Ya Bezzer!

Out the cup because of a completely unacceptable first half performance. Our first 45 minutes was a disgrace. Even in the first five minutes there must have been 10 misplaced passes and players looked like they didn't care a jot. No doubt Hartley and Mugabi will get a lot of grief and I'm certainly not going to defend them but you defend as a team and we were all over the place for that half. As I said at half time we didn't even have a shape or set up with two banks defending, the full backs and the midfield need to take a big share of the blame, they were totally unprofessional. The comeback, as welcome as it was, was on the fortuitous side (two wayward crosses and a deflection) but even then we looked dodgy when St Mirren were on the ball and I think a couple of our penalties are still in the air. Fair play to Tait and especially O'Hara who at least came on and looked interested. We crossed over into unacceptable territory tonight, big changes needed for Saturday.

It's a crazy game to be sure.

Utterly shambolic display reminiscent of McGhee's last days. You can talk about players or formation but we don't even have a shape and when that happens it's down to players chucking it. The guys selected have let us down to a man. They haven't even given us 50%. When you see a display that bad there has to be something going on behind the scenes.

There is literally nothing about the 'reserves' in the match programme any more. Didn't used to be the case, when they covered it thoroughly with match reports, stats and line ups. Poor really. As I've said over and over, youth development needs to be a completely integral part of our club strategy.

What we have now is the best its going to get in terms of most teams competing for something. The change I'd make is have two automatic relegation places so we get a greater turn over of teams in the top division. 16 or 18 team leagues sound good in theory but it leaves way too many teams with nothing to play for and creates a huge and dangerous drop off for relegated teams who go straight to down to the 'seaside leagues'. That can't not have big economic issues for top league sides that are relegated I'd scrap the winter break as I don't think you can really justify it by weather or fitness. Most players come back less fit from not playing games. You ask me, you've been blowing out our arse in the recent post break matches.

I agree and disagree with various points you've made here, mainly agreeing about what Scott brought to the team and mainly disagreeing about your judgement of other players, especially those that haven't had a lot of game time, but at the end of the day what we got for Scott was bite your hand off money. Also I think a lot of our problems were already there before Scott was sold. The striker position has been a problem since Moult left and I've said from the beginning of the season all through the 'good times' that I didn't think our midfield was good enough. It should be built around Campbell but while Polworth and Donnelly are better than we've had most of the time under Robinson I don't think they are bolted on Top 6 level players. Polworth might have got assists and Donnelly goals but their overall quality and the specific blend in midfield is, I think, still open to question. I accept it was difficult to replace Turnbull and Gorrin from the Turnbull-Campbell-Gorrin midfield of last season but the TYPES of players we have brought in aren't the same. Donnelly just doesn't have the same quality as Gorrin on the ball and Turnbull provided the goals getting forward from midfield. Donnelly's goals have mainly been headers and penalties, set pieces essentially, he's not getting into those dangers areas of the box like Turnbull did that turns open play into goals. As a result Campbell has struggled also due to a level of dysfunction in the middle of the field.

Earlier in the season we won back to back matches against Kilmarnock and Ross County. In both games their keeper let in a howler and our keeper made a great save in the last minute of the match. If you'd swapped just those events round we'd have lost both games and since we lost two games on either side that would have been six defeats in a row and probably a crisis on the forums. In football, especially in the Scottish Premiership, it's all about small margins, I thought we played some decent football at the beginning of the season but we've probably not been that good since about October and we've got by with a bit of luck and the fact the opposition is no better than we are. We are Motherwell and even our best teams, and despite being in 3rd for a lot of the season this one isn't one of them, have a wobble or two. The upcoming matches are going to be important but since our recent form shows results against Hibs and Aberdeen and loses to Livingston, Hamilton and St Johnstone I don't even think you can say they will be season defining. I will say though that if you look at the teams that play 4-3-3 in this division - Aberdeen, Rangers, Motherwell - they are all in bad form and it looks like the tactic has been figured out.

I'll start worrying if we can't beat Rangers.

Dare I say it but one of the reasons we've been better this season is Dunne hasn't been playing.

Real signs of a St Johnstone revivial. Since we beat them last time out they have only lost 2 out of 10 matches and of course have progressed through the cup. Their results show a similar kind of pattern to ours - they win when they keep a clean sheet but struggle for three points when they concede. They have also been shifting around between a 4 at the back and a 3 at the back so I don't think it's entirely clear what formation they will play but they have gone 3 at the back for the last 3 home matches although they went 4 at the back against Aberdeen in the last match and won. Another draw wouldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility.

We shouldn't be looking beyond St Mirren at this point but if we do get through he have a decent chance of getting to the semi finals

Saw that Broque Watson has moved from Annan Athletic to high flying Cove Rangers and gone straight into the team. Assume he must have been doing well at Annan then. I liked him when I watched him in our youth set up.

