El Grew

Some really good stuff - the powers that be should take note. But no they are away as ususal coming up with another load of pish as to how to improve Scottish football without asking the people who really matter - the paying customers. Personally, I have not been to a 'Well game since the 1-1 draw with Aberdeen back on the 18th of September. I thought I'd be missing it by now but I'm sorry to say not. It really is easy to lose the habit of going. I have been a 'Well fan for donkeys years and always will be but as to when I'll be back to see them, who knows. One thing's for sure the longer it goes the easier it gets. I'm not blaming Motherwell for this because it goes further and deeper than that. Scottish football has been haemorraging supporters from all clubs for years now and continues to do so at an alarming rate - and they won't be gotten back. And what do the geniuses in charge come up with? A league of 10!!! That's forward thinking for you. Taking us back to what we started off with a way back in 1975 because a league of 18 clubs was boring and fans were losing interest. Sound familiar? And how will it work? Well at some time in the future when they decide to move to a 10 club SPL1 it means that 3 clubs will be relegated and if you accept that neither of the OF are going to be relegated then that will mean a casualty rate of 33% and with only one club getting promoted from SPL2 thereafter it means only a 10% chance of getting back up again. Oh and it won't be long until the gate prices get increased again. Sobering thought eh! Talk about turkeys, votes and Christmas!

Maybe these stats are for pre-Sky TV coverage of the OF away games when they tended to travel to away games in greater numbers than now. Time was FP was full when the OF came to town but we struggle to see the gate getting above 8 or 9 thousand now. Personally I think the product is well over-priced for what we get and offers poor value for money when compared to other competing entertainment offerings. Last night we couldn't break 3,500. Reason? Price, quality of offering and Sky TV coverage encouraged a lot of fans (Hearts too) to either sit at home and view or nip to the pub for a couple of beers and see the match FOC.

In total agreement with this.

Same old same old. Our inability to keep a clean sheet, especially against some teams who couldn't score a slate is continuing to kill us. IMO the main reason for this is our two centre backs Craigan and Reynolds. Stephen Craigan should have been thanked for his valuable contribution to the club and then replaced at least a couple of seasons ago and Mark Reynolds has shown no real improvement in two seasons now - as witnessed by the fact that nobody has shown the least interest in signing him. Two soft goals lost at Easter Road last week and another one yesterday. Its high time Craig Brown got the defence sorted because its putting too much pressure on the other end of the team. It pisses me off big time that he's twice had a go at Nick Blackman despite the fact the guy's goals record is second only to Kenny Miller and the main reason we have been picking-up points and yet Craigan and Reynolds never get mentioned for the shite performances they are turning in.

I don't know if some of the older posters would agree with me but Jamie Murphy reminds me a lot of the great Vic Davidson (from the 'seventies side with Graham and Pettigrew in it) the way he glides across the ground and slaloms past opponents with the ball seemingly tied to the end of his boot.

Says it all when most of the chat is about Falkirk beating Hearts!

Spot on Lobey. Totally agree with this. Sad thing is that we don't seem to have been able to pick somebody up that can bring this to the party.

Weather = nice and sunny Pitch = perfect and as good as it will be all season Crowd = 5,200 or so Football = pish . Worst game of football I've seen in a long time. This summed up perfectly why Scottish football is where it is. If you didn't have an intrinsic interest in a Scottish football team then you would definitely not have football on your list of things to do on a weekend. Both teams were absolutely dire. They would have been better keeping the kids that came on during the interval on and keeping the other 22 imposters in the dressing room. There was not one footballer on the park just a lot of physically fit guys humping the ball up and down the park like primary school kids. Just wait until the bad weather sets in and see how many folk will bother to drag themselves out to pay money to watch this kind of horseshit.

I put it down to the fact that the players were better than those nowadays.

Alas, Melvin I fear you are correct. We certainly are now where near as strong as we were last year - losing Coke, Jutkiviec and O'Brien has devalued us.

