star sail

Let's say for arguments sake that the season had lasted from Jan 19 to the finish in March 20. Motherwell would have still finished third in that case. They proved to be the 3rd best team for over a year. Belt and braces, 3rd best in the league. Something to celebrate. That the context should be that the achievement be judged on the games that had still to be played (and we will never know the result of) suggests to me that a certain spin is being applied to the context. I understand that in a certain context (there it is again) one win in eleven would indeed end in sacking and in modern football more often than not, managers do get sacked but I think it is something for Well fans to celebrate that our board tend to buck that trend and back their man. It also comes after a 3rd place finish which in any context is an achievement for a team like ours. We have been here before during the sticky spell in the second half of 2018, with some of the support wanting Robinson sacked then. His team then went on a great run in 2019. I know that again some will say that was luck but to be lucky over a 12-14 month period stretches that argument a little. You might be right this time. The poor run may continue but only two games into a new season I think he has earned the right for us to back him. I think he will turn it round again but I am one of those happy clappers.

I was going to reply making a similar point but you have made it far better than I could. The beauty of undermining the current Spfl teams is that before a ball is kicked anything short of a 2nd place finish or a Cup Final victory renders any other success in the season short off this as failure. Must be hard to know as a Motherwell manager that before a ball is kicked, a 3rd place finish is not going to cut it with a minority of the support.

Interesting to read a few people putting a negative spin on a 3rd place finish. Like all statistics you can focus on any particular timeframe if you want to make a particular point, good or bad. Is it not the case that if you look at the season from Jan 1st 2019- Dec 31st 2019 we were second (or a very strong 3rd). Looking at the here and now, it is a disappointing start. A week ago, I was very hopeful of taking six points from the first two games. This was based on the strength of the squad alone. Maybe we should have taken the pre season friendly form a little more seriously. Hindsight as always is a wonderful thing. Some stats are difficult to hide from and the one win in eleven is not one I had picked up on. To put a positive spin on things, if that ten game stretch represents a temporary bad spell than we can still come out the other side (perhaps fortunately) with little lasting damage. I am confident that it will come good. We have the same squad that we had a week ago and I believe the manager is good enough to turn it round.

The midfield situation reminds me of the year Vigurs and Lawson arrived. The resources were plentiful but McCall could not find the balance in the team. It made the squad seem somehow lop-sided. I can understand the issue. To leave Turnbull or Polworth on the bench seems like a luxury, a team like Motherwell can not afford so the desire to play them both is understandable. Campbell on the bench also seems like a waste of resource. The challenge of a strong squad for the manager is that tough decisions have to be made. Will be interesting to see who is ultimately favoured and how they are deployed. It is a good headache to have but I wonder if it comes as a result of the fact that Turnbull was not supposed to be with us. Robinson will earn is salt working out the best combination.

I really liked Grimshaw as a player when he first arrived from Man Utd. Did the simple things well and his attitude was without question. He reminded me a bit of a Neil Lennon type player (in playing style only) and would have fitted nicely as a holding midfielder. He does not look like a natural right back to me but I can see why Robinson would want to have him in the team. If he is indeed the first name on the team sheet, I would imagine it is for his attitude and work ethic as much as anything else. He is a player that I prefer to see in the team than not. That he would be the first name on the team sheet is very interesting.

One thing I have noticed about Steven Gerrard's Rangers is that there pre-season record is very good. He seems to treat them like competitive games insisting that the team plays with intensity. I find it difficult to understand the dynamics of pre-season games. Whilst the results can be unpredictable, this particular result has gone to regular season form. If the team are not yet fully fit they should be fairly close. In athletics a general rule of thumb is that you need six weeks to notice performance benefits from training. Also in athletics, the principle of doing training sessions and sometimes races fatigued from previous work is not uncommon. The danger of this approach is that if not managed carefully it can increase the chance of injury. Football is not athletics but there must be some overlapping principles. My theory in this particular instance is that Rangers were mentally up for the game (because Gerrard seems to demand that in friendles) and Rangers are simply a better side and it showed. I would like to think that we would do the same to lesser opposition in pre season friendlies but it rarely seems to work out that way and hence we get the arguments every pre-season about just how much we can read into these results.

This was my first thought. Larkhall is not known for its tolerance and multicultural diversity.

