Ya Bezzer!

It's definitely a trend. Been like that pretty much all of this season and to an extent last season as well. And it seems to be escalating. The club and police need to step on it now before it gets out of hand but most likely they won't. Foresight isn't in great abundance these days. At least the daftie that ran on the pitch gave us a laugh when he fell on his arse!

Comfortable win against very limited opposition. As I said at half time if you are a St. Mirren supporter it could be a long time before you see your team score. They had absolutely no threat whatsoever, their delivery into the box was atrocious and there was no link up play middle to front. We played better but caution should be advised. We need to be able to beat teams outside the bottom three before anyone gets carried away. Turnbull though has stepped up no problem at all. Way more accomplished with a football at his feet than almost anyone else in the team. More of our youth players need to be introduced and although I don't want to complain too much after a long awaited victory, we were 2-0 up away from home, very comfortable in the match and we bring on Campbell after 72 minutes to no real purpose and then bring on Maguire in the 89th minute. These are the matches when you can bring younger players on from the bench and give them some real game time and I still feel like Robinson just doesn't get it. Given Dundee's form we should be looking to follow tonight up with another win. That's bare minimum. Then we can see if we can actually perform against teams that don't lose against, literally, everyone.

St. Mirren look like they could play for the rest of the season and not score.

Only in Scotland could you harm a players development by not playing them.

There is no way Robinson is going to change his formation tonight. You think he's played time after time after time with 3-5-2 and then he gets to a game that, even in our abysmal form are probably still favourites to win, and decides to change it? Tonight is his chance to prove the tactics and formation work enough to put a win on the board. Of course it's a big gamble for him but it would be a bigger gamble for him to change it. If we played a different formation and different players tonight and lost he'd have no where to go. For St. Mirren and Dundee he'll stand by the formation and players that got him here. These two matches are a last stand for everything the manager has believed in.

But it's a complete misnomer to say that because a player didn't make after being misdeveloped and released during the most crucial period of their careers that they wouldn't have made it if they had been given better exposure to first team football. We have had good players leave this club aged 21 or 22 with less than half a dozen first team starts. The way our youth development links up with the first team stinks and the way most youth development systems link up with first teams stinks right across the country. Out of 22 players we've used in league matches this season only 6 of them are Scottish and only 3 of them were developed by the club. Dundee have used 24 players, only 7 of them are Scottish and only 3 of them were developed by the club. The pattern is repeated across the rest of the league. St. Mirren 24 players, 13 Scots. Hamilton 26 players, 10 Scots. The Hearts v Celtic league cup semi final had 6 Scots in the starting 22 players. If you include the Aberdeen v Rangers semi final it was 15 players out of 44. The league is filled with imported dross while youth players get released left, right and centre. Youth development in this country is atrocious and it's the single biggest reason for the catastrophic decline of quality in the league and our European and International failures. Things HAVE to change.

They signed Jake Mulraney from Inverness so anything is possible.

St. Mirren have scored 2 goals in their last 9 matches and taken 1 point from the last 27. But if you think that form makes us look good remember they can leapfrog us if they win on Wednesday. If we can't beat this mob it's the end for Robinson. Perhaps not on the night but it would take an almost impossible upswing in form to save his job in the short to medium term. Our November/December fixtures look like a death spiral.

Is this the Chris Cadden who's last league goal was 46 games ago? Has very little effect on matches these days and its debatable if he should even be in the first XI. Cadden was a prospect when he broke through but Robinson's tenure was a huge blow to his development. To be honest going to Hearts would be a smart move for him. He's not good enough to play at a higher level but he'd get paid a lot more and might kick on again away from Fir Park.

Some of their behaviour at away matches has been an embarrassment to the club, and to themselves, for some time. Absolutely cringe worthy stuff. I also heard from Sligo fans that one of their supporters was physically attacked. If so, bans are the consequence. There's no doubt a group like the Well Bois can contribute positively but in my opinion there has been more negative than positive recently. The club needs to keep these guys under control and if you ask me some 'pruning' is in order. As for the atmosphere I'm sure it would pep up a bit if there was anything worth cheering.....perhaps a home league win before December would lift the mood?

I'll accept that I'm getting old and crotchety but to me this attitude is part of the problem. Ask players in the 80 & 90's, and even the 00's, about losing in two major finals and they'd probably say it was the worst experience of their careers. These days players say it was the highlight. They are natural born losers. I'll say it again and again. Professional standards have been lowered over and over until we have the current standard of player - small time, lower league journey men. We need to start making demands of the players again. If you play in the top level of a national league you should have basic passing skills. A lot of our squad don't even have that. I don't expect us to win every game but I expect us to try and win every game. Doesn't happen any more. Last weeks debacle against Livingston showed just how far we'd fallen. Not just a Motherwell problem, the whole game in Scotland needs a massive kick up the arse.