Totall agree with you on this one Lobey. This game had 0-0 all over it from the outset with two poor teams but Celtic deserved to win in the end - they had 70% possession and more efforts at goal than us. But we could still have nicked a point but for the inability again of our two centre-backs to defend. Folk are on here foaming at the mouth about the penalty and Maloney this and Maloney that. They should get over it. It was a stonewall penalty. If it had been at our end I'd have been demanding the same outcome. What they really should be foaming at the mouth about is the part our two centre-backs played in it or rather didn't play in it. Craigan and Reynolds are among the poorest central defenders in the SPL and their performance today was just awful. Reynolds can forget all about getting a move out of FP because he's going to be here as long as Craigan's been so he'd better get use to it.

Just can't agree with that. We have enough strikers at the club. Jeez we've just loaned one out. What we need is a decent creative passing midfielder who can also support the strikers and get beyond them now and again. Our midfield at present is poor - Jennings, Lasley and Hateley are all defensive midfielders. The sum total of goals between the three of them almost amounts to the square root of f*ck all. Because we are incapable of playing the ball through the midfield we resort to two standard passes (always having to be made by defenders) one is a long hopeful punt up the middle and the other is a long hopeful punt to the wings. Our centres can't be expected to hold balls up that are whistling around and over their heads like howitzer shells and our winger's end product is very poor so both types of pass are an utter waste. Added to that our ball retention is dreadful - our players are always looking for a defence splitting pass instead of keeping the ball and working positions gradually. So far from needing strikers I think what we really need to get is one or two midfielders who can provide the strikers with decent amunition.

Just an observation but I think it is quite ironic that when we had money to spend we gave it to a rookie first year manager who squandered it on bringing in highly paid players - some has beens and some never would bes and helped send us into adinistration. Now when we have a decent sensible experienced manager we can't give him any money at all. Strange world of football and FP.

Whilst certainly in no rush to lose them, given the age of our current management team its odds on they won't be around for a long time so I wondered if we would consider going for a young go-ahead manager who already has a decent track record, albeit in a lower league but who has shown he is not of the 'old school' and who clearly has an appetite for going places. Who you ask? Derek Adams. He is clearly making his mark at Ross County and has his young team playing attractive winning football. Has his own ideas and is not out of the usual mould. Might just be what we need.

First up thanks to all at the club for their hard work and effort in taking us so close again in Europe and for behaving with courtesy, humility and dignity in the face of exactly the opposite from our Danish opponents. The guys gave it their very best shot last night and you can't ask them for any more than that but ultimately in the final analysis it just wasn't good enough. What made it hard to take last night, was that they are not a particularly good side. Sure they have a couple of handy players but they fell apart once pressure was applied in the second half and if we had been a little more clinical in our finishing then they'd be out of the competition. What we sorely lacked was composure in the finishing department however to get that in the modern football era costs more money than we have available and ultimately that was what cost us our place in the group stages. Sure folk can have a go (and I have and will continue to do so) but when you look at the fact that the guy to whom the best chances fell in the second half, had up until a few weeks ago, been plying his trade in the Blackburn reserves then you have to admit that its a really big step-up and ask to expect him to come into a Europa League play-off game and start firing in goals. We also lacked any creativity in the midfield area - somebody who can make a few telling passes into the inside right and inside left channels for Jamie Murphy to be able to really hurt defensives. I thought last night that although Jamie Murphy had a decent game, he too often had possession of the ball in areas of the field where, if you were the opposition, you'd be pleased to see him there. We have to find a way of getting him into and around the penalty box where he can cause the most fear to defenders and danger with his pace and touch. Its not use him getting ball out in the corners or 30 yards out. As I've posted before, our old failing returned last night to cost us the goal - inability to deal with crosses into the box. We have needed a big no-nonsense centre-back for a good few seasons now and yet we still haven't sorted this out. The goal was too similar to the one that Stokes scored for Hibs a couple of weeks ago for my liking. We need to address this and soon. On that track, a really pleasing aspect for me last night was the peformance of young Stephen Saunders. I thought he was immense for such a young player and I made him our best defender on the night. He is the best defensive header of a ball seen at FP for years, he's athletic and fit and is great on overlapping runs and not afraid to do so. He's coming on a ton. I think that's the way forward for us now. Bring in the young players and lets see if they have got what it takes. No harm to the rest of our back four but I personally think its time to bring Hutchison back and play him and Saunders as the centre-back pairing and bring in young Jonathan Page at right back and push Reynolds to left-back. I believe this would make a far better defensive unit. Anyway, don't get too down on the team - just look at Celtic with all the money and resources available to them - we run on a fraction of the budget of them and most other clubs in the SPL so chin up and chase top six again and maybe get back into Europe for another crack next season.