These games happen. I have sat through 'the worst humiliation I've ever seen as a Well fan' about 100 times under ever manager we have had since the mid 1980's. I have watched turgid dross under Davie Hay, Tommy McLean, Alex McLeish, Terry Butcher, Maurice Malpas, Harri Kampman, Jim Gannon, Mark McGhee, Billy Davis, Craig Brown, Stevie Robinson (I am sure I am missed one or two). I suspect that you will put the failings that night squarely at the door of the manager. You have to remember that many of those same players had been playing just as poorly a year prior under Stuart McCall. Ainsworth, McManus, McDonald to name a few. I tend to have a soft spot for managers more than I do for players. I think the job of a football manager at a club like Motherwell is a very difficult one. I also think that players get off very lightly at times for not doing their job properly. My opinion (as one who has absolutely no inside track to the goings on at FP) is that there were a few players at the time that were doing a lot of talking and disrupting behind the scenes and not performing on the park. Les Hutchison suggested as much when Baraclough left. My overriding feeling is that fans are very good at coming to a conclusion very early on about managers and then building the facts that back that conclusion up round about that argument. As an example a fan of Baraclough might look at his overall record with NI U21's and come to the conclusion that he has done a good job. A critic might just look at the last half dozen matches where the stats don't look as good. A fan might praise a win over Spain, a critic might think it was just luck. Who is right? The fan or the critic. The beauty of football is that nobody really knows. Baraclough might be a superstar or he might be a dud. He may also just simply be an average manager doing the best he can.

Wes Fletcher made a decent start scoring in the first game away at ICT. Moult's debut was not as impressive. I am sure if you asked many Well fans in the month of August who was going to be the better of the two, many would have gone with Fletcher. Hindsight ofcourse makes a mockery of that. You made the point about the East Fife game and yes he did suffer abuse that night. To me it backs up the opinion that some Well fans were never going to give him time. It is no crime to not know your best 11 in the month of August. Baraclough was not given the time to get it right maybe rightly so maybe not. I don't remember McCall receiving the same flack for losing to Icelandic part-timers in the early part of the season. Infact many Well fans used it as an example of why you cannot expect consistency when bedding in new players and getting up to speed physically. I would not hang my hat on the argument that sacking Baraclough was wrong (it may have been) but I am confident in my view that there were a good proportion of the support that were not keen to give him the benefit of the doubt.

What brings you to the conclusion he was out his depth? Ultimately it did not work out but if he had been out his depth we would have been relegated. I think we were heading for relegation when Baraclough arrived early December and he kept us up. It was a notable achievement. The team under Stuart McCall was dead on its feet. I don't believe any Scottish Manager would have got us through the play-offs. They would have had us beat before a ball was kicked (McCall proved this in a League Cup shambles a few years prior). I have felt over the years that certain managers have been judged more harshly than others. Baraclough was judged harder than most. Good luck to him. The best news of all is that we keep our man (for the time being anyway).

Indeed. I was making the point in relation to Robinson also being well prepared. In a NI interview I think both men would be thoroughly prepared. My hunch is that Robinson may well get the NI job with Baraclough his assistant. They seem to have a strong relationship so it would be a good fit. I would prefer however that Robinson stay with us.

So was Baraclough though. I heard a story that Baraclough had folders full of players histories (Louis Moult was the example given) and was the most thoroughly prepared of the candidates at the time. I would like to see Baraclough get the NI job. Despite the opinion of some Well fans (the same ones that were telling us not so long ago that Robinson should be sacked), I think he has the makings of a very good manager. He has done very well with the NI U21's. It would also mean that we could keep our manager.

Still got some way to go to match Craigan’s goalscoring record. Really disappointing tonight but no panic yet. Remember Aberdeen have been through an equally poor run and turned a corner last night. It happens.

The fact that any team in world football is paying £1.5 million for a 19 year old striker with half a dozen professional goals to his name is crazy. However that is the crazy world we live in. Football transfer fees are obscene, so relatively speaking £1.5 million for James Scott becomes a issue for discussion and debate. My opinion is that this is a great piece of business by the club. Four league goals is not prolific. With a fit Christopher Long it is debatable if Scott would be a first team starter week in week out. I understand the argument about potential but potential can be fulfilled or it can fizzle out. I think unfortunately we are a club that cannot indulge in the luxury of waiting to find out when these offers come along. The bigger picture ( that the likes of Steelboy will refuse to admit) is that we should be celebrating the fact that we are in this position in the first place. The club and Robinson himself should be congratulated for producing and nurturing these players. Scott, Turnbull, Campbell, Cadden etc. This is a fantastic return. What other Scottish club is producing this young talent at the moment? We should be celebrating this success. Let's enjoy watching Scott develop at Hull (if he does) and hope that the club can make good use of the £1.5 million (a considerable amount of money) to develop the new young talent.

