El Grew

Great post.

By my reckoning this will be our 12th League Cup Semi-Final. Details of previous 11 as follows: 1950/51 v Ayr Utd W 4-3 1951/52 v Dundee L 5-1 1954/55 v East Fife W 2-1 1955/56 v St Mirren L 2-0* 1969/70 v St Johnstone L 2-0 1986/87 v Celtic L 5-4 on pens 1987/88 v Rangers L 3-1 2004/05 v Hearts W 3-2 aet 2005/06 v Celtic L 2-1 2010/11 v Rangers L 2-1 2017/18 v Rangers W 2-0 * After 3-3 draw.

🎵 Late September under the Fir Park lights. What a very special game to see as I remember what a night. 🎵

Surely there has to be some changes in the 2nd half.

Nearly a quarter of the game played and we’ve not had a shot on goal yet. FFS it’s a chance to get to a cup semi-final; get the f*cking finger out!

Stephen Craigan on radio:- “Motherwell have been negative, they need to play forward. They need to get it into attacking players more. They have to be braver in the middle of the pitch.”

No money in Motherwell. The majority of the population don’t work and are on some form of benefits. The town is so run down and resembles something out of the old Soviet Union. Folk don’t have the money or the inclination to go to FP nowadays.

Thanks Kmcalpin. Yes I get that I just don’t agree with it. IMO we should always play with 2 strikers home and away.

We signed Moses Ebiye in March this year. Since then he’s played 9 times (3 starts and 6 as sub) and scored 4 goals. Seems to have a knack for scoring goals so why does Kettlewell not start him in games?

Yes we didnt play particularly well and no it wasn’t an easy watch at times but then you can say that for the majority of games in this league. Other than maybe Celtic the league lacks any quality as shown by the results in the various Euro qualifiers from Hearts, Kilmarnock and St. Mirren. However fans demand results so today’s is very welcome as we’ll play better and lose.

Did exactly the same thing at Dundee Utd last week. Took the ref 84 mins to send one of them off!

Absolutely delighted to have been proved wrong (again). Great result and a very good team performance. COYW.

The stats I posted earlier were for our HOME league games v Hearts. For comparison, here are our stats for AWAY league games at Tynecastle: P142 W30 L79 D30

Our all-time home record against Hearts in the league: P140 W56 L60 D24 Not many draws (17%). I hate this lot more than the bigot bros and would really love to beat them but I fear they will get the points today.

Don’t know why they should think that about us as we’ve always had the whip hand over them down the years as shown by our all-time and all competition stats against them: P275 W121 D52 L102 They had a golden spell from 1956 to 1965 as they only finished outside the top 3 three times - 2 x 3rd, 4 x 2nd and champions in 1964/65. Other than that nothing of note.

I’m not a great believer in bringing players back. He was on loan to St Mirren last season - only played 10 games and scored 1 goal. Obviously can't get into the Dundee Utd team. Maybe a bit of a desperation signing by Kettlewell. Time will tell. How many strikers (including the crocks) is that we have now? 🤔

Spot on Grizzly and grasping this fact seems to be beyond our manager.

Older posters will doubtless recall signings made in the Bobby Howitt like Jackie McInally (Kilmarnock) Jimmy Wilson (Aberdeen) Billy Campbell (Dundee), Billy Ritchie (Rangers), John Fallon (Celtic). All very much in the “older guys whose best days are behind them” category. So nothing has changed.

That’s now 3 games on the trot where we haven’t scored a goal. Most worryingly we don’t seem to be making many chances.

Aye it’ll be a great workout for our goalkeeper.

Aye, get them out selling match programmes at the corner of Manse Road!

Is there a doctor in the house?

Totally agree. He’s the only real creative player we have at the club. The opposition know this and know that if they stop him playing (by fair means or foul) then we’ve no other threat.

Couldn’t agree more. Once we were clear of the drop at the end of last season he should’ve been thanked, had his contract terminated and we should then have began looking for someone who was capable of trying to raise the bar above the current level of mediocrity. However the club became mired in a power struggle between those who invited and wanted external financial investment and those who wanted nothing to do with it. This dragged on for too long and nobody seemed to be interested in asking if the club had progressed or regressed under the present football management team. I haven’t seen any signs of improvement, even small incremental improvements in the performances under the present manager during his tenure and he seems to have a blinkered approach as to how he wants the team to set-up and play and it has been and still is spectacularly awful.