El Grew

One of the best all round team performances I've seen from us in a long time - the Craigan sending off seemed to galvanise us. Hope this kick-starts us again. The referee (again and I know he's an easy target) but he was very poor and his competence to be officiating at Grade 1 level must be questioned. Overall his decision making and handling was bad and in the worst of these he booked 3 Motherwell players needlessly in my view; allowed his main stand linesman to incorrectly rule Ojaama offside when he scored; and missed a blatant penalty for Dunfermline when Hutchison shoved one of their forwards to the ground in the penalty area. The accusation levellled against referees by fans week in, week out, is that the majority of them are simply not competent and when some of their major decisions get reviewed, they apologise for making an error (e.g. the ICT sending off against Celtic earlier in the season) but no action is taken.

If we can finish 3rd or 4th then maybe the prospect of European football could be a carrot for him + it might also bring the club some much needed extra funds.

Oh I don't know about that - what about John Gardner?

The attitude of some on this post towards Mark Reynolds is ridiculous! The guy was one of the best young players to come through at FP and he was, due to circumstances, asked to play in the wrong position as he was a left-back when he made his first team debut and not a centre-back and IMO had to play alongside one of the poorest centre-backs ever at FP. But he never complained once and always gave his all in a C&A shirt. I think he had to play far too many games too early in his career and he should have been introduced more gradually. That said, he matured into a right good pro and who can blame him for wanting to try playing at a higher level at Sheffield Wednesday who are IMO at best a Premiership club and at worst at Championship club. It wasn't his fault that the manager that signed him got sacked and the new manager does not fancy him - that's sometimes how it goes when new managers go to clubs. Personally I wish Mark all the very best for his future career and I think he will make a terrific difference to a mediocre defence at Aberdeen and will get his chance to play at a higher level again as age is on his side. Obvioulsy I hope that when we play Aberdeen he ends up on the losing side.

They will certainly be no pushovers but hey we got a home draw so we should be up for it and take full advantage. I'd have been more concerned if we had to trek down to Greenock.

Really sad news. He was a frequent visitor to my place of work and always took the time to pass the time of day and have a quick chat about the 'Well. He was one of the last remaining links at FP to my childhood days going to FP in the early '70s. A true gentleman in every sense of the word and a stalwart and diehard for MFC. His presence at the club will be well missed. Bill will be sadly missed by all who knew him (inside and outside FP) and my sincere condolences go to his family.

I've seen all the left-backs from Joe Wark onwards and IMO Joe was head and shoulders above everyone else. However the great Ben Ellis certainly must get a mention.

Allan Wyllie Keith MacRae Stewart Rennie Charlie Aitken Joe Wark Vic Davidson Bobby Roberts Pat Delaney

The second Celtic goal was offside. Hooper ran into an offside position on the 6-yard box, right in front of Randolph, before McCourt made the pass to Stokes and was still there when the pass was made to Stokes. He should have been flagged offside at that point. Hooper was still in that offside position and no Motherwell player ever got behind him when Stokes squared the ball to him to score. Even under the 'revised' offside rules he was offiside in both phases of the play. Yes, Clancy certainly deserved to walk. However, why did the referee or his linesman fail to take any action against Hooper for pushing his hand into Clancy's face as the ball was played forward to Hooper. This led to Clancy kicking out at Hooper. I'm not condoning Clancy's action but surely Hooper should have at least been spoken to/booked? When I saw that the referee was Charlie Richmond I must admit my heart sank because he has continously shown dreadfully high levels of incompetence in the past and here he was doing so again. We don't want to depend on referees for our results but only a fair and competent refereering performance.

FFS Give the guy a break. He's only just arrived at the club and he's being lambasted already. He's only played 9 SPL games and has managed to score 4 goals. Give him some time to settle in and get to know the team's style of play and how best he can fit in.

If anyone seriously thinks that Scotland's so-called enforcers of the law are going to do anything about sectarianism with regard to either half of the OF then they are sadly deluded. All the great and the good signing peace douments, dictats and concordats with each other earlier this year was absolutely laughable and just the latest example of politicians feeling they have to jump up onto the moral high ground to assuage public opinion on every such issue that arises. Yesterday's removal of a fan was just to demonstrate to their political masters that they are actually enforcing this particular dictat. It must however be said that it was far easier to go into that particular area of the east stand and take a young lad out that doesn't look as though he's had his first shave yet than to wade into the massed ranks in the south stand. Brave lads are Strathclyde's finest!