I was at work and kept pressing refresh on the Nancy town square webcam as I jealously watched the Motherwell fans gather. In my memory there was about 250,000 gathered there!!!! It was a beautiful sight!

I think Richard Gordon generally does a very good job on Sportsound. He is knowledeable and is about as reasonable and neutral as you can hope to get in Scottish football. Yes he is an Aberdeen fan but he is balanced when commenting on them. This may counteract my praise for RG but my gripe is the OF obsession on the show. I have listened to build ups for Sunday OF games the following day that superceed team news for Saturday 3pm kick offs. I remember once a few seasons back driving up to Aberdeen (it may have been the 2nd place end of season game) with my Dad and we had to listen to Rangers take over talk the whole way up in the car. We got out the car at 2.50pm and still had not heard the team news for our game. That was back in the Jim Traynor days ( the Airdrie fan!!!) .

On paper it was a difficult tie. Away to one of the better Championship teams always provides Cup shocks. A home defeat to Ross County last season should have been enough to make us very wary. I was really surprised by how poor Dundee were. They will do well to hold on to a play off place based on last nights performance. As for us. I should be buzzing after a 3-0 Cup away win but I found last nights game a real Jeckyl and Hyde performance. First the good: the second goal was a thing of beauty and the performances by Gallagher, Long and (IMO) man of the match Campbell were excellent. The problem was that the good was punctuated by some poor performances and at times very disjointed play. Hartley, Seedorf and Tait particularly looked very rusty and against better opposition, I don't think we would have got away with being three players down. Defensively we were all over the place at times and Gallagher's good performance papered over a few cracks. Our shape looked all wrong at the start of the second half, with big spaces opening up for Dundee to exploit. Danny Johnston's run when he came on highlighted this perfectly. Donnelly coming on seemed to resolve this. That is not a criticism of O'Hara because I thought he played well but the balance of the side looked better when Donnelly came on. Let's hope it was rustiness after the winter break as better teams will exploit those weaknesses. I would hope for a kind draw in the next round. We have not had the luck of the draw in recent years in either cup competition. When did we last draw anyone less than Premiership side or top half Championship side in the knock out stages?

Yes. Hollis came into my mind seconds after I posted. It may have been better to say the decade started and ended well.

The BBC did a team of the decade. The one genuine contender for that team from a Motherwell perspective was Randolph. Fraser Foster got the vote and it would be hard to argue with that but there can be few better keepers in Scotland over this last decade. Interestingly he replaced John Ruddy who arguably was as good if not better in his time at Motherwell. I will never forget his triple save at Tannadice which was probably the best save(s), I have seen live at a game. Considering our first and second choice keepers at the moment, we have been fairly blessed over the last decade in this area.

Don't worry, there will be a defeat soon enough to really sink your teeth into. After all it's Christmas!!

Is there any manager in the history of football that you would give pass marks to?

What does this have to do with football? Gallagher was the best Motherwell player on the park (in my option), poppy or not. One of the reasons I support Motherwell is to get away from the political and bigoted nonsense that blights the Old Firm and much of the West of Scotland. Seems you just can’t escape it no matter who you support which is far more depressing than a 2-0 defeat today.

I think we have to be philosophical about these games these days. They are an exercise in staying well organised and disciplined in front of a big crowd. But for the goals Well did that today so I am not hugely dispondant. These games can derail a season and that has not happened today. Negative maybe but tinged with realism. The big disappointment for me is that Tom English is back from the rugby world cup and back to commentating on the football.

Why? Let fake political posturing and wet dreams about conflicts of the past remain the domain of both sides of the Old Firm. Let’s stick to football and not be dragged down to their level. There is opportunity aplenty in other aspects of our lives to pay respect to our war heroes. Posturing undermines genuine sentiment.

If either of the two Edinburgh clubs look beyond the big name catch then Robinson would be a good option. A young, ambitious manager who has shown he can do much with limited resource. A man who works tirelessly, is professional and gives thought to all aspects of the successful running of a football club. Fortunately, I don't think either of the Edinburgh clubs will be able to see beyond the big name so for a time at least, I think we will keep our man. If Motherwell are still 3rd when the January window opens, I think the vulture's will start to circle. People tend to forget that Hibs were going backwards under Lennon when he left. He made an impact when he arrived but they were languishing mid-table when he left and were struggling for form. I am by no means saying that Lennon was a poor manager, his success at Celtic at this moment proves his worth, more that managing Hibs (or Hearts for that matter) is no walk in the park.