Ya Bezzer!

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.

Really enjoyed that today. Don't see the U20s a whole lot but since Craigan took over I've always been very impressed when I have seen them and today was no different. It's a shame more weren't at the match (att 950 ) to see how the game should be played. Excellent stuff, every player composed on the ball, ball on the grass, good movement on and off the ball. We maybe lack a real goal poacher, although James Scott is a hard worker and good team player, but other than that I thought we were very good. When you go to see U20s football you are maybe expecting to see perhaps 2, 3, maybe 4 players who could potentially step up but I thought every outfield player today showed something. Having said that David Turnbull was the best player on the park. Perhaps worth pointing out that even though it was a strong performance across the team I thought Adam Livingstone did very well at left back.

Will be interesting to see how the standards of our U20s set-up fair against an Irish Premier side with fairly recent European experience. Based purely on the players in their squad that I know about - Rhys McCabe, Caolan McAteer, Adam Morgan - you are maybe looking at a bottom half of the Championship level for Sligo. Hopefully a few of our guys can use this as a chance to advance their claim on a first team place.

We have three winnable matches coming up and we need to pick up a decent tally in these upcoming games because it gets a lot harder after that - Rangers, Celtic, Hearts, Aberdeen etc. St. Johnstone aren't much better than us and have conceded 13 goals in the last three league matches. They have also struggled to score goals, 5, excluding OG's and penalties, in 8 matches. Another 1-1 draw seems the most likely result but we need to see a much better performance that the Livingston match.

The problem now is that Turnbull should have been brought into the team when we were in better form or playing lesser opposition. Now, if we do turn to him, he's being brought in at the worst possible time to introduce a young player. You can't reasonable expect one young player to turn around a team that is massively under performing all across the park, has won 1 league game out of 8 and seems to be in a state of disarray. You need experienced players to guide young players through the game, not the other way round. Guys like Turnbull should have played regularly in the League Cup matches and then been brought off the bench for league matches when there was less pressure on the team. Of course THAT didn't happen because of the short sighted mismanagement of our youth development by someone who's not interested and will only throw in youth in desperation when his own neck is on the line. But it's not all Robinson's fault. The people behind him need a sharp slap to the side of the head as well. It should be part of a Motherwell manager's remit to develop youth. But heaven forbid we have any kind of long term coherent strategy for the club outside of snapping up English non league players, crossing our fingers and hoping two or three coming through the mass import revolving door are good enough to sell on. The people steering the club need to get the finger out. Imagine we'd spent as much time and effort constructing a footballing strategy as we have constructing a social media strategy for a team that's almost unwatchable at present. As for McHugh, having seen the highlights and just how bad the elbow on Gallagher was I think this guy just needs ditched. He should have been sent off at Kilmarnock last week, got away with it, should have been sent off for the elbow, got away with it, and then put in about another 2 or 3 borderline yellows, got away with them, before eventually getting sent off. You can't have someone that stupid on the pitch when you are in our position; then you look at the goals he sold recently at Dundee and against Hearts one of which resulted in a team mate being injured, potentially seriously, but luckily not. You'd think when he put himself out of the game for 6 months with another ridiculous challenge it might have knocked some sense into him. And for Robinson to come out and say it was a soft sending off, well that's just proof that the guys in charge have stopped watching matches and are seeing what they want to see.

I just don't buy this budget argument. One of my consistant criticisms of Robinson that is he has brought in poor quality fringe players yet not used our own youth players. That in itself is a huge waste of money. Guys like MacLean, Hastie, Maguire, Turnbull, Livingstone, Scott are being paid by the club and in some cases have been ready to step up for two years now but aren't being used when we are also paying to bring in guys like George Newell, Ellis Plummer, Liam Grimshaw, Deimantas Petravicius, Stephen Hendrie, Aaron Taylor-Sinclair, Liam Donnelly, Alex Gorrin, Christian Mbulu .etc, who are hardly ever going to play and don't add anything to our squad when they do (or did). Put together all those wages of all those youth players and all the fringe players brought in (plus agent fees and the other expenses involved in 'free' transfers) and you don't come to the conclusion that our spend on players has been at all financially efficient. We are spending a lot of money on players to virtually no effect on the teams play, so if debt repayment is keeping us down why are we so wasteful with our present player budget? Then you can also point to us having multiples of certain types of players while lacking completely other types of players so there is no balance and a tactical inflexibility inherent to the present squad. If we have approximately 50 paid professional players at the club why is Richard Tait been playing out of position for more than a year? There are huge financial inefficiencies in the way we have built our squad and used our resources so it really doesn't cut it for me to use it as an excuse. Instead of being used to excuse it should be seen as a failure.