Dunne was fairly solid on his return but we weren't really put under a lot of pressure. Turnbull came in and did well, needs a run of games now but I felt he fell out of it in the last third. I thought Allan Campbell was our best player today. Was always looking to get on the ball and do something and made some good defensive tackles. Still not at his peak form but you fear for us if he wasn't there.

Ian McCall has spoken often about how Ayr Utd is his perfect job and his great relationship with the chairman. Doubt he'd be interested. Don't think Lambert would touch us with a barge pole either.

Assuming Robinson was fired I don't think Lasley is a stick-on given that financially the club has to remain in the Premiership. Placing a guy with no managerial experience in charge would be a huge risk. Having said that I don't understand the antipathy towards Lasley as manager when the current incumbent is so bad. Do you really believe a Lasley managed team would be even worse than this one?

We have a very tough fixture list coming up after the next two against Dundee and St. Mirren. As is well known I'm not particularly a fan of Robinson but I don't see what kind of improvement is likely from firing him given the upcoming matches. There is no point changing the manager over the next couple of months. Right now the change needs to come from the manager and his philosophy rather than a change of manager. If nothing improves when we get into December then will be the time to make the change and give the incoming manager a better chance to pick up points and bring in new faces. Bringing in a new manager to face off against Celtic twice, Aberdeen, Rangers, Hearts etc is basically chopping off the new guys legs straight from the start. I'm afraid you wanted Robinson and now you need to take your medicine.

Our team has been built, by the manager, around set pieces. The forwards we have reflect that.

Johnson is still has to prove he's a goalscorer at Premiership level but at least his attributes as a player are different from Bowman/Main/Sammon and give us a bit more variety up front.

If he was brought in to score goals then the management have misjudged him as a player. If Main and Bowman, neither of whom are goalscorers are played together, then that is also a misjudgement by the management. I agree on Johnson, he should play alongside one of the others.

He should be playing alongside a goalscorer. Ask the manager why we have a squad with three similar style forwards who aren't goalscorers. I don't have the answer to that.

I think that's a bit unfair. He's just not a goalscorer.

If we can't beat a team as poor as that St. Johnstone team at home we are in serious trouble. For me two bad teams with very little quality between them basically cancelled each other out for most of the match but when it came down to the crunch St. Johnstone upped it and put us under pressure for the last 10 - 15 minutes. Shouldn't it be the home team doing that to the away team? Created virtually nothing in the second half except for a couple of excellent balls from Turnbull taking out the St. Johnstone defence. Main yet again proved his shooting is no where near good enough, even if he does work hard outside the box. We need a goalscorer desperately. In a year of league football (28/10/2017 - now) we have a 21.6% win ratio or 8 wins from 37 matches. We have now failed to score in 5 out of 9 league matches and conceded in all 9. Can only be described as atrocious. Things getting pretty serious now. We cannot lose to either St. Mirren or Dundee.

'Better' than the Livingston match but still far too much high ball and heidy tennis. Bizarre sub of Taylor Sinclair after 23 minutes. Not saying I rate the player but for me that is poor player management unless its injury related which it didn't look to be. Usual problems creating anything outside of high balls into the box but Turnbull has been tidy on the ball. St. Johnstone almost a carbon copy of us, ie very low quality.

Objectively, I don't think Robinson should be fired now or in the next two matches. However the problem with Robinson is he has shown absolutely no scope for change, no plan B, no notion of any kind of joined up long term planning and no interest in modern or entertaining football. It's all been percentage football and that is a problem when your win percentage is hovering just about 20%. Robinson has to show that going forward we are going to improve and get easier on the eye and if I'm honest I don't think he has it in him and that puts into question just how much longer you stick with him. It's not all about the past, a big part of it is the future. Where is Robinson taking us? Of course, no one can predict the future but you have to look at trends, form, recurring patterns to try and judge that as best as possible. The prospect of the rest of this season and potentially a season after that watching the same kind of football that we've watched pretty much for a whole calendar year is pretty depressing, regardless of whether we get relegated or not.

950.

Perhaps we can finally ditch the whole 'budget' excuse for playing atrocious football. Doesn't cost a penny to pass a ball as our youth team proved today. Thought we got a bit lucky on the tackle that the Sligo player was stretchered off after. Don't think there was malice in it but the boy (I've forgotten who it actually was that made the tackle) went in studs up. At least a yellow but the ref let it go.