Ya Bezzer!

No McGinley. Don't get why Donnelly is there though.

That 2-1 was Raith Rovers in the League Cup. I wouldn't exactly say I'm very confident but we shouldn't be losing these matches. We need to step up today and next week and get the season back on track.

That McLeish side was very poor.....yet it had some excellent players in it. Essentially it underperformed because the manager made poor decisions. This team just doesn't have any good players. Outside of Kelly I don't think we have a player who could step up a level. I'm sure we'd all be more enthusiastic about going to the football if Dougie Arnott, Tommy Coyne and Brian Martin were playing. The worst football in my opinion that I've ever seen at Fir Park was the post Moult, pre Turnbull era under Robinson. I made my feeling clear at the time and a lot of people fell out with me but we were DIRE.

Ok this is what we are up against. Aberdeen's away record this season. League first, blank is today's match, then cup.

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!