Ya Bezzer!

Not if you saw Woods performance against Celtic!

It won't be long until most Scottish youth players come out of English clubs. Our system is a disgraceful shambles. If you even look at the current Scotland U21s squad most of the players have never kicked a ball in a Scottish League match.

We regularly had 2 Scots in the line up during the 2017-18 season. Cadden, Tait and Campbell were the regular Scots. Looking but can't see a match where 2 of them missed out. Typical team of that era would be something like Carson - Kipre, Hartley, Dunne - Cadden, Rose, McHugh, Campbell, Frear - Bowman, Moult.

About 50% of all the players in the league are non Scots now which is far too high. Especially as a lot of them are English academy players on loan and foreign flotsam and jetsam. I mean Aberdeen gave Bruce Anderson hee haw chance and gave away to Livingston while signing Curtis Main and Jay Emmanuel Thomas. That's our league in a microcosm. The league motto should be 'SPFL Premiership - 'Tripe in, fuck development'

I agree with everything you say but the big worry for me is that since the U20 League got ditched youth development seems to have been sidelined. Who have we produced since the 'Craigan' team? Cornelius might come through, his last couple of performances have shown promise, but I don't think that's enough over the time period. Especially when the standard of the league is so poor. All those youth players came through 3 or 4 years ago. I know I'm a broken record but producing youth has to be THE central focus of a club like Motherwell, both in terms of having players in the squad worth watching and the financial benefits of selling on. If we don't we're only going to see the sort of slow decline that players like Campbell, Turnball and Scott jolted us out of for a while cos 95% of the players we bring in are going to be journey men. What happens when we need another jolt and there is no one there? I think it says a lot that we have one striker at the club and there isn't anyone that can move up from the youths and even sit on the bench.

People suggesting the manager should be sacked when he saved us from probable relegation last season, has us in the Top 6 virtually all of this season and are 8 points max away from Premiership survival in February, need to have a look at themselves. We are running a professional football club with 4,000 supporters in a footballing backwater with a shoestring budget. It is what it is. Most of our problems are symptomatic of the league not the manager. Until we start producing better quality players or can afford to import them the quality of the football isn't going to improve any. We are on a poor run with a lot of away fixtures and tough home matches but we're in a decent position overall. Even if we end up 7th or 8th that's a reasonable performance for a team that doesn't have a single outfield player that could step up a level.

If you take away the 6 months of Turnbull Football I think most of the football we've played for 4 or 5 seasons has been turgid. We play in a turgid league . Turgid is the standard. I said it recently but teams like Hibs and Aberdeen who have much bigger budgets are even worse than us. It's not just us.

It worked to an extent before Watt left. Now? Open to debate but we don't even have two strikers that you could play off each other in the squad. Playing one up front and hoofing it and we go back to Robinson tactics that were even worse to watch than the current style. 3? 2? 1? I don't think there are any easy answers to the current lack of cutting edge.

This is off the top of my head but I think we've had over 50% possession four times this season and lost 3 of them.

Not replacing Watt was a big mistake. Said so at the time. Our best midfield this season was Goss - Maguire - Slattery. We've not been able to play that midfield due to injuries and I'm afraid Donnelly isn't up to scratch. Alexander needs to back what worked previously if these players are available again.

Crazy idea out of left field. Couldn't we have used the cash we got for Watt to, I dunno, buy someone that's out of contract in the summer?

Home form is decent, away form is poor. We've had four out of six away and Celtic at home. I'd hold off from panicking for the moment.

Oh the positive side Aberdeen and Hibs are losing again.

Away form is shocking.

He scored 11 goals in his last two seasons for us ....and one of those seasons was truncated.

I remember him coming on against, I think it was Celtic at Fir Park the first time, and he made an impact. He's not had a lot of minutes on the pitch to make much of an impression.

Dundee Utd have scored 4 goals in their last 10 matches and one was an OG, one was a penalty and one was scored after 90 minutes. Of course there is the, ahem, Tony Watt factor.....

And has an awful plastic pitch.

The fact that Celtic lost twice in the league last term to anyone other than Rangers during "their worst season in over a decade" kinda shows how massive the gap is. Between them they have lost 5 league matches in the last 126, excluding defeats to each other. Our points total from the Old Firm over the last two seasons is pretty typical for a non city club Livingston 7pts from 5 results Ross County 4pts from 2 results St Mirren 3pts from 1 result Motherwell 2pts from 2 results St Johnstone 2pts from 2 results Kilmarnock 1pt from 1 result Hamilton 1pt from 1 result

Was thinking about this during the game. I think all Scottish football has gone backwards including Rangers and Celtic but back when they had genuinely world or european class players we competed better than we do now so the gap is probably bigger than its ever been. Think back a couple of weeks. We are a little bit better than Morton, a little bit, and absolutely miles behind Celtic and I think you could say that about pretty much every team from 4th place down in the Premiership so it's not just us. On a related note I was also thinking about 'quality'. Right now I don't think we have a single outfield player of quality in the squad. Not one of them is better than Scottish Premier diddy team level. The one exception is Kelly in goals. Overall I think Alexander has done a decent enough job given what he has to work with and where we were when he came in but the lack of any quality is slightly dispiriting and definitely comes to the fore when you see actual footballers on the pitch at Fir Park, albeit in the form of opposition.

Just started snowing. Get the trainers and the orange ball out!

Could go either way. Maybe Celtic are flying, full of confidence and firing on all cylinders in which case it could be a long afternoon for Motherwell fans. Or maybe playing at a dull, rainy Fir Park is a bit of a come down from midweek and they aren't up for it. Looking at the results this season it seems fairly obvious that you have to get to half time at 0-0 to get a result against Celtic. 5 out of 6 occasions with dropped points this season for Celtic came from matches where they didn't score in the first half. We've seen Celtic struggle to break teams down in the second half if they don't get those early goals. Even against Dundee Utd a couple of games back where they won by the skin of their teeth in injury time. Livingston and St Mirren played 5-4-1 and I think if we are going to get anything out of this that's probably the way to go. Just shut the game down, get to half time and then you give yourself a chance with 45 minutes to go.

He's scored 2 goals in his last 10 appearances. Motherwell 7+0 (2); Dundee Utd 2+1 (0) I think he was still probably our best player last season when he wasn't scoring either but that early season form this term may have been a career anomaly.

Well the thing about Griffiths is he actually can. Remember when he played for Hibs he played off the centre on the right side. So that's two out of three at least.

I think Griffiths would be worth the risk till the end of the season. He's a massive talent but he needs a right kick up the backside. Maybe Alexander could be the guy to deliver the boot up the arse. I suppose it depends on how much demand there is for him and if Alexander would be willing to give someone who's really wasted 3 or so years of his career another chance. He's actually played in the last 9 Dundee matches before last night anyway so he should be 'relatively' fit, although we all know what previous managers have said about Griffiths fitness regime.