Ya Bezzer!

The thing is Rangers weren't that special today. I was expecting a lot more from them but all they really did was do the basics better than us in the first half. They went in at half time 1-0 purely because WE kept giving the ball away. The number of corners and set pieces we conceded in the first half was ridiculous and of course when Rangers got their opening goal it was from a corner, when only a minute or so before our goalkeeper had the ball in his hands. I like Gillespie, he's a good goalkeeper and he pulled off some good saves today but his distribution stunk and played a part in our downfall. Second half, despite not improving much, Rangers fell away slightly and looked like we might actually get something out the match. The introduction of Scott improved us a lot. When Rangers killed the game a 2-0 it was probably against the run of the match at that point. I was surprised Morelos wasn't taken off by Gerrard earlier in the match because that red card was coming all day. He should have been booked long before he actually was. After that the match was over and kind of petered out. I keep drawing attention to our current midfield, it's not as bad as it was when we were playing McHugh, Grimshaw (terrible today at right back) and Rose in there but it's a big step down from last season with Turnbull and Gorrin. The recent matches showed you can get away with poor distribution against even poorer teams but against half decent opposition it's a different story. In our last 5 matches against the city clubs we've lost all 5, and are 12-1 down on aggregate. When we come up against the very little quality there is in this league we struggle. We seem to be the best of a poor bunch of provincial clubs. That's not me throwing thunderbolts, just a realistic appraisal of what we are.

Don't know why people are surprised by our passing. It was rotten against St Johnstone, St Mirren and Hearts. Poor distribution from the keeper and an inability to keep the ball has put us under so much avoidable pressure. It led to the goal. Formation needs changed. Campbell and Donnelly look so isolated on the ball. Need to load the midfield. Three forwards are doing nothing right now.

Rangers haven't won in 3 matches so they are going to be under pressure, especially if they don't start well. They can't afford to drop further behind Celtic, especially with the next Old Firm match at Celtic Park. If they were even to draw today they could easily be 7 points behind Celtic at the break. That wouldn't go down well. I think we've got away with a lot due to playing very poor teams over the last few matches and we are going to have to perform at a much higher level to have a chance. We can't afford to only start playing 30 minutes in. Rangers have only failed to score 2 or more in the league 3 times out of 15 this season so we will have to use the ball much better than we have and be right in there from the start. If we give them the opening 30 minutes they will almost certainly score. Rangers will be massive favourites but if you only bet on favourites, like I do, you'll know that's not exactly the fast track to untold wealth. Rangers are much better than us but they have also shown a fragile underside recently, albeit against better teams than us. It's still there though. We have nothing to lose, it's Rangers that have to win. I hope we can transfer the pressure from us to them during the match. Then you never know. The only time we've ditched the 4-3-3 this season has been against Rangers and Celtic so I'd fully expect us to go 5-3-2.

Probably didn't deserve the three points today in all honesty. Fair play to Long for a good finish that has decided the match. Overall though a pretty poor quality match with very few chances created for either team. Don't want to be too critical given our league position but we've had an easy run of fixtures and I'm not convinced at all by our central midfield three. For me it's substantially poorer than last season's and against better quality opponents, such as next week's visitors, I'd be a little concerned. Our ball retention isn't good enough at the moment. We've been a little bit like we were at times under McCall, not playing particularly well but picking up points and wins. On the upside I thought Mugabi had another decent game, Carroll is very consistent and Hylton was excellent in periods but we are going to have to improve a lot against Rangers or it might be a long afternoon.

Similar story to the last few matches, look a bit slack, bit awkward, bit wasteful in possession but when it comes down to it we have more edge in the box. Hylton far and away the best player so far.

But not taking Alex McLeish into account.

Naismith is the key for Hearts. He went off injured midweek so it would be no bad thing if he didn't play today.

Today scoring the first goal is going to be crucial. If we get the first I think the match will be there for the taking. Hearts are in existential crisis and on a pair with St Mirren and St Johnstone in terms of quality. We aren't likely to face a poorer Hearts team than this one so we really need to be looking for full points from this.

If he's on 5 grand a week, quite a bit lower than the average wage at Rangers, he'll still earn over a million pounds over four years. To stay at Motherwell would literally be like winning the lottery, then tearing up your ticket so you can keep working at McDonalds. On top of that he's played 14 more games and scored 3 more goals than he had this time last year at Motherwell, ie none, in front of much bigger home crowds (Rotherham 8,000 - 10,000 ave attendance) and at a level that's no worse, and arguably better than he'd be playing most weeks in the Premiership.

Got to be Scott for illuminating the match with something a little bit special.

Heard on the radio that Austen will be the manager at the weekend although who knows for sure. Agree with you on a couple of things. We started really poor again tonight and while we can do that against bottom of the league teams with powder puff attacks we won't get away with it indefinitely. I also rate Scott and think he should be starting. He's a kid learning the game and you have to expect mistakes, decision making is something you get with experience, but what he does do is he always looks to carry the ball forward, has better technical ability than most of the team and is capable of doing that little something special on occasion. We were toiling before he produced an excellent opening goal and that turned the match around. Overall I think the balance of the team is much better when we have Scott wide and play Cole upfront and leave Long on the bench. On the other hand while it looks good now things can change quickly so I think it's a bit premature to think Top 6 is a certainty. We have tougher matches coming up - the Ross County match will be important in that regard.