Was looking at St. Mirren's home record and it's pretty good. 1 defeat in the last 6, a 2-1 loss to Celtic. Would take any kind of result out of this. A replay certainly wouldn't surprise me given the number of draws St Mirren have had at home.

I'm not pressing a panic button. Motherwell have had a long run of good form and you have to expect there is going to be a tough period in there as well. However saying we are the fourth highest scorers in the league is a bit like saying we are the second tallest dwarf in Scotland. I wonder what the average goal per game in the Premiership would be without the OF? Most teams in the league struggle to score. At any decent level Celtic would have conceded about 7or 8 goals since the break.

Can't complain too much about attitude and application. You could argue we were the better team in the first half and we definitely had more good opportunities than the opposition to score. But when you don't take your chances against a team like Celtic.....also a bit worrying that that is 3 league games without a goal and we've only scored more than 1 once in the last 8. For me Celtic are pretty poor at the back and you aren't going to get much better chances than we did tonight. Thought Rolando Aarons showed up well even though he looks well off it in terms of fitness but you could have said that about a few tonight who looked gassed after 60 minutes. The lack of pace in our midfield really got shown up tonight, Celtic players were breezing past us on the counter and the inability to track overlaps and runners showed we have a lot to do on our off the ball work. Overall, decent 1st half, blown away 2nd half. We gave it a go in the first half and considering we probably don't have a single player that would make the Celtic XI you have to be happy enough that we competed. We need to start taking chances though, if we'd had a 25% conversion rate in the first half we probably wouldn't have lost so heavily in the second but its tough when you go 0-2 down.

Surely it makes sense for both him and the club to sign, say, a new two year deal with better terms and a reasonable release clause? The Celtic transfer puzzled me and would do even more now. They have Ryan Christie and Tom Rogic is coming back from injury.

We aren't winning any cups if we roll over to Celtic. Put down a marker tonight and if and when we get to the stages of the cup were we are playing Rangers and Celtic you have a result at your back. Otherwise it's going to be the last Cup final all over again.

In our last 10 matches we've only won once when the opposition scored. Celtic have scored in 23 out 24 league matches this term. If you were a betting man you'd go 3-0 Celtic but I've been a Motherwell supporter long enough to know that often our results are counter intuitive. Just the fact that we were so bad against Livingston makes me think we might get something out of this tonight.

That was the one recent match that Celtic didn't play 3-5-2. They played four at the back that day.

Celtic have lost twice in this domestic campaign....both to 4-3-3 formations. For me the whole idea of flooding the defence and midfield against teams like Celtic hardly ever works. You are better just going for it like we did in the first game at Fir Park. If we'd taken our chances in that match and cut out poor individual mistakes we could easily got a result.

That's exactly why we were right to sell. Next season there might have been much more serious consequences in selling a good first team player. None of the things you have mentioned have changed, they are all still to play for but if we don't make it we'll probably still have had our best season in ages.

Scott was our out ball. He beat players, created spaces for others and brought us forward as a team. Wasn't there today so can't comment on today's performance but I think it's going to be a problem for us, if you'll excuse the pun, going forward.

Last time at Fir Park they scored with every shot on target. 5 out of 5.

Gillespie keeping us in it by the sound of it.

Do you think Scottish football is held in as high regard as it was at the time of Lee McCulloch? The facts are the reputation of the league and the quality gap between English and Scottish football has massively widened. The quality of Scottish football has plummeted far further than any inflation calculation would take account of. Performing well in our league is not even considered as any kind of reliable indicator of ability. It's considered almost like a kind of youth or amateur football. A player stands out a bit and clubs take a punt on them with no great expectation. To imagine the context of the James transfer is anything like that of the McCulloch transfer is to complete ignore what has happened to Scottish football over the last 20 years. You aren't even factoring in that Lee McCulloch was an experienced players with close to 150 appearances when James Scott has less than a season of experience. You also ignore the different financial model that the club operates under. When McCulloch was sold we were operating a debt that we couldn't operate under now, in fact it nearly ended the club then. Today the club has to live off it's own means and that equates to not having the same ability to turn down offers of note. A couple of months ago plenty people around here were of the opinion that James Scott should be farmed out on loan, or that he wasn't first team material. Now we are receiving 1 million up front and potentially more. I liked Scott, I pushed for his inclusion on these forums but in my mind this is a good deal for the club. I think it stretches credibility to make out that anyone thought we'd be selling Scott for this fee now. That tells its own story. Does it impact the starting XI? Of course it does, if our new loan signing doesn't step up, I think we'll suffer more than a little on the playing side but in the position we are in as a club it is far more important that we can continue to fund a high level of youth development and that the club doesn't run up debts. The thing we have to insure is that youth development is a major, in fact integral, focus, so that the next Campbell, Scott, Hastie, Turnbull isn't far away.