fizoxy

Our options are really limited right now, and bringing in Jeffers gives us another option up front that we definitely need. The guy had something about him at one point, and who knows maybe things click here and he gets four or five goals for us in the next few months. The worst that can happen is that he turns out to be shite and doesn't get on the park. The money is there to spend on wages, so this is a relatively low risk signing. He could be this season's Willie Falconer or Mickey Weir! Or Lewis Grabban, who knows. Oh, and how often are we going to be able to say we had an £8m player

Gutted with that, considering how many chances we had. I'm not going to worry about relegation though. Think I'll join some of the others on a forum holiday!

Gannon was at Stockport for quite a while and therefore had a bit of respect there. I think they were also in a bit of trouble when he took over, so he had time to build. The success of his time there and the respect and pull he had got to his head a little, and he seems to be believing his own hype a bit too much. He clearly struggled when he came to Motherwell and had to start from scratch and actually prove himself. Also, I don't think his "eye for a player" is that great. Juke and Ruddy were loans, and Coke is gone. Hately and Hump are good players but nothing special. I'll give him the credit for Jennings though. However, other managers brought in the likes of Hughes, Porter, O'Brien, McCormack, and McDonald. So Gannon wasn't the first manager to get us a couple of good players, I'd give the club the credit for a lot of those listed as it took a few extra quid to make it happen.

He was signed for us to take a longer look at him, on a one year deal with the option to extend it. This gives both parties the chance to see if things will work out. Hately and Saunders have been available all season, so this guy hasn't had a look in, but chances are we'll see him at some point this year when injuries and suspensions kick in. Also, we need a squad, not just eleven players. So not everyone is going to get a game all of the time.

At the moment our squad is half decent in every area. When I say half decent I mean enough to get by on and get us to the end of the season. I don't think we have the squad to really push for 4th/5th. Goalie We're never going to have more than 2 keepers, and paying a backup decent money isn't going to happen, so we have to settle for Hollis there and hope Randy doesn't get injured. Defence At right back we have Saunders, Hately, Page, and Charalambous (although he might be shite) so we are covered there. At left back we have Hammell and Gunning, with Page at a push as I'm sure he's covered there. In the middle there's Craigan, Hutch, Page, Gunning, Saunders, Charalambous? Midfield We only have one natural left sided player in Jones, with Murphy as cover there. On the right we have Humphrey and possibly Hately as cover. I'm not sure if this is Pollock's position. For centre mid there's Lasley, Jennings, Forbes, Hately and Meechan. Keeping Las and Jenno fit is the key to our season avoiding injury and suspension. Forwards Sutton, Murphy, Casagolda and Mchugh (if fit), possibly Jones? I don't know any of the other youngsters and may have missed a couple. What the above shows to me is that we have a good enough 1st XI, but two injuries would really test us. The core of Randolph, Craggs, Las, Jenno and Sutton are really important to us and hopefully their decent injury record to date will serve us well for the next five months or so. My worry is that there doesn't seem to be anyone doing anything to push a regular out of the side. Page, Forbes and Casagolda have all been OK when used as cover or subs, but they haven't done anything to force the managers hand.

Webster is a good player, but I'd be wary of spending money on someone with such a bad injury history.

I guess every player that doesn't work out is a waste of a wage, but how many signings actually come off? Especially with young players? Problem is, it would be difficult for us to sign someone who is a stick on to perform for us as they would be out of our range, or we'd at least have to deal with some competition. So we have to take a flyer on some guys. Charalambous is a non-story. We signed him to see what he could do, with the option of keeping him if he's any good and ditching him after a year if he's shite.

Think someone's taking the piss. There's no way we'd spend money on someone we're unlikely to sell on.

It seemed like a muted appeal from the players, when Weir had Sutts in a headlock/rear naked choke/skull crushing finale! We gave a good account of ourselves, and were very unlucky not to get a second. Alexander's save was pure luck, something we could do with one of these days. Jenno and Las were immense, and I liked the look of the team when Hately was in there as well. Rangers were very wary of Hump and doubled up on him at times, but when we involved him more in the second half we looked really dangerous. The Scottish cup is the only one that matters anyway Oh, and if every defender stuck with their man 100% of the time and never made a mistake there would never be any goals! So give crags a break. Maybe Naismith made a good run or jellybitch did well to set it up. We don't need to blame someone every time we lose. It was Rangers for fuck sake.

We've played relatively well, and kept them pretty quiet. Nothing we could have done about Edu's goal. Hopefully we can get a wee bit of cutting edge about us in the second half. Good to hear our guys make some noise!

Dougie making a pest of himself.

Good to see that we made good on the promise to be the third force!

If he's better than Hutch, Page, or Saunders then I hope he does walk into the team.