So we now have 3,500 season ticket holders do we? I believe the official gate at the ICT match was given as 4,100. So if both of these reports are correct then it looks like we only had 600 pay cash at the gate punters including ICT supporters. Gates have been steadily falling at FP (and at other clubs) for years now and regularly the gates at FP last season were around the 4,000 mark so it is really very worrying that the club can now only manage to attract around 500 or so 'floating voters'. I have not renewed my season ticket for the second consecutive year and last season I never went near FP after the home game against Aberdeen in September. I did however go to the opener this season against ICT and sat in the Cooper Stand with my mate (2 x £22!!!!) and we were astounded at the number of seats that had "Reserved for Season Ticket Holder" stickers on them in the area of the stand I went to when I arrived at around 2.45pm. We were even more astounded that the vast majority of these seats remained empty thereafter. I know its been said before but if football clubs don't look at dropping their admission prices and soon then the haemorrhaging of supporters will continue unabated. I went to Hamilton Park races on Saturday evening where the admission price was £14 and there were 6 races over 3 hours or so and the place was hoaching. IMO much better VFM. Scottish football needs to take heed and wise up and SPL clubs will really need to start drastically reducing players wages, players who are failing to put bums in seats and who quite frankly are amongst the worst in Europe.

I have never been a great fan of Stephen Craigan but I really do think he deserves a far better testimonial than Partick Thistle on a Wednesday night in July. No harm to Partick Thistle but hardly box office draw material plus a a lot of people will be on holiday etc. As for all these friendlies IMO all clubs should be throwing their gates open for these on a foc basis or as a bare minimum setting the price at say £2. But I forgot its like everthing to do with footlball nowadays (not just Motherwell) - fleece the usual loyal fans as quick and as often as you like/ can.

Glad to see that someone's paying attention to exactly what's being proposed. Without wishing to dampen enthusiasm for what in principal and on paper seems like a good idea, I personally don't believe that in the current financial climate or any financial climate come to that, that there are 2,000+ Dossers out there who have got £300 to write-off.

Here we go again, every fucking season we get this same shite.

I think with the earlier than normal start to the new season its time McCall got the finger out with regard to new signings. Personally, I doubt that we will see many if any new arrivals despite the cash garnered as a result of to good cup runs + tv revenue from these. We may well be bank-debt free, which is fine but we are clearly strapped for money and clearly there is no intention to change that. There is nothing wrong with carrying a debt provided you can comfortably service it. The club expect people to fork out hard-earned cash on season tickets so lets see some plans for the playing side. I really fear that we are going to struggle next season and over the coming seasons and that we may find ourselves in a lower league.

I have never ever doubted Stephen Craigan's commitment to the C&A but time catches up with us all eventually and his time has come. As for coaching the younger defenders Iwould have no problem with that only not on the park during games. If that's the view then get him onto the coaching staff. Our defence is shocking at times. The back four seem incapable of keeping a line and if you watch them during games they are all over the place. As we are not going to be able to sign world beating forwards we need to address the defence and make ourselves hard to score against. Sorry but Stephen Craigan is not the answer but part of the problem.

"Chrismfcno1 Posted Yesterday, 11:26 PM Just a thought, see with this new UEFA rule about club debt etc, I think it's where wages cannot exceed club turnover. Where exactly would Hearts fit in with all this. Is there wages not at around 126% compared to their turnover so would that not mean that in the following years Hearts would in fact be banned from European football? Again just a thought not sure when this is being implemented etc. All the best Sutts decent servant had worse had better let's move on! " This is a very valid point and it is one that will catch up with Hearts sooner than they think. As for Sutton going, this is just proof, if proof were needed, that all football players, whether the fans like it or not, are simply prostitutes who are prepared to hire themselves out to whichever club is prepared to pay them the highest wages. Fans of all clubs would do well to remember this. Hearts too in the past have suffered from the same thing when bigger clubs came calling to take their players away - remember Craig Gordon, Christophe Berra to name but two recently. What goes around comes around. People have posted that it will be hard to replace a 17-goals in a season striker but I don't think so - Sutton like previous 'Well strikers needed others in the team to make the chances for him to convert, so at least the team are making chances. We managed to replace Skippy, Clarkson, Porter, Jutkiewitz and Blackman so I am sure there will be others out there can be brought in and do a similar job. On another point, and at the risk of upsetting the Stephen Craigan fan club, I cannot for the life of me understand why we have offered him another year's contract. He's now become a liability and a bombscare we just don't need. Its time we got somebody younger and fitter to partner young Hutchison. We had a defensive record that would have graced the bottom 3 places in the SPL this season and we must become harder to score against and we won't do that with Craigan in the side.

