bobbybingo

The Motherwell page is populated by the ones who never made it over the cuckoo's nest.

If it comes to appointing a new manager from outside the club, I think most of us don't have a clue. Luckily, the Facebook intelligentsia are on the case - early favourites include a chimpanzee, a baboon, a dead clown and Stevie Hammell.

Hearts paying Snodgrass €2million per year was a good one. Still dunno how we missed out on him.

That was probably me. I meant that if the club were to bin Kettlewell between now and May, they would promote from within rather than go looking elsewhere, so it would be Frail, Foster or Clarkson. That's only my opinion, not a fact, but I think everything would point to that course. Of course, it's highly unlikely they'll sack him, something Weir appeared to confirm a few weeks ago.

Starting but not finishing, again. Subbed before the hour.

I would've thought the best indicator of how the rest of the season will go for us and our relegation rivals is how it has gone so far. You could measure that by checking how many points each team has amassed up till now, since it's the number of points that will determine who stays up and who drops, nothing else. Seems bloody obvious, but obviously not everyone considers it the most relevant statistic.

Fair enough. That would certainly be a big call. You'd have to hope sacking Kettlewell wouldn't piss the players off for starters.

You're right, it's not your job to find a new manager, but I didn't actually ask who you wanted because, as I said, we all know they would promote from within at this stage. That's if they sacked Kettlewell, which Weir made pretty clear wasn't happening. It's been a poor season so far, no doubt about that, but we won't finish bottom and are currently at least 4 points above the play-off place - that's allowing for Ross County winning their game in hand and taking our far superior goal difference into account. In the last 5 league games we've picked up 8 points more than the bottom 2 and at least 4 more than anyone else in the bottom 6. Taking all that into account, do you honestly feel it would be worth rolling the dice on Frail, Foster, Clarkson or the currently unemployed and mega cheap Mr X at this point of the season?

You know who the new management team would be, we all do. Do you believe they'd do a better job?

If I've read it correctly, David is talking specifically about the folk who disappeared between Tuesday and the back of 9 on Friday. Yourself, and most of the others who want Kettlewell out don't fall into that category.

I don't think anyone suggested Imrie is a managerial great or that he should've replaced Alexander. But Morton got the better of us on Friday and they're the only non Premier team left in the cup. Obviously, his players followed the instructions they were given.

I don't disagree with anything you said and I could never criticise anyone who's had enough.

We've been to 4 cup finals in the past 20 years, which is good going for Motherwell, historically speaking. And our league record over the past 3 decades would equal that of most eras. No happy clapping involved, those are just facts.

As I alluded to in the next sentence you didn't quote.

If we had gone through we'd have been ball 7 and drawn away to Celtic. I know....

Och well, would've been a trip to Parkhead.

I've already acknowledged this was his second game against us. That's the only fact. Why you think they won and we lost is opinion. What's Dougie Imrie's disciplinary record as a manager?

You're right. Feels like an awful long time ago now.

He's turning out to be as big a pain in the arse as a manager as he was a player. Interesting that a relative rookie was able to beat us tactically at the first time of asking when an old hand like Levein couldn't do it in 3 attempts.

When you lose 2-1 to a team who had 1 shot on target....

We can start at Carlo Ancelotti and work our way through to Walter Zenga.

Yeah, they should always be planning ahead, but like the players, identifying decent targets is the easy part, getting them to come here is problematic.

Agreed. What's done is done, but Kettlewell needs to be using Vale and the other guys going forward. I could understand why he was loathe to use subs when the bench was almost devoid of decent options, but it's looking stronger now, so let's see them getting a fair run out.

On the bright side, Vale's already scored two more goals than Van Veen. He definitely needs to be given his chance.

On Wednesday, yeah.