Ya Bezzer!

Hope our goalkeeper coach is good at remembering names.

I expected to get a drubbing today so considering the start we made we did reasonably well to stay in the match. I mean Celtic were in 2nd gear, had 2 goals disallowed and hit the post, so on another day it could have been a drubbing but we hung in there. New players looked decent and I thought we looked threatening in the first half with Maswanhise and Armstrong up front but second half we've not really created anything at all. It's a game we just needed to get out the way and now it is. Hopefully have a new manager in place by the time the Ross County match comes round and we start again.

Never mind that all 9 matches we've won this season we had less than 45% possession and every time we've had the majority of the possession we've lost. When you have less technical players having the majority of the possession isn't always the best thing - one of the reasons St Mirren convincingly beat Aberdeen 3-0 with 25 % possession last week. Sure you'll be a lot happier if we don't get results with higher possession stats.

Robinson's tenure featured three terrible runs of form the last of which almost got us relegated. It wasn't all bad but here's the thing about 'style of play'. When Robinson had either of the two outstanding players during his reign, Moult and Turnbull, we were decent to very good. When those players weren't there (or not being played) we were mostly garbage. To play good football you need good footballers. Under Robinson, under anyone. I'm in my fifth decade going to Fir Park. In that time we've had 4, 5, maybe at a push 6 teams that actually played consistent good football and all of them had, at our level, outstanding players whether it was Tom Boyd, Davie Cooper, Tommy Coyne, Brian Martin, Paul Lambert, David Turnbull, Ross McCormick, Darren Randolph, Michael Higdon or who ever. Outside of Lennon Miler we don't have anyone and he's had two periods of injury that, both times, has seen our form fall away. At its most innocent the quest for good football without good footballers is like the alchemy of the modern day. It's a bird brained folly. It's just not going to happen. At its worst it's a re-write of the clubs history to justify the most atrocious toxicity. It's like alt right weirdo Trump stuff that denies actual reality. It used to be you went to the football to escape all the bad things of life. Now the football is all the bad things of life magnified. Support the team and stop all this idiotic, toxic hatred.

I never said it did. However the ones who are should be called out. I said after Alexander we would struggle to attract good managers to the club and we have struggled. Now it's happened again. What does the future hold for us when managers are rewarded with hatred for what is to all extent and purposes, relative success? This has become a trend and if it continues we are going to be the worse for it.

He said so. So presumably he must be a liar in your eyes. And yet he's made himself unemployed and has no guarantee of ever managing a club again. Do you honestly think it's a wily calculation to further his career? It was obvious over the last couple of weeks he was rattled by the abuse he was getting. I've been ill the last couple of weeks and not very active online but the atrocious abuse towards players, staff etc is there at the best of times, I can only imagine what it's been like since the cup defeat. It's embarrassing and disgusting.

In the past Neil Lennon has publicly said he's not interested in managing a club of our size/budget. Unless he's changed his mind it's not happening.

For the second time in a row a manager has taken us from a relegation situation into the Top 6 and then been abused out of his job. There is no way around saying this, a lot of our fans are deplorable human beings.

Remember Jordan McGhee scoring a free kick against us in the Youth Cup Final.

Having both Dundee teams in the league is a big boost to St Johnstone's attendances. They are only 146 behind us currently. This season's attendances so far after 11 or 12 home matches. 1. Celtic - 58,585 2. Rangers - 47,584 3. Hearts - 18,567 4. Aberdeen - 17,805 5. Hibernian - 16,615 6. Dundee United - 10,641 7. Dundee - 6,822 8. St. Mirren - 6,780 9. Kilmarnock - 6,440 10. Motherwell - 5,748 11. St Johnstone 5,602 12. Ross County - 4,498 Kilmarnock, the team above us in this table, generally pay about 20% more in wages than we do. The team below us, St Johnstone, are closer to us in wages but still pay more. I think that kind of gives you some kind of perspective of what we are up against.

Motherwell are 10th out of 12 in total league attendances this season. I don't have accurate up to date wage info but one of the clubs marginally below us (St Johnstone 5,602 v us 5,748) have traditionally paid higher wages than we have. I don't know how true it was but it was claimed only Livingston had a smaller budget than us last season. We are a bottom 3 club in this league and if Falkirk come up next season we'll be a bottom 2 club. If you don't believe me Falkirk got 1,500 more fans in their last home match against Queen's Park than we did against Aberdeen with a big travelling support. A lot of our fans need a long hard introductory course in reality. Our extended stay at the top level has made some of our fans think we are far bigger and better club but we've escaped relegation on technicities three times and that's not including a relegation play off. For us to be in the Top 6 is a tremendous achievement. If we finish in or around it that will be an excellent season. If you don't like the standard of modern Scottish football, I sympathise with you. But don't put that on a manager or club officials or staff. Aberdeen and Hearts played out one of the most woeful matches you will ever see at the weekend and they have facilities and a budget we could only dream of. I've seen bad, good and indifferent performances this season. Same as every other season. Like I've said over and over the standard in Scottish football is a shadow of what it was in the 80's and 90's but that shadow casts a pall over the whole league. I try and watch as many games as possible and the standard elsewhere is pretty much the same as we watch at Fir Park.