I like John Sutton and think he's been terrific for us and I'd love to seem him staying with us. However, it seems that we have made him the best offer we possibly can so I think its time to tell him and his agent to put up or shut up. I really think clubs need to start playing hard-ball with their players and if they have made the best offer they can then put a time limit on accepting it. If they have not accepted within that time limit then the deal should be withdrawn and the player told to move out asap. If they think they can do better elsewhere then good luck to them. We need to move on as a club and the manager has to start planning for his replacement if he's not staying. Players come and go nowadays and very few of them show any loyalty so why should we. As I've said here before, most of the players who have moved out of FP in recent years for so-called better deals with so-called bigger clubs have ended up on their arses.

Its time somebody reminded Celtic and Rangers that without the so-called diddy teams they would not have any league to play in. And in fact its high time the chairmen of the so-called diddy teams each grew a set of balls and got together and reminded them of that instead of sucking up their arses for TV monies. They have a strong negotiating position and its time they started exploiting it. Let me think what happened this season in the SPL! Oh aaye, that great footballing team called Celtic came second in a two horse race. In my book that's failure of the highest order and warrants the manager getting the sack not a long-term contract. The sad reality for the rest of the diddy teams is that is that no other football playing planet in the known Universe wants anything to do with these two so-called football clubs. They are strangling the life out of Scottish football and poisoning it at the same time.

It’s wonderful to get to a major cup final and as there is usually a very long interval between our appearances then all the more reason to savour them – win or lose. But surely when you get there you have to go out, have a real go and try and win. Frankly this was a really poor game for a cup final and the weather didn’t help matters. The referee failed to take account of the conditions with a number of tackles. He failed to apply the laws of the game when not sending Majstorovic off for deliberate hand ball when he’d already been booked and then failed to book Craigan for deliberate hand ball presumably in his mind in some attempt to even things up. Two wrong don’t make a right. This is a further demonstration of the incompetence of the Scottish refereeing fraternity. I’m sorry to have to say but the manager’s team selection and tactics were all wrong and as a result the game was lost before a ball was kicked. When I heard the team line-up my heart sank and I knew we were unlikely to be able to win. We were playing a team with the best defensive record in the SPL this season and he set up with only one man playing up front, clearly focused on containing Celtic rather than trying to beat them. Admittedly man for man they have much better players than us but that’s no excuse for not having a go and trying to win the game. It’s a cup final for any sake. I think it was the 88th minute and we were 0-3 down when we forced our first corner! If we are to get back to cup finals and actually win them we have to concentrate on producing synergy which means the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. This just never happened yesterday and we looked like a team of individuals who had never played together before and they all looked totally ill at ease right from the kick-off – I believe the change in position for some and the manager’s tactics caused this. Once Celtic scored the first goal our players just did not seem to know what to do and this was not helped by the manager waiting until 70 minutes to consider a change. I thought that at half-time we needed to move to a 4-4-2 to have any chance in the game but no he stuck rigidly with his 4-5-1 which allowed the two Celtic centre-backs to play without any pressure on them at all. If we were to beat Celtic we had to get right in their faces with a 4-4-2 and have a real go and then if we’d got beat we would have held our hands up and said we gave it our best but the other lot were better than us. In all the times I’ve been to Hampden to see the ‘Well this was the first time since we lost to Airdrie in the semi-final replay in 1975 that I’ve had nothing to shout about and I really felt heart sorry for a huge support that had to sit on their hands through 90 minutes of pure purgatory.

+1

Just surfaced after the father and mother of all hangovers after well overdoing it yesterday. And to confirm it was not a dream. Another great day for the 'Well and one of the few occasions, as far as I can recall, that we have actually made it the easy way! Well done to Stuart McCall and all the players for giving us another really special memory of Hamden. Doesn't seem like its 20 years since we won the cup. Win or lose in the final lets go and enjoy ourselves again - and we may be in Europe again for the 4th year running. Up the 'Well.

Wondered if anyone out there knows how much money we will get for reaching League Cup semi, Scottish Cup semi and for finishing in the top 6.

Peeps. SUMO. Shut-Up Move on. Don't waste breath/print on auld Broon. He's just the latest in a long line of chumps that have left FP to go on to so-called bigger and better things. He has joined the ever-lengthening list of "where are they now?":lol: