Ya Bezzer!

The next test, although hopefully it never comes, will be if we can cope with injuries to key players. For me those three key players are Moult, Bowman and Campbell. We have done well but we are still very reliant on Moult to score the goals. Bowman is now a key player because he's crucial to getting the best out of Moult. And Campbell has been our best player this season, he might be 18 years old, but he's running that midfield like a veteran and I don't think it's a coincidence that the two matches we've lost this season were the one's he didn't play in.

Will be interesting to see if we have the energy at the weekend that we did tonight. Players absolutely burst a gut. Might be a tough ask but we'll see what happens.

Don't think we played great football tonight but every player in the team got the sleeves rolled up and gave everything. Every player in our team wanted it more than every player on the opposition and not for a spell, it was over 90 minutes. That's what made tonight our best performance of the season by a long way. We should have won by more. They say you get out what you put in and that was epitomised by every Motherwell player on the field tonight. Take Ryan Bowman, far from the greatest player to ever pull on a Motherwell shirt, but by god did he graft his arse off. Earned every penny of that BACS payment in sweat. Allan Campbell, with 11 games under his belt, is an absolute prodigy. For me he's the best player in the team (with one near rival who I'll get on to later). Reminds me of Scott Leitch at the top of his game but at that age you'd expect him to go on and be so much better than Leitch, even though Leitch was a very good player for us. If Campbell keeps his form up, and I've yet to see him have anything less than a stellar game, he's going all the way to the top. Louis Moult. Getting closer and closer to my all time Motherwell XI. He's just a magic act. Made two goals tonight out of NOTHING. No offense to Dunne but I also think Hammell brings much more to the team as long as he can stay fit. Dunne has the height and athleticism but with the ball Hammell is a different level of player. Great atmosphere tonight as well, the fans matched the players. Hampden chips, here I come!

Got to be Louis today.

Didn't see much with my hobbits eye view of the pitch but Boyle dived and it was never a penalty. Though we got away with one earlier when Stokes went down so perhaps it evened out. First half Barker was tearing us a new one down the right and putting great balls in. He was a big danger and him and McGinn were running the game. However we were a bit unlucky to go in 0-1 down given the dubious penalty. Second got off to a bad start with losing a poor goal. Didn't quite see what was going on but it looked like it should have been cleared and was avoidable. At that stage a comeback didn't look on but as soon as we scored Hibs just fell apart. You'll rarely see a bottle crash like that. Almost from kick off Hibs were all over the place and the equalizer seemed almost inevitable. Great finish from Moult. Probably didn't deserve the win over the piece but a third was looking likely until we started dropping deep in the latter stages and let a team we were completely dominating back into the game for a slightly nervy finish - much like Kilmarnock last week. Overall a good away point, played well in parts in the second half and dominated for spells and looked dangerous. Usual suspects stood out - Kipre, Campbell, Moult. Bit disappointed in McHugh again and we always seem to get a lot better when Andy Rose gets subbed. Cadden at right wing back is a weakness too when are are up against strong wingers.

Like I said over on P&B with Hibs only having had 1 home match and us only having had 1 away match there has been no real form established by either team. Accies went there and won 3-1 but that could have been an anomaly, we don't know at this stage. The same goes with our 4-1 defeat at St. Johnstone. By all accounts Hibs out played St. Johnstone on their own patch last week so I'd expect a tougher match than we've had since our visit to Perth but a result is more than possible if we can restrict teams to one goal or less.

If he did that on here he would probably fall victim to a miserablist trope! We've got better but I think there is still a lot to learn about this team. If you look at our results so far this season we are up 4 points on the corresponding fixtures last season but lost the same number of games - 2 out of 5. (Rangers 0-2/1-2; St. Johnstone 1-1/1-4; Ross County 4-1/2-1; Kilmarnock 0-0/2-0; Hearts 1-3/2-1; Total 5/9. That's an improvement but it's mostly centered around that one match against Hearts - which was our best overall performance of the season (so far). Due to the rather odd fixture list this season (4 home/1 away) we still need to see if we can get any sort of away form going and if we can get results against teams expected to finish in the Top 6, defeats against Rangers and St. Johnstone so far suggest we've still got a bit to go in that regard. So although there has been an improvement I think we shouldn't jump the gun until at least a full round of fixtures has been played. We've been a little bit fortunate that we've had very winnable home matches (in contrast Partick have had Aberdeen and Celtic) and we've also got away with some poor 1st half showings when we might have gone in at HT with worse scorelines than we did. One other area to look at is if Robinson is willing to adapt his plans. Seems to me that Bowman and Campbell weren't part of them early on but 5 games in I think both of these players have proved they are worth a starting spot and have consistently improved overall team performance. Hammell also proved on Saturday that he is miles better than Dunne with his foot on the ball.

Often Lennon has been the personification of that Celtic brand of persecution and paranoia that is utterly infuriating, with a tendency to blame all his short comings on everyone else. However listening to his after match interviews this season he seems to be showing a humility that hasn't been present up till now. Perhaps being Hibs manager is good for him. Craig Levein though, from his big toe to the top of his head, will always be an absolute arse of a man.