Unhappy at losing but I think on reflection Hibs probably just deserved it for their second hald display. We bossed the first half but could only muster one goal and then gave a poor equaliser away in first half stoppage time. They certainly were the better team in the second half and could have had few more but from super 'keeping from Randolph. Good teams should not lose three goals at home. Our old failing is still there - we are kamikaze under crosses - and two of the three goals came from crosses. Needs to be sorted quick because that's the bread and butter football in the SPL.

Like the strips. White shorts on the home strip would really lift it and set it off though, as it would just about be the exact same as the one we had in the middle to late '60s.

Wouldn't be surprised if it was something radical. Hibs have signed up with Puma too and there away strip is all mint green!!! Couple of Hibs supporting pals are livid about it.

By my reckoning we have played the SPL Champions 4 times this season and only lost once. We have drawn 3 times and to be quite honest we should've won 2 of them at FP. That must be the best record in the SPL this season. Ah well not a bad season maybe.

Apologies if this has been asked and answered but exactly who in the current squad will still be here for next season. I understand we are losing Ruddy, O'Brien, Jutkiewitz and perhaps Reynolds.

Only bad teams lose 10 goals in 2 games. Last night we conceded 6 at home which is criminal. When you analyse where the goals came from - 2 resulted from the right-back position and 2 from the left-back position - then serious questions must be posed to the two guys in these positions. Saunders is young and inexperienced and will learn and anyway is entitled to expect his 3 fellow defenders who are much more experienced to help him. IMO Hammell is a liability as a defender. He's great going forward but continues to repeat the same defensive positional mistakes over and over again. First and foremost full backs need to be competent at defending and anything after that is a bonus.

Season ticket holders are arguably the lifeblood of the club. Most stump-up their hard-earned well before the season begins and so the club gets the benefit of a kind of interest-free loan. Then during the season the club begins reducing pay at the gate prices to attract more people to games (i.e. Hibs last night) and this season we get short-changed by paying for 19 home league games but only getting 18. IMO the club should be considering providing some added value for season ticket holders e.g. why not give them a free programme at every home game; put vouchers in the season ticket book which get the bearer a free pie, bovril etc. at every home game. It would not cost them much to do this and it would add a bit of value to having a season ticket.

Hearts debt has now risen to £35 million - latest published. When you consider Rangers debt is £30 million and there is deep concern about that and how it is affecting them how the hell can Hearts keep going? Rangers will undoubtedly get this sorted one way or another but Hearts surely must be close to oblivion.

The defence has played well undoubtedly but a lot of credit must go to Keith Lasley and Steve Jennings for providing terrific protective cover so that you don't see very many opposition players being able to make runs through on top of our central defenders. They play like a couple of old-fashioned wing-halves and have been outstanding since Craig Brown and Archie Knox came to the club. Note to anyone under 40, wing halves was a term once used to describe defensive midfield players.

There is no doubt that the club did everything necessary to get the pitch sorted out and at cconsiderable cost. There was one glaring mistake though and that was the decision to seed the pitch instead of laying turf. Seeding grass is notoriously difficult to do even under ideal growing conditions and to believe that it would be ready to play football on by August and stand-up to the winter was optimism of the crazy variety. What you are seeing now is the result of that decision severely excarcerbated by one of the worst winters for decades and poor groundsmanship and grounds maintenance. Players are actually playing on the planting medium that was laid for seeding (a mixture of sand, loam and soil) which without grass roots to bind it just cuts up exactly the way it is doing. The sensible option was to have laid turf, which had already had its grass root system already established -evidenced by how well the two areas that were recently turfed are doing. And any talk of grass growing when the weather improves is fantasy as anyone who has seen the pitch should no as there is precious little grass to grow. The only thing the club can be faulted for was for taking advice to seed instead of laying turf and we are now paying for that.