees etc, probably bringing it up closer to £400,000 than £200,000. That would be close to an 1/10th of the entire income of the club on one player - fantasy stuff.

Will never go back to Ibrox after various things that have happened down the years but hopefully we can get something out of this as we need to start picking up points again otherwise the St. Johnstone match suddenly becomes a real pressure situation. Perhaps Rangers having seen off Dundee United will go down a gear and might well be a little tired having played midweek. Alternatively they could be on a high and Kris Boyd has only scored about 72 goals against us in 13 games or something. A cross your fingers and see match, I'm kinda fed up with drawing matches but this is one where a draw would be a pretty good result.

The agreed fee of £250,000? Since we were never ever, ever, ever, ever, not even in our wildest dreams, ever going to be able to afford the agreed fee it was pretty much irrelevant anyway. If anyone ever thought we had £250,000 to spend on a transfer well I applaud you on your optimism! The best we can hope for is the loan is extended to the end of the season, then it will be cheerio big man.

If he's not going to play we'd be as well to take the £20,000 and get him off the wage bill, cos otherwise he's a just a drain on our resources. I'd prefer if he stayed but as I said before that depends on the players attitude and the managers plans and we don't know what they are right now.

Yeah it will be the referee's fault cos we usually always win at Ibrox! The last time we had Craig Thomson, who is generally regarded as the best referee in Scotland incidentally, he sent off an opposition player and gave us a penalty. He's so biased against us isn't he! This place is getting more and more like an Old Firm forum - the press are against us, the refs are against us, everyone has an agenda against us, it's all a conspiracy! Behave!

McDonald signed a pre-contract with Celtic in March that year. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/t...ell/6495029.stm In the next match after signing for Celtic he scored the two goals against Dunfermline. Since Dunfermline were eventually relegated the match was a old fashioned 6 pointer.

Why are we complaining against referees again? We've never had so many penalties and opposition players sent off. When it comes down to it, how many mistakes by referee's have cost us points this season and how many mistakes by the manager have cost us points this season? But, hey, your not allowed to criticize the manager unless you've been in the game! And for the record I don't think referee's should be immune from criticism and if they consistantly make mistakes something should be done but the problem is that the referee's are an big easy target. I can't think of one stonewall match altering decision that has gone against us this season (Jamie Murphy? We got well and truly humped at Easter Road!) but the players and manager have thrown away so many points in the last couple of months its not true. This whole thing is a deflection from the fact that multiple times we've thrown away leads, struggled to beat a mid league 1st Division side at home, consistantly couldn't beat 10 men, or even 9 men and have 1 win in the last 8. If we'd won 6 games in a row none of this would happening. This Gannon crusade is phoney baloney bullshit that parallels exactly a long winless streak, starting at Accies since when we haven't won a single game despite being in the lead in four of the five matches.

I think that might have been the only time I saw 'Well win at Ibrox. I was staying with friends who lived in Ibrox (the area, not the stadium!) and when I got back to their place and I told them the score they wouldn't believe me. There was no internet then so it wasn't until the next day when I got a paper that I managed to convince them!

You play your best team. O'Brien has probably been our player of the season so far, or at least until a couple of weeks ago he dropped to the bench, made two poor sub appearances and then dropped out completely. If, if being the important word, O'Brien can play to the level he had been before being 'unsettled' then he should play. Remember Scott McDonald played on in the team after signing a pre-contract with Celtic and even although lots of fans wanted him out the side he scored the goals that basically kept us up that season. You don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

I think this is a bit unfair. A lot of those young guys in our team are 18 or 19 years old and are still developing physically and they have been thrown in at the deep end against strong experienced players. Ideally most of those players would have had at least another year at U-19 level before stepping up but as we all know circumstances dictated that wasn't possible. U-19 football is played at a completely different pace from the full team and you have to give them time to, quite literally, grow up. Take someone like David Clarkson, he was obviously a much stronger and fitter player at 22 - 23 than he had been at 18 - 19.

I've not tried running about in cold weather since I was a kid but as I remember it took a lot more out of you than in normal conditions. He might also have a cold, a lot of people don't have two operational nostrils at the moment! It can also be difficult for substitutes to get to come on and get to grips with the pace of the game and it was quite a high pace today. Could be a combination of factors.