Read the article properly. Clarke clearly states it's his "first benchmark" with further benchmarks beyond that. Kilmarnock already have 16 points after 8 games so they will hit that benchmark probably by the end of the second round of games and move on to the next one. That's not the message coming out of Motherwell. Survival seems to be our only benchmark. As for us, we have three winnable matches coming up. We need a big performance against St. Johnstone to exorcise yesterday. A defeat to St. Johnstone puts us firmly in a bottom four situation. Then we have Dundee and St. Mirren and after that we have a very hard run of fixtures so it is absolutely imperative we get wins in these three upcoming games or we could potentially be in real big trouble. If we can't do it in the next three games Robinson is going to be under huge pressure. After that we have Rangers, Celtic, Aberdeen, Hearts, St. Johnstone away....

I don't really care about what position we finish. What appalls me is the absolute paucity of football being played. What is going on now can't fail to backfire. Today was close to unwatchable. We'll either get relegated or drive fans away in their droves. Another 1 or 2 like that and people just won't come out, especially as we head into the winter months. And what is the long term plan? We might be a percentile better than two of St. Mirren, Dundee and Hamilton but what then? Another season of this? As it stands we should do the honourable thing and take the F out of MFC.

Can only really give it to Bowman as it was the single moment of any worth.

Who can defend that? We are by any objective standard absolutely atrocious. We are a club that's brainwashed it's self into non professional standards. Oh, and McHugh is a complete idiot. Should have been sent off last week, got away with it. He's a reckless, dangerous player who every time he puts his foot in risks a yellow or red. A clown.

Although I'd agree our close season transfer dealings have been poor and the players brought in aren't good enough I still believe all our current woes stem back to the beginning of last season. We won 6 out of our first 10 matches but people forget about many of the performances. Against Kilmarnock and Ross County the team was literally booed off the field at half time, we put in dismal first half displays, were generally given the runaround and were lucky, due to poor finishing from the visitors, to still be in the match. In the 2nd half we improved and we managed to get 1-0 leads with two late penalties, one each match to wrap up the points. The introduction of Allan Campbell from the sub bench turned the match against Ross County. It showed one thing, that Robinson's choices that he'd brought in - Bigirimana, Rose, alongside McHugh were not good enough as a midfield. And as has been proven time and time again ever since, when Allan Campbell is not present our midfield rarely if ever functions. Yet while this was evident to anyone actually analysing the matches rather than just looking at the results nothing was done about it. To this day, more than a year on and two transfer windows past, we still lack quality in midfield. A football team with no midfield will always be destined for disaster. And so it's proved. So how did we win 6 out of 10 then? Our initial success was based on a number of factors - new players, an unusual formation and 'throwback' tactics in an age when 'good' football meant playing on the ground, as well as having the best striker in the league, a good bit of luck and a favourable opening run of winnable home fixtures. However, we were easily figured out after one match, luck doesn't last forever and our striker was injured and then sold. Once teams had played us and adapted, we were easy to counter. The classic example was Aberdeen. Soundly beaten in what will probably be remembered as the best performance of the Robinson era in the league cup, Aberdeen returned the following weekend, changed their tactical approach and completely shut us down and won 1-0. More or less every team did the same after the first round of matches - a fact that saw our form go off a cliff and never really recover beyond a few wins against relegation bound Partick and an end of season kick about against Hamilton in the Bottom Six matches. Here was our second mistake - not replacing Louis Moult. While Main started brightly at the club it soon became apparent that he was no penalty box striker and while he often did good work outside the box the goal return was nowhere near the player he replaced. Yet, again, like the problem in midfield, nothing was done. Another transfer window and Connor Sammon was brought in, a player far too similar to existing players in the squad and a striker with a poor goal return. True, Danny Johnson was also brought in but here was a player with fitness issues and who clearly needed time and matches to adjust and step up a level. He wasn't ready to step right in. So last season while the midfield was not good enough at any point but we could get away with it because we were defensively sound and had a great striker. Then when Moult was sold we couldn't really get away with it a lot of the time because we were depending on not conceding to get anything out of games. If teams scored first they generally beat us. Form suffered badly, goals dried up and our form went into free fall. Finally we get to this close season. Both midfield and forward positions were not significantly strengthen, something that should have been apparent for some time and then disaster happened - the last functioning part of the team - the defence - fell apart. Dunne was injured, Hartley came back from a serious injury and didn't look the same player, Kipre was sold and our best player last season, Trevor Carson, took a major dip in form. So as it stands no area of the pitch is good enough. Carson's poor-ish form may improve but defensively we have been very bad - 14 conceded in 7 league matches and not a single clean sheet. We have exactly the same midfield as last season - a Chris Cadden going backwards at a rate of knots, Rose, Bigirimana, an out of position Tait, and of course ,Campbell, a player that, as good as he is, desperately needs help. The only 'improvement' in midfield was moving McHugh out of it into defence. So while it's tempting to blame Sammon, Donnelly and ATS for the poor start to the season I still maintain that, really, our problems stem back to last season for the above reasons.