Another season recap

Some more Creed.

While we're on the video search, anyone got the vids of the fans from 2005? I'm sure there was one with us dancing along to Franz Ferdinand.

The "creed" videos that were kicking around prior to the 2005 final would be handy here. Think it was SCDave and Jay that put them together. I think one of them had the Fitzy goal on it. Can't find them anywhere though.

Good news. Despite the mixed opinions, he's one of our most dangerous players and is still young. It would, however, be handy to have someone else in the team as quick as him so that he has someone to aim for!

We've beaten Rangers against the odds before and we'll do it again. It may be this Sunday or it may not, but I'll be getting up early to watch whatever live stream I can find and I'll be hoping we pull off the upset. If I only went to or watched the games I thought we were going to win I doubt I would have seen the inside of Fir Park yet. OF victories are rare, but it's sweet to be there when they happen - Ibrox when Coyle spoiled the title party, and Skippy Sunday stand out for me. We don't get to many semi-finals, so this should be a big occasion for us. Considering our home gate is around the 4k mark, taking that many to Hampden isn't a complete embarrasment. It's been an expensive season so far and January is a very long month when you're waiting for pay day.

I think the 90's team is harder, but the rules have also softened the game up a bit since then. If the McGhee team went back in time to play Tommy's side, Hughes and McCormack would have the shit kicked out of them. However, it Tommy's team came to the future I reckon a couple of red cards may happen. Looking at the defences, I think that Coyne and Arnott would get more joy out of Craigan and Reynolds than Clarky and Porter would have gotten out of Buff and McCart. The keeper position is a no contest. The 93/94 midfield wins hands down as well for me. However, did we have this opinion of the players at the time? I remember Dolan, Davies and Lambert getting their fair share of stick at the time, and Sieb was a psycho. I always loved the McKinnon long ball into the channel.

You're right about McCart and Davies, my memory is dreadful. I always liked Quinn, and didn't really have much time for Shannon.

We were further out of the race in 94/95 though.

So thinking back to some of the best Motherwell teams I've personally witnessed. Two of which are the 1993/94 team which came as close to winning the league as we will do for a very long time, and the 2007/08 team who for at least the first half of the season played some excellent attacking football. I'm no good at remembering teams, but the 1993/4 team was something like ------------------------------------Sieb--------------------------------------------- ----------------- Philliben--------Martin--------Krivokapic------------------------ -------Shannon---------------------------------------------- McKinnon----------- -------------------------Lambert---Dolan---O'Donnell--------------------------- ----------------------- Coyne----Arnott/McGrillen/Kirk---------------------------- With wee Tommy as manager. League table here There there was McGhee's 2007 team: --------------------------------------------Smith-------------------------------------- ------------Quinn------------Craigan------------Reynolds-------------Paterson---- -----------------------Lasley----------Hughes-----------O'Donnell------------------ ------------------------Clarkson------Porter-----McCormack----------------------- League Table So if the two teams played eachother, who would win? and if you could combine both teams, how would you do it? Also, who in the above teams were considered shite at the time?

Is this just something spawned from this forum, and not based on real life reality?

If I was John Boyle, and owned a club with unlimited finances and had all of the managers and potential managers in the world at my disposal, all willing to manage my club, then I would have appointed someone else. Otherwise, I'd go through the list of applicants, give interviews to four or five of the best suited applicants, and appoint the one who impresses best at the interview, assuming he still wants the job. This is how the hiring process works. We probably wont know if McCall really was the first choice, but it doesn't matter since we can't force people to take the job and the financial conditions won't be changing anytime soon. Please remember that Jim Gannon came to the club in the summer, and therefore had more scope to make some signings. Few players come to the end of their contract in December, so we have to weigh up whether we want to bring in some short term shite, or get through to the end of the season and then make some proper signings. What was the last good January signing we made? I also believe Gannon's "eye for a player" is way over rated anyway. Also bear in mind that the combined genius of Gannon and Brown got us to 5th in the table, a position which is still very much achievable this year. We didn't win the league, and we also had a whole load of shite performances. The Christmas periods of 2009 and 2010 were very similar. Where do you really think we would have finished if Brown and Knox stayed? What is a realistic aim for us in the league? As for McCall's record. We bucked the recent trend with wins against two teams that have had the better of us for a good while in Dundee and Hibs. Although we've beaten St J and Utd each twice this season I don't think we've got to the level of Aberdeen-esque snobbery where we can start saying "we should be beating teams like these", they are at the same level as us. Winning away at Tannadice and McDairmid isn't an easy job. The draws against Caley and Hamilton weren't ideal, but a point away can't be sniffed at, and we all know caley's away record. Overall I think it's way too soon to be doubting the management team, especially when they have only had a few weeks in the job and one signing to show for it.