Kmcalpin

Unless Aarons is fit enough to replace Illic. Livi will deploy every means possible to get and keep the ball in our box for as long as possible. That said they'll favour route 1.

On reflection I'm comfortable with Scott's transfer. Whilst he is an emerging talent I wouldn't say he's been a mainstay of the team. The upfront cash, which added to fees received for Stuart McKinstry, Jake Hastie, Reece MacAlear and Kyle Semple will amount to about £2m this financial year. A nice sum and in line with our business model. That will allow us to pay off the modest residual debt of £80K (meaning we are now 100% debt free), invest some more cash in the war chest, pay for other projects like the youth academy, and keep more for a rainy day. It might help to underwrite improved offers for the likes of Polworth, Campbell and Long. Could we have received more? Probably yes. However we are not Dundee United and most Scots players from provincial clubs are undervalued by bigger English outfits. I hope that our reputation grows to match that of United to the extent that a Motherwell "label" is automatically worth a few hundred grand extra, irrespective of the player's individual talent. I hope it won't impact negatively on the playing side. The Hibs game proved beyond all doubt that we are/were very lightweight up front. Hopefully Ndjoli can fill that role along with Long. I suspect that Mazinga is a longer term project. Aarons will provide us with a threat on the right to counterbalance Hylton. Sloth's departure will free up a place in central midfield for a youngster like Jamie Semple or more likely Dean Cornelius to progress. Its impossible to predict how the transfer window will impact on results as business done by other clubs will no doubt have an impact. Mid sized rivals have almost all been busy bringing in players as we knew they would. They may have picked up some gems but also some dross. Quality V Quantity as the old saying goes.

Probably Livingston will be saturating the pitch, Accies style, to ensure the ball is hard to control on the deck. Robbo has said that Hylton and Long are both fit.

I hope that we have 2 strikers lined up if Scott goes south. As things stand we are a striker down. Hopefully we know what we're doing if Scott departs as we're pushing for 3rd and have a cup tie coming up.

We do the Centenary Suite once a year and it's been excellent. That's all I can say.

Man of many clubs, Alan Martin signs for Edinburgh City.

Its interesting to sit back and watch the usual suspects who are "underperforming" ( Kilmarnock, St Mirren, Ross County, St Johnstone, Hibs, Hearts etc) panicking in the transfer window and desperately signing bodies. Reminscent of the Ian Baraclough era.

Entertaining unless you're involved.

I notice that although the tickets have seat numbers printed on them that strict seating arrangements will not be enforced. In other words, "sit where you want". This is on our official website. For once common sense has broken out! I'm normally a stickler for sitting in your allocated seat as fans do tend to buy tickets to sit beside family and friends (very late arrivals excepted) but I've no problem with this change. I don't like the attitude "I'm bigger than you are/there are more of us than there are of you" so I'm not shifting. The bottom line is that it doesn't matter what the arrangements are so as long as they are made quite clear beforehand and its made clear if they'll be consistently enforced or not as the case may be .

Now down to the last 50 tickets. Very unlikely there will be a general sale.

Hamilton Accies earlier this season? I appreciate it wasn't as big as last season but that was down to Accies controversial price hike.

Tam doesn't hide the fact that he's a Well fan but doesn't let that colour his views in the way that Stuart Cosgrove does for example. Stuart manages to mention St Johnstone positively in nearly every topic he discusses. Tam's not in the same league as messrs Miller and Gordon when it comes to bias. I'm biased of course!

Is he being paid by the BBC? Is it as a pundit and employee or as an Aberdeen fan. If its the latter hopefully Aberdeen FC is chipping in with his wages. If he's the best it really doesn't say much for the rest.

Agree about the OF obsession but not about Richard Gordon. I won't forget his bitterness when we beat his team 1 0 at Pittodrie to nick the runners up spot. Also his continual moaning along with his sidekick Willie Miller that we wouldn't sell Louis Moult to the Dons grated with me. Was fed up with him last Saturday babbling on about Neil Lennon's tv preferences when we wanted to hear about that day's football.

According to Alan Burrows we've sold just over a third of our allocation as of an hour ago. I had to wait a wee while on the phone to get through to the ticket office. Tickets obviously moving fast.

Probably the fee would be equivalent to buying out the remainder of his contract i.e. £100K - £200K

Its for an undisclosed fee as is the norm these days. Nothing whatever to do with MFC being secretive and awkward.

Its not just the commentators unfortunately. After the game on Saturday, Richard Gordon and his cronies were discussing at some length what programmes Neil Lennon would be watching on TV on Sunday afternoon. Thats despite an almost full Scottish football card on Saturday.

As far as I'm concerned, both players have potential and Robbo is quite good at developing young players. Don't know about anyone else, but I'm not writing either of them off; I just happen to think they had a poor game yesterday. Every player can have an off day or poor spell or indeed take time to develop.

I would say Illic and MacIver. I can see why they were given a chance though. Perhaps Manzinga and Ndjoli could have started with O'Hara coming on later, if required. I don't think Seedorf contributed anything when he came on. MacIver looks promising and showed some nice touches but is lightweight and to me looks more of an attacking midfielder rather than a main striker. Nobody on our books though looked capable of facing up to Jackson. Others may know more about MacIver than I do though. The lack of a main striker in our recruitment process this season is puzzling to me.

Overall I was quite pleased with a share of the points as neither side deserved to lose. We had far more of the play but Hibs defended extremely well although we outgunned them in midfield. Rumours of Hibs having a poor defence turned out to be way off the mark. I thought their huge centre back (Jackson?) had a great game and gobbled up everything in the air we threw at him. I've seen one or two comments referrring to their style of play as agricultural but thats paying them a disservice... they were ruthless and cynical and I have real doubts as to whether that was down to spur of the moment decisions or whether it was premeditated, which is more likely. Despite having far less of the play than us Hibs had almost as many efforts on target as us. Our defence looked a bit shaky at times but Gallagher strolled through the game. Our midfield bossed their Hibs counterparts and that was largely down to Donnelly, who took a real beating, and the energetic Campbell. Polworth had a reasonable game but but got caught in possession 3 or 4 times. Illic did nothing of note and I was surprised he wasn't hooked at half time. Up front we were very lightweight and although Scott started well he faded once he was snuffed out by 2 or 3 defenders. MacIver looked promising but was out of his depth and maybe centre forward is not his role. Overall our attack was very lightweight, which was my fear going into the game. We could have played until next week and not scored. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I think we got several selection decisions wrong today. The referee was very poor and bottled a big decison not to red card the lucky Omeonga. The point will please us more than Hibs and it was another clean sheet. I'm not convinced though that had Long played we would have fared any better. If we seriously want to go for 3rd spot then I'm afraid we need to sign an out and out striker very soon. Not easy, I know, to find the right man this month and Robbo's record on signing strikers isn't anything to write home about. Next Saturday will pose us another challenge and we have to come up with something different. Its a great position though to be writing about going for 3rd place...its beats a relegation struggle every time!

A toss up for me between Gallagher and Campbell but decided to go with Mr Consistency big Declan.

Interesting. Maybe youth will get a chance.

I'd expect us to play Scott and either Manzinga or Ndjoli up front.

I think 20% is very slightly less than the capacity of the East Stand.