This. Cathro Hearts we should be beating (or immediately Post Cathro for the pedants out there). 8 out of 10 teams in the league had beaten them in the past year and every other team in the league had taken at least a point off them - except us. Overall they had 4 wins in their previous 21 league matches. Under Levein they will probably improve so we definitely caught them at a good time.

Seems to me the two key decisions to make in terms of line up are to get Campbell starting and to play Bowman off Moult.

About 75% of the quotes I get on here are by you. Bit creepy.

We won so don't take any lessons on board? That's a great game plan for when we go away to a team who, like Rangers and St. Johnstone, will probably be Top 6 this season.

Any time there is a runner from midfield they go right past McHugh every time. Happened every game this season. Needs sorted out. It's gonna be a big problem against better teams.

Campbell, obviously.

Didn't seem to be injured. Kilmarnock weren't in the game at that stage and the defence was cruising it.

Deserved to win on the second half performance. Might have been different if Brophy hadn't missed a sitter, albeit with a good save from Carson but he still had to put it away, and then Carson again has clawed one out of the corner of the goal. Second half improved immensely after a pretty sloppy first half - Hammell and Bigi were a huge improvement on Rose and particularly Dunne who gave the ball away on virtually every occasion. Killie's heads seem to go down after we opened the scoring and we were completely dominating the match at that stage until the rather odd Hartley for Grimshaw substitution put us the other way. Suddenly we looked a bit nervy at the back, a bit tired and falling further and further back. The penalty came at a good time as it was looking like one of those nervy finishes we are all so accustomed to at Fir Park. Carson had a good day, Kipre was excellent again but I thought Allan Campbell was absolutely tremendous. Looks like he has a 150 games under his belt.

Ok the Hartley change has completely unnerved us. We were cruising.

Changes have improved us immensely. Rose was anonymous, Dunne was atrocious.

Had more of the ball but we keep giving it away. Honestly think Dunne must have about 5% pass completion in that half. Started OK but got sloppy again and lapsed into long ball stuff. Moult taking up deep and wide positions isn't helping. Cadden isn't a right back either. Kilmarnock should be at least 1-0 up based on actual good chances.

On the face of it we are in a much better place than Kilmarnock but I think looking at it beyond surface level I'd expect an even match tomorrow. Kilmarnock have not been far away from getting results but have faltered at the last. Conceded in the 89th minute against St Johnstone (at 1-1), 88th minute against Celtic (at 0-1) and the 88th minute against Hamilton (at 2-1). In fact both teams have conceded the same number of goals in league games this season and there has only been 1 clean sheet between the teams so I'd expect both teams to score. Overall though we seem to have more goal power than Kilmarnock have shown so far and Kilmarnock's tendency to concede late goals gives us the slight advantage. 2-1 home win.

See Henri Anier scored the winner in a 1-0 win for Estonia against Cyprus. Playing in Finland at the moment apparently.

Last season Crawford got 10 goals and 8 assists. I think we could deal with that kind of stall in progress.

Late on this as I work strange hours (not as a taxi driver though) Peter Hartley. I'd take a sneaky punt on him improving us defensively. Experienced player that's pretty much played 1st team football his whole career. That's why he's here, he's not prepared to sit around somewhere. Just that on its own, to me, shows an admirable attitude. He's also got a decent record of goals, one of my standard rants for a while was the lack of goals we get out of our centre backs. Overall I reckon moving out Heneghan and bringing in Hartley will be an amazing bit of business and will benefit the team. It remains to be seen but that's my prediction. Liam Grimshaw. I was luke warm on him first time round, I felt he took a long time to really find his feet although he did put a few good performances latter. If he's cover for right back, fine. If he's now in front of Allan Campbell for a midfield berth it's another wrong turn in terms of youth development. Overall though 1 - Held on to Moult 2 - Held on to Cadden 3 - Moved out Heneghan for an outrageous sum and brought in an experienced player with a track record 4 - Made a lot of dough off a player that didn't want to be here in the first place. 5 - Ditched Clay and Blyth I think we look in better shape than at the beginning of the season but at the end of the day it's all about producing performances. We beat Hearts and that was great but everyone else has been beating them for 6 months so I think in the aftermath of the game some went a little overboard on the performance. I enjoyed it personally but I also realise that Hearts have been the worst team in the league so far in 2017. We should be looking to beat Kilmarnock at home in the worst of circumstances but after we have games coming out against Hibs and Aberdeen and I think that's when we really see what we are made of.

Ha ha! If I'm being compared to a taxi driver I really must be a moaning git! Sorry, I don't have a driving licence and I wash my armpits so no go on that one. On the other hand I did meet Lee Harvey Oswald several times at the Cuban training camp just outside Overton.

He wasn't good against St Johnstone. Last season plenty on here would have gave him bus fare to England but as usual are so fickle they spin on a dime at 1 or 2 games. My opinion I based on 40 games. If he puts together a run of form maybe I'll revise but not before. As for the constant negative, well things have generally negative over a number of seasons, hardly my fault for calling a spade a spade. However you really don't have to look far for me too see praise - for Bowman for instance for his effect in the last few games, or Kipres performance against Hearts. Or praise for Campbell as we cross our fingers that he might actually get a first team start some time soon. If you want to offer weak argument based on a myopic view of my posts that's down to you.