Aberdeen game was decent, Rangers game was good, Dundee Utd game was great. All recent matches. I've been going for 40 years and it's always been the case that if you went to a Motherwell match it was more likely than not we wouldn't win or wouldn't play well. Motherwell are a team you support. It's not an entertainment event. You have to have the stomach for it and you have to have realistic levels of expectation. If you don't, Rangers and Celtic are just down the road. And of course the standard of the game has regressed massively over the time I've been going but that's mostly down to economic factors that extend across the whole of Scottish football and most other nation's football. It's not dross every week but it is a lot. That's just how it is and it's not going to change. So you either have to accept that or move on. Every single person here would love it if Motherwell played better football and scored more goals and won more games but that's not the reason you go.

Decent result, if not performance. We've lost 2 in our last 8 and one of them was at Celtic Park. That's reasonable since we've played Rangers, Celtic, Aberdeen, Hearts, Kilmarnock away and Top 6 sides Dundee United and St Mirren.

He was for their last game but I don't know if it's a longer term injury.

This decade in the League it's 4 wins, 4 draws and 4 losses between Motherwell and Kilmarnock. Only once has a team scored more than twice (Kilmarnock put 4 past us in March 21) and there has only been 5 goals in the last 3 matches. Everything points to this being as tight as you can get. These matches usually go to the home team though. We've not won at Rugby Park since 2021 though where our record is 1-1-3, while at Fir Park we have a decent record of 3-3-1

Kilmarnock's home record has been pretty good....until today. 1 defeat in 8 I think it was. A win would open up a nice wee gap again between us and Kilmarnock.

I thought Balmer had a good game today. Looked assured in the second half as we saw the game out.

Going to say something I very rarely say about Motherwell. I thought we saw out a 2-0 lead in quite a professional manner. OK, it's not the same spectacle as the Dundee United match but I'm fine with that! Thought both teams started pretty jaded looking. Lot of games in a short period and it looked it. We started to get into the game about mid way through the first half and scored shortly after. The red card incident and the quick fire goal afterwards meant we were pretty comfortable for the rest of the match. Missed a sitter to make it 3-0 (didn't quite see who it was, Vale maybe?) and just saw the game out with minimum fuss in the 2nd half. Aberdeen had more possession but I felt fine about it and I also thought we looked more likely to score the next goal. Only hairy moment was when we gave one of their players a wee bit much too space and he hit the bar. Not an amazing performance but a couple of well taken goals and a fairly calm second half.

Quite a few important players missing for both teams today. Gonna be a battle of the second strings.

I once posed naked for a magazine. Last time I went to that newsagent.

He's been inconsistent. There was a spell last season when he was absolutely terrible. Still one of our best three centre backs though. As someone else said McGinn, Gordon, Casey is our best back three and we've not been able to field them.

4 of them away from home. SPFL can't even get fixtures right. And guess what? Rangers and Celtic don't play 3 away from home in a row.

If I'm being honest I'd take a draw any time we go 2-0 up against the OF cos I've seen it too many times before. Thought the start of the match was a bit of a weird one. We looked wide open down the right and if Rangers had been better on the ball we could have been in real trouble. However we took our chances to go 2-0 up and it was only then that I thought we grew into the game. From then until Rangers equalised I thought we were the better team. Conceding 4 minutes into the second half was very frustrating as you felt if we'd defended those first 10 15 minutes of the half a result was on the cards. Just defending too deep on a 2-0 lead and not for the first time this season. Overall we defended reasonable well under pressure and the midfield did a hard shift putting their foot in. Like Rangers we could have been better in possession but the guys worked hard off the ball. I'm more or less the full pitch away from the Davie Cooper end so I can't say much about the disallowed goals but the first one looked very soft. It seemed at times like the VAR officials were leaning a certain way and the Lennon Miller booking was ridiculous. Clement made some major selection boo-boos today and the Rangers team that ended the match was miles better than the one that started it but we held on fairly comfortably and at least deserved a point.

In the 10 league matches Lennon Miller missed last season, Slattery played in 9 of them and we didn't win a single one of them. In the 17 league matches Callum Slattery missed last season, Miller played in 16 of them and we won 6 of them. That's out of 10 league wins last season. I think that kind of sums up what either player brings to the table and how essential they are.

It's a balancing act, not one or the other. This might not be a prime Rangers team but they are significantly better than us in every area of the pitch. We struggle to defend against much lesser teams, leaving ourselves open at the back is simply suicide. On the other hand you have to present some threat going forward and take your chances when they come. As for Rangers being 'fragile at the back', they have played 8 European level matches this season and only conceded more than 1 goal twice. Domestically they have kept 5 clean sheets in the last 7 league matches and only conceded 3 goals, one of which was a penalty from a "whit's the goalie doin" moment. I don't think they are actually that bad at the back and as I said after the semi final I thought they were pretty decent off the ball in terms of pressing, aerial duels and all that stuff.