fizoxy

Welsh was excellent, but Elliot Watt ran the game for us.

By the current standards that's a blatant handball. If the ball was going miles wide Hanley must have mr tickle arms. Also, whether its on target is completely irrelevant. Gray is really doing his best to deflect from us sussing his team out and ragdolling them. As mentioned in the Terrace podcast this morning, we focused on boxing in iredale and Nicky cadden, and gave them a torrid time, leading in them both getting subbed early. Hibs get a lot of joy out of N Cadden's crossing ability, and we totally nullified him.

Oh, and Elijah Just is awesome. Hes another that I don't think will be with us long, but as per the post above, he's such an intelligent player, and his work rate is excellent.

It's hard not to get carried away with the start to the season, but one thing that makes this a bit different is that a lot of the optimism and general good feeling isn't just tied to results. As pissed off as most of us were about the semi final, we all moved on rather quickly - and that's just weird. JBA will definitely be on the radar of much bigger clubs with the way he's transformed this team in such a short time. We have seen managers like Shaun Maloney, who has the exact same ethos (and worked with our assistant) struggle to get that across, and you wonder if someone like him could drop in once JBA goes and continue the work - not advocating him in particular, just wondering if JBA has set the foundation.. Im also interested in whether other scottish clubs will try the same. I also wonder if more ambitious managers will be open to coming to Scotland, and the smaller clubs at that, to build theor stock. Wimmer should get dome credit for kicking this off as well, and bringing us Fadinger at the very least.

Didn't realize that was McGinn both times, takes "dangerous pass" to a whole new level.

I also went with Priestman. I was worried about the lineup, but I was fine with the rotation, and that's all I saw it as at the time. I thought there would be a significant drop-off with Priestman in for Fadinger, but I couldn't have been more wrong.

I kind of get what youre saying, but he set up the first goal and was instrumental in the second. I also think its going to be hard to live up to the way he played in his first few games, as teams are more aware of him. It's on him to figure that out and adjust. I guess he was subbed for fitness reasons, as he wasn't playong bad enough that replacing him with a right back on a yellow card is the best option. Fadinger is such a solid player, he put in a great shift today, especially defensively.

His thinking may be that being unattached to a team while the window is closed will present opportunities to him if clubs need to add someone due to injury. He also may be looking at countries wirh other transfer window schedules. If he's adamant he wants to play abroad, then fair play to him for sticking to his guns.

He finished the game and seemed to be running fine in the last few mins.

In January? I don't think they can recall him outside of the transfer window. Goalies have different rules.

Justs header was definitely offside to the naked eye when it was replayed. The first one was very close, but the linesman gave it, so VAR wasnt a factor. Offside decisions don't need to be clear and obvious, you're either onside or you aren't. Whether the cameras are good enough is a different question, but the lines are consistent at each ground at least. As soon as you move away from the factual decisions for offside you would get all sort of stupid interpretations, like with all the other var decisions. It would be better if we just didn't have it at all.

Stam, 2 goals, enough said.

Went for Welsh. He was solid. I didn't think we were particularly good today, but the team still put a shift in, and kept their nerve in the latter stages, which was especially important with the lack of bench reinforcements that we have right now. However, we wouldn't have had the chance to win it if Lazetic had taken that chance, and a lot of that goes down to Welsh, who didn't give up and recovered well enough to put him off.

Not technically true. He did stop on multiple occasions to smell his own farts.

Turnbull back playing 90 for Cardiff. Devante scored for Port Vale in their win, with Ben Heneghan also in the lineup. Declan "gun to his head" Gallagher git sent off for Ross County in another loss for them.

This will be an interesting one. This is our first opportunity to play a team for a second time. Will we make adjustments to counteract how aberdeen handled us, or will they figure us out? Aberdeen disrupted our playing out from the back, and hit us on the counter really well, they were just toothless in front of goal. They have Utd before us, so it's possible that we won't see Thelin at fir park. What is it with dogshit managers winning cups?

Well, if you have any social media you've just triggered a string of relevant ads 😆 Maybe motherwell should buy ads in that space, the team is exciting to watch.

Stam is who we have, and until Hendry, Robinson, Sule and Stuparevic come back from injury or the transfer window opens, we might as well accept his good points and hope he clicks in front of goal. Our other option is shoehorning wingers into the 9 position, which just won't work. It was an excellent win and a guttsy performance with some of our best players missing, so maybe we shouldn't dwell on the negatives.

Fadi/watt were excellent again, and RCC got stuck in and has some of the cynical side that we need at times. Thought the defence was solid enough, with the framework not putting a foot wrong. I went with Said. I had him down as a tricky unpredictable winger, but he put in a great shift in midfield, and is so good at taking the ball in and opening up some space.

The players and manager call him JT, so did the previous managers. So my guess is that's what he wants to be called. I'm sure he'd have corrected them by now otherwise.

Only if the bid actually happened, and it was for the amount the papers said. Add to that that we brought in Osong and Hendry, I'm not sure we would have replaced him with anyone good. Maybe this is more an indictment on Osong, but we clearly missed AP in open play when he was subbed off. Osong reminded me of that guy Souness signed for Southampton. JT missed a sitter too, and Said has one of those running man style perimeter monitors on his ankles, which turn his feet into cement the second he crosses the 18 yard box. So our build up play is technically working, we just need a forward that can make half chances for themselves, and take the ones the midfield hand to him.

I'm starting to think that the reason I think Watt and Fadinger are so good is that I spend most of the game confusing them for eachother, even though they dont look alike in reality. This opens up many opportunities. Is one shite and the other great? are they both the same? Then throw slattery into the mix, and they're all better. Anyway, I'm going with Fadinger. Or Watt.

The Clyde game I think.

Longelo, Just, Fadinger, and Watt is some combination of signings for any transfer window. All 4 have made a good impact already, and I'm not sure we've seen the best of them yet. Said looks decent, but still hard to tell with him, and RCC is a known quantity (kind of) and at least on the face of it a decent coup. Hendry, Osong, and Priestman are too early to call, they've barely played an hour between them. The latter looks like a decent prospect, and possibly a succession plan for our first choice midfield. Hendry has been decent in our league before. Sule also looked to be a coup before the injury, with some pace and skill. Hopefully we see him back. McGhee may struggle to make an impact now that we've made a good few signings while he's been out, but still most of the season left to go, and we know there will be twists and turns. Overall this has been a positive window, with some real quality and less lottery tickets. To come into the last day woth just one need to fill, and getting it done, is pretty impressive, as the less we leave to the last minute, the better. The same goes for January, all going well, we want to be fine tuning at that stage, not bringing in numbers.

Mcghee played 30+ games for all but one of the last 8 seasons or so, going over 40 a few times. So I wouldn't describe him as a Callachan style crock. We signed the latter after him being out a whole season. We'll see how this season goes, but Mcghee will be up against it trying to get into the team having missed pre season.