Ya Bezzer!

Today was a performance that slowly unraveled before our eyes, Started well and dominated the opening exchanges creating 3 or 4 decent chances. But whatever had charged our initial impetus started to fade after the 15 - 20 minute mark and instead of keeping Hearts on the back foot we started making poor decisions on the ball so that Hearts got more and more comfortable. We weren't being outplayed but Heart's looked fairly secure after a shaky opening. Then we had the catastrophic McHugh back pass and the game slowly but surely started to slip away. Poor passing, poor decision making, poor touch, lots of little mistakes, dallying, a lack of quickness of thought, players not making good position off the ball, all these conspired to give Hearts what turned out to be a fairly easy win for them. You might argue that we didn't deserve to lose the match but we've lost at home without really creating a chance for over 60 minutes or so with the opposition never getting out of 2nd gear. Two points. Curtis Main does a decent job outside the box but 2 goals in his last 19 league matches is not a good return. We need more goal threat and Main is not providing it. Secondly, Chris Cadden, 43 league matches without a goal and only 6 assists over that time isn't good enough either. When we are struggling to create and score I think we have to have a look at these two players.

Started well and dominated the first 15 minutes or so but afterwards we started to get a bit sloppy in the final third. That was survivable but being sloppy in our own defensive areas has completely transformed this match. McHugh's pass back is an absolute disaster giving away a goal and leading to Carson's injury. Since then our confidence looks badly affected and Hearts have looked comfortable. We've not been outplayed and don't deserve to be one down but these foolish individual mistakes can cost you points. Second half we need to get back to how we started, make better decisions in attacking areas and cut out the poor final ball. For me Cadden has been stinking again, I'd whip him off. We've competed and we are only 1-0 down so let's go for this second half.

The Djoum tackle was an absolute shocker as well. Red everyday of the week And the red that never was. The Djoum tackle was an absolute shocker and the most blatant red you will ever see. Of course it only got a yellow!

It was Barry Cook who I don't think has refereed Premiership matches off the top of my head but mainly does second tier and cup matches. When Thomson retires Cook is a possible replacement!

Not strictly speaking Motherwell related but if you've not seen the refereeing debacle for this weekends Partick Thistle game it's well worth looking out for. Partick Thistle take a corner from the right hand side, score, referee disallows goal and gives a throw in on the left hand touchline to Morton. Unbelievable. https://twitter.com/PartickThistle/status/1036025973798588417 https://twitter.com/PartickThistle/status/1036025973798588417

Went for Bigi. Thought Tate had a good game today as well.

2nd half Frear came on and almost immediately did three things Cadden didn't do the whole time he was on, beat a man, get down the line and put a ball in the box from which we score. Might be doing Bigi a disservice but his free kick didn't look the best but it went in to give us a deserved 2-0 lead. He was one of our better players again today. Then the usual happened when we go 2-0 up, we immediately give away a very poor goal and Dundee who had done next to nothing in the match suddenly had their tails up. Indeed Carson made a stop with his foot that prevented an equalizer. We had a hairy 10 minutes or so but Campbell ended it with his goal. Again didn't look the most convincing hit but it was down the far end and I didn't have the best view. Overall a deserved win.

Much the better team but we've had about 10 chances and we've not made the keeper make a save. Everything is going high and wide....all a bit Accies so far. Need to be a lot more clinical in the 2nd half. The points are there for the taking if we can actually hit the target.

On the face of it this is a match I think we should be winning. Dundee have 5 matches this season against full time teams, 3 Premiership and 2 Championship and they have lost them all, scoring only 1 goal. Their home record under McCann is pretty awful as well, only 6 wins from 21 league matches. But it's important we can show that we can perform against teams like Dundee because Rangers match aside when we obviously raised our game it's not been very good and I did feel we stole quite a few points off Dundee last season and what's the phrase about things evening themselves out? Wee bit pressure here, a win puts us back in the pack, a loss would have us a couple of points behind everyone else in the league. Will be interesting to see how we perform.

For me it was between Bigi, Campbell and Johnson. Campbell and Johnson didn't play 90 minutes and Bigi had 2 assists so it's got to be him.

I think when a team goes out with such a cynical attitude as that Rangers team the referee is never going to look good. Cheating to win fouls is part of their prepared game plan.

Expected us to come out in the second half with our heads down after the circumstances of the first half but we kept plugging away and in the end have dominated the second half, can't remember Rangers having a single chance of note. Absolutely deserved the point, at the very least, and Rangers tactic of going to ground every time there is a 50/50 really didn't work out well for them. Good to see Campbell and Bigirimana in midfield together and Johnson up top. They were all excellent.

