steelboy

The fittest McFadden was with us was when he re-signed after training but not playing with Sunderland for 6 months. He obviously builds up his fitness but playing competitive games gives him niggles and wear and tear that brings that down.

Clarkson made it look easy today. He's no pace but he played with his head up, found space, held the ball up and brought his team mates into the attack. I don't see any of our forward players doing what he did today.

Every single player at the club was either signed or given an extended contract by McCall.

Honest question. How much more time? If we take our form from the last three games into the three friday night games then we are going to struggle. After that it's the managerless international break, ICT away and then the Scottish Cup. Avoiding relegation is the priority for us but the Scottish Cup is the only opportunity we have to do something positive this season.

That's how I feel as well. McCall's league finishes in the past few season are immense but if it comes down to giving McCall a fair crack or doing what's best for the club then there is only one choice. A club with our resources needs to recognise that we need a long term plan for the structure of the club in the board room, in the community and with youth development but that the coaching staff and players are transitory and we need to get as much as we can out of them without any sentiment. McLean to come in and do a short term job isn't a bad idea, it could be similar to Brown fixing Gannon's mess. Long term we need someone who will set standards but also be able to bring in players from England or abroad.

When I was heading home I heard Tam Cowan saying on OTB that he would only criticise Stuart McCall if we got relegated this season. To me that seemed like a crazy statement, getting relegated would put the future of the club at risk so the prospect of giving the manager enough leeway that we could end up in the Championship makes no sense to me. McCall has done brilliantly in the league but that's been and gone and if we finish 11th or 12th two second places in 2012/13 and 2013/14 aren't going to help us, bigger and more succesful clubs than us have been relegated and are paying for it. In the last three games we've lost we've conceded 10 goals and scored 2 against teams that are full of guys who wouldn't have got a look in the SPL 3 or 4 years ago. The board have said that our budget hasn't been cut but anyone can see that the quality in our squad has decreased massively. If you were to guess who are our top earners i'd say Lasley, Hammell, McManus, Sutton, Ramsden,Neilsen and Ainsworth. Six guys who are on the decline and one guy who is a waster who has been booted out a dozen clubs. The question is can McCall turn it around. For me he has answered the question by making it clear he doesn't think he can improve the team on the training ground because he doesn't believe fucking off for a week with Scotland makes any difference to our form. We need a new manager that can come in, give the complacent element of our squad a fright, get the players fit, put a few of them on the scales every day and make it clear that Motherwell is a full time job.

although he didn't name him mccall's comments on mfctv after the accies debacle gave me the impression that he's fed up with lawson. mcmanus and lasley are the two players who owe us a performance this week. mcmanus has been terrible this season and needs to up every aspect of his game and lasley either hasn't been fully fit or his legs have gone. both of them were given two year deals in the summer and it's time to step up.

regarding devlin scotland u18s is an age group for boys who aren't playing full time football so being the captain isn't that big an achievement in the scale of things.

his choice of user name seems a bit more sinister now. did someone not suggest he had some connection with craig brown which is how we ended up signing the goal machine despite his total lack of ability? edit - it's on the previous two pages.

we should offer him a mulligan.

'doing everything we can' i would say the least he could do is work with the players this week but he won't even do that.

Obviously McCall has spent the week thinking about why we got gubbed and concluded it was a lack of josh law.

kerr or ramsden? on this form this season i think you would have to say kerr.

when he came back, aye. after randolph, law, higdon, humphrey, higginbotham, daley and hateley left we would have had room for his wage, after he signed we still went and brought in anier and ainsworth so we still had some money to play with.

ojamaa will be part of the normal budget. we've only got about a dozen senior players.

it was said he was funded by a director when we signed him in feb 2013. i didn't see anything that suggested he wasn't within the normal budget for 2013-14.

when you look at the players who aren't in this squad he's got no chance of chance of getting a 50th cap but the memories from the holland and france games and even the goal against macedonia are more significant than being in the hall of fame.

he can't be less fit than lee croft.

the players they have brought in from the lower leagues have been young players other than paton and erskine. paton was brought in to play a role in their 4-2-3-1 and erskine was unpopular with the fans and has took a while to settle. it should be guys in their early 20s we are looking at from the lower leagues. i agree about mcmanus, he offers no value and it's gutting we've got him signed up for another season. hammell was hardly injured for a decade, now he's getting up near 600 games it seems like his body is letting him down more and more.

there is no point in blaming burrows. the problem has been our transfer policy for the past few summers. spending good money on guys who are over 30 and are only going to decline ans bringing in guys who are career lower league players and are never going to be good enough. last summer was a huge opportunity for the club. the manager had near enough the entire budget at his disposal and we have ended up with by far the worst squad since admin despite the level of competition never being lower. we have pissed away hundreds of thousands on ramsden, neilsen, lawson, mcfadden and now it looks like hammell and lasley have went into chronic decline with 20 months left on their deals. at least when malpas was here we had some talent in the squad and a good number of guys who went onto bring in a transfer fee and play at a higher level. other than erwin every player in our squad is only headed one way.

it's clearly stevie hammell who is the key to our attacking problems. 2 games started and 4 goals scored vs 9 games out and 4 goals scored.

i think the main effect of putting them on double sessions is that they will realise if they don't get their finger out they won't have as much free time as usual. you don't have to work them to the bone every day, just change their lifestyles so they are desperate to get back to winning ways. anyone can sit and take a bollocking, losing 18 hours of free time every week is going hurt much worse.

i've noticed in person and online quite a lot of people thinking that our current decline is due to the society. the reality is that beyond putting in a bit of money now and then the society has no influence in the club. the society has two directors on the board one of whom lives in yorkshire and is busy with society businsess and the other who will never rock the boat at fir park. the club is being run by the same group of people as it was when mcghee, gannon and brown were here. nothing has changed.

a pumping and two weeks to find a new manager is the only outcome i can see. flow better start begging thistle to put our fans behind the goals.

we don't have an owner because no one wants to own us. the well society was conceived primarily as an exit strategy for boyle and the reason the club is valued so ridiculously highly is to lower his tax liability.