I guess I'm saying a lot of Motherwell supporters chose not to support us today - only 500 out of our regular 4,000, never mind the 12,000 that turned out for the final. If you are fed up with us being beaten or turning in very poor performances, then I think that's a legitimate reason for staying away and the rest of us shouldn't get too judgemental about it. Me, I go to almost every match but we've been too bad, too long to really criticise people for not wanting to drop £30 - £40 quid going to a game.

Since he was talking about midfield runners not being matched and since Bigi was getting strips torn off him after the second goal I think you can safely say he'll be one of them. Not sure who's not matched the run for the third goal for Kilmarnock as you don't get the best view looking down the length of the pitch but Cadden had another poor match and really needs benched.

I'd agree that we were competing in the game and the early exchanges were fairly even but I always felt Kilmarnock were the much better footballing team and when we scored it was slightly against the run of play. When Kilmarnock scored the equalizer had been coming for 10 or 15 minutes so I don't agree we looked comfortable at that stage. As for this supposed ability to cope turn round games, we've won 1 match in our last 35 league games from being 1-0 down, that against Dundee. Kilmarnock have done it two weeks in a row. We'll agree completely about the second half. It was noticeably that there was a lot of finger pointing at the goals and with a good 15 minutes of the game left the team had more or less given up going by body language. These are not good signs.

There was 550 odd through at Kilmarnock today. Are those the only ones getting in on Saturday?

Liam Grimshaw is by far the worst player in the squad. Quite an achievement.

Pretty much. If you want to improve a squad you sign players that will displace guaranteed first team starters the previous season. What we've done is replace second string dross with second string dross. Since our actual first team is actually weaker than at the start of last season that policy seems even more bizarre. We have something like 30 first team squad players (if you included Maguire, Turnbull, Scott etc) and you'd be lucky if you could find 10 that are either good enough or tested at this level. As a result there is no competition in the squad, something only compounded by the managers aversion to promoting U20s players into the first team. Robinson has painted himself into a corner with his loyalty to a side that, cup runs aside, was pretty poor in the first place and is poorer now. We brought in Donnelly, Grimshaw and Taylor-Sinclair from the fringes today. You'd think these guys would want to impress during a rare start but alas they did absolutely nothing.

Carson for keeping the score down.

Finished 1-3 but might well have been 4, 5, 6. Carson has made a couple of smart saves and Tait cleared a certain goal off the line. In the end we were well beaten by probably the best team I've seen this season and that fact is what I'm taking away from this match. I keep seeing wee team mentality all over this board, that we can't expect much from a club our size and that the city teams are unchallengeable. Why then are our closest cousins, in terms of size of club, history, support, so far ahead of us? Kilmarnock have beaten Celtic and Aberdeen and are as good as any team in the country. At Motherwell we've let our standards fall drastically. That's a problem that is pre-Robinson but it's only been compounded during Robinson term in charge with atrocious outdated tactics, embarrassing style of football and the complete neglect of our youth system. Things have to change. Kilmarnock showed us today what could be.

Idiotic challenge for the penalty.