Competed well in midfield and Johnson has continued his good form but I'm afraid if you concede 3 goals in 45 minutes its all for nothing. Rangers have got into the spaces behind our wing backs and we can't seem to deal with Lafferty.

I looked into that. Collum has only officiated three Motherwell vs Celtic/Rangers matches. One of those was the infamous last minute penalty match that was drawn. Collum's matches - 2 Aberdeen, 2 Celtic, 2 Hamilton, 1 Hearts, 1 Inverness, 2 Kilmarnock, 1 Rangers, 2 Ross County, 3 St. Johnstone. Doesn't look especially 'high profile' to me. Most of the matches are against non city clubs.

Recent chat got me interested in the actual facts about referees and perceived bias of certain officials. First of all I looked at win ratio against referee in charge. Over the last 4 seasons, not including this season, we played 179 domestic matches with a win ratio of 36.8%. Therefore I expected most referee's to be roughly around the 35% mark. I've excluded referees who officiated less than 5 matches. FINNIE P6 W4 D0 L2 66.6% WALSH P7 W4 D2 L1 57.10% MUIR P11 W5 D2 L4 45.4% CLANCY P14 W6 D1 L7 42.0% MADDEN P21 W8 D0 L13 38.0% ALLAN P8 W3 D1 L4 37.5% DALLAS P8 W3 D1 L4 37.5% McLEAN P17 W6 D4 L7 35.2% THOMSON P17 W6 D2 L9 35.2% ROBERTSON P12 W4 D2 L6 33.3% ANDERSON P9 W3 D1 L5 33.3% AITKEN P6 W2 D1 L3 33.3% BEATON P10 W3 D2 L5 30.0% COLLUM P16 W3 D6 L7 18.7% So as you can see most of the referees didn't fall far below our overall win ratio, with two exceptions. Beaton who was almost 7% lower and Collum who was a massive 16% off of where you'd expect. Out of interest the referees who didn't make the 5 match cut were.... COOK P4 W2 D1 L1 50.0% MURRAY P4 W2 D0 L2 50.0% CHARLESTON P2 W1 D0 L1 50.0% DUNCAN P2 W1 D0 L1 50.0% COLVIN P4 W 0 D1 L3 0.00% CRAWFORD P1 W0 D1 L0 0.00% I intend to look into cards issued against us by referees and against opposition by referees but that will have to wait for now.

I'm guessing if the roles were reversed and a Rangers player had come out in the press about enjoying watching a Motherwell player having his nose broke no one would have said a peep about it? Eh...maybe not. Anyway it motivates the opposition, puts Hartley under the spotlight from referees and puts the club in a bad light, this was a lead story on the BBC earlier in the day. It's nothing to do with going soft and everything to do with having some kind of intelligence when talking to the press. When we have a game with a referee who made at least two atrocious red card decisions against us last season why on earth would you go out and talk about some serious foul play that we got away with?

I like the rough side of the game but there are some things you can't say. Hartley has done us, and himself, a massive disservice with his comments. However he seems to have these sorts of outbursts in his locker and yet he's been made club captain. Perhaps, ultimately, it wasn't the wisest decision to put him into a role that he doesn't seem especially suited too. As I've already noted this season, away from the lenses and microphones, I've not been impressed with his captaincy on the field either. As regards the game in general, I have no idea how good Rangers really are but they have gone 10 games undefeated and have hardly conceded any goals so they will be very confident at the very least. Having seen every minute we've played this season I suspect we are going to have to see a massive performance increase to get anything out of the match. Will be especially interested to see if Johnson starts or if Robinson reverts to type.

Ha ha. Some people have taken against me and kick out at virtually anything I say, even when if you isolated what exactly I said, they would actually agree with me. But hey, that's the fun of the forums.

Yeah but as good as their home form was their away form was terrible.

They also only lost two home matches all last season. Once to Rangers, once to Celtic.

Very, very tough tie. Hearts home record in recent times has been superb.

The pitch!

For me Johnson was the difference between the teams.

Poorer 2nd half but at least Campbell came on and looked like his old self. Hit the post as well but apart from that don't remember either keeper having a serious save to make. Livingston played nice enough football but have a serious lack of cutting edge. For us Johnson was taken off and Frear fell out of the game. Overall a fairly even match with Danny Johnson the difference between the teams.

Better. Actually created chances what with having a winger and a proper striker on the pitch. Livingston looked dangerous in the first 20 minutes or so and Carson had to make a smart save and they had one off the bar. Since the goal though we have mainly been able to nullify them as an attacking team. Probably 1-0 is about right. Important we get the next goal though.