Much like Saturday we were second best when we scored. Excellent goals by Scott but for me we'd been poor up till then. Agree the midfield has been hopeless. Campbell, Polworth and Donnelly were spectators. Game opened out a bit after the first goal. We'll see how it goes 2nd half.

May as well start with the good bit. Really good goal for the fourth with good set up play from Scott and O'Hara and a really nice finish from Manzinga. Otherwise we were lucky today that we were playing a team that looked like it thinks it's relegated already. At times St Johnstone dominated in terms of possession but never looked like troubling us. Even when they were pinging the ball around there was a whiff of the defeated about them. I said at the time that any team that hadn't scored against us after the extraordinary poor level of our performance in the first 25 minutes was going to lose and so it transpired. The first three goals we scored were down to shocking defending from St Johnstone. I'm certain Tommy Wright will be furious at defending crosses and corners in the way they did. The ugly nature of our goals kind of summed up the match in general. The team deserves some credit for taking it's chances but today underlined that you don't need to be good to win and in this case handsomely.

For your sake I hope not!

Be grateful for small mercies, we are winning, but this game is atrocious.

Tom Boyd is easily one of the 5 best players to wear a Motherwell shirt in the 40 odd years I've been going to games. The Hall of Fame is about recognising great players that wore the shirt, not about scrutinising what club he supports or going over every line of interview he's ever done with a highlighter pen and a chip on your shoulder. If only we'd had a few more Tom Boyd's since then.

Could have been worse. With 7 teams left in the draw Rangers, Celtic and us were still waiting to be picked. In fact with three teams left Rangers and ourselves were still in the draw. Even though we are away from home I think we are still favourites to go through. Dundee are no great shakes. The 'winter break' issue is a bit of a concern though.

When? In 1895? The club had played two seasons of league football back then.

They were just interviewing Neil Lennon there and he said in quite an authoritative way that Robinson wouldn't be interested in the Northern Ireland job because he had 'club ambitions'. Then he corrected himself and said "maybe you are asking the wrong person" but the way he said it it was like he had maybe spoken to Robinson about it or knew something.

Even without his goal it would have been Allan Campbell for me.

I'm not sure I really buy into the whole maintenance cost angle at least in the long term. If you go to Fir Park or travel around the country you'll see that the Taylor report era stands that were built in the 1990s are not in the greatest nick. That suggests you have maybe a new stadium life time of about 25-30 years before you get back to square one. And it's not like new stadiums don't have any maintenance costs either, even if they are reduced you have to factor in the redevelopment costs along with rising maintenance costs over two or three decades and then what do you do in 2050? Build another stadium? Redevelop the existing one? It's a repeating cycle and I think it's even debatable if we would have paid off the debt of building a stadium over the sort of time period. However my main objection is that Fir Park is Motherwell FC's spiritual home and if you take that away, for me anyway, you don't have the spirit any more.

Tale of two keepers today. Livvie keeper has let a shot go straight through him for the first goal. Then right at the end Gillespie had made another point saving stop. You'll take it of course but I felt we were a little bit fortunate to get the win today and I suspect Livingston will be a wee bit disappointed to get nothing out of it. Started very, very flat and although we had a lot of possession we didn't do a lot with it and Livingston looked the more likely of the two to score. Got a big slice of fortune with the first goal (second time this week) but if you can get shots on target these things happen. For Livingston's penalty I didn't get a great view but it looked clumsy from Cole. Thereafter it was fairly even and the game pepped up a bit. Though we improved notably when James Scott came on to replace the ineffective Cole who I don't think should start if he's being played wide. Overall we were a bit laboured today but we kept at it and didn't revert to hoofball which is a big tick from me.

In a league where goal scoring is a vanishing art, outside the Old Firm anyway, Livingston have managed to put the ball in the net fairly regularly. In fact they have the third best goals total away from home in the league. They haven't been as tight defensively, conceded in every away match and at least two in all but one, so it could actually turn out that we get a few goals in the game.

Agree. Suspect Hearts would be something of a poisoned chalice for Robinson. I'm happy enough with him at the moment as our manager but when you boil it down to the facts he's not shown the level of managerial ability that suggests he could go to a much bigger club, with much more pressure, much more media focus, much more expectation and turn them round from a historic low ebb. It's taken him two and half seasons to make us look like we might finish Top 6 (and there is still a LOT of the season to go and things could change radically) and he's just not going to get that time at Hearts. And if you look at Hearts they have pretty much chewed and spat out managers over the last 10 years. Outside of Levein, who got 3 years, they have gone through 7 other managers in 7 years. Of course it could be that Robinson is a better manager now than when he came to the club. He certainly seems to have altered his footballing philosophy but if I was at Hearts looking for a manager I'd be looking for someone who'd had sustained success and right now Robinson's highs have been flash in the pan. 3rd at this stage is fine but the league season is only 25% done and Levein had Hearts top at this stage last season to illustrate how misleading that can be. Jack Ross seems like a better fit for them. Big club experience and had that rapid turn around at St. Mirren where they went from bottom of the Championship to league winners in a short time.

Thought it was a decent performance without a real stand out player - you could probably give it to half a dozen of the team. Thought Carroll, Campbell, Donnelly and Cole all had good matches but I'm going to give it to Gillespie because his save at the end has given us the 3 points.