steelboy

is it still the case that the flag on the main stand only flies on match days? i've got vague memories of being a very young well fan and my grandpa saying games were off because the flag wasn't flying but that might not be right. is there/was there a tradition around the flag?

either st johnstone game this season. totally agree about hutchy and saunders. the pair of them are incredible in the air, saunders should be scoring 8 or 9 a season from set pieces he's unbelievably good at winning headers.

how much does it cost not to drive a tractor over the pitch or not pour sand on it?

harsh mate. the season we finished third we wouldn't have done it without him. he had incredible performances up at pittodrie and at falkirk in feb 08 which won us points, was man of the match when we won at parkhead and then made a total wonder save at 1-1 at home against aberdeen the day we got europe. he was right in the poty running for us in 05/06 and 0/9 as well.

that's not how it works with the tv deal though. you pay your money to sky and take whatever games your given. with your season ticket you pay for your own team's home games.

went for hammell as well. saunders was superb too. can't really blame him for the penalty either as hateley's flying bodycheck on him would have been a foul in the nfl. hutchy in third. an easy first half for him then when nish came on he gave him a few bumps to let him know he was in a battle. props to jonny page and meechan as well.

100% correct. it was much worse when some fanny kept everyone up late at the end of the last window with a pack of lies about a loan signing from man u.

i've never seen him play so i don' feel i'm missing out on anything. he was just a name to me. now he's a name with a strange link to the well.

i've a horrible day and this was about the only thing that raised a smile from me. who gives a france if we don't have some american naebody from leeds, he'll be good banter for years to come in the hom kraska mould.

nae chance. i'd rather we stood on our own two feet than be subsidised by old firm fans anyway. season ticket sales would collapse as well, it'd be gutting knowing that you were giving 150 quid to motherwell and 13 quid to every other club. it'd also be sickening to see a team like gretna and accies with no fans getting millions from other clubs every year.

anyone launches a motherwell season ticket on the park it'll not be there long.

the germans have low gate prices because there's 90 million of them and they have a massive tv deal and sponsorship. the netherlands has more than 3 times the population of scotland concentrated in a small area.

they both know they're going to get relegated at some point and they want the league below the spl to have decent funding.

netherton 1. scotland already has better per capita football attendance than holland. 1 in 373 people attend top level matches in scotland, in the netherlands it's 1 in 849. 2. we had decent crowds during the ten team 90s so it can't have been that bad.

a top half finish is a decent achievement. there's also an outside chance of 4th getting a euro spot if the winner of the old firm cup tie goes on to win the cup but not the league.

how did it fail miserably? we keep on hearing that it was changed due to "negative football" ect but that's a load of made up pish which seems to have been accepted as fact. it changed from 10 to 12 because that was part of the agreement with the sfl to allow the spl to be formed in the first place, the decision to expand to 12 was made before the ten team spl even kicked a ball. thinking back i can't remember any overly negative teams in that period.certainly no one along the lines of accies. looking at wiki the first spl season with ten teams had 2.61 goals per game and last season had 2.57, not much difference at all.

maybe they think it's just a load of bluster and they heard the same shit about the split and nothing came of it? i can understand people chucking it if they're not enjoying it, can't afford it or have something else to do but to chuck it because we'll be playing 9 teams 4 times rather than 5 teams 4 times and 6 teams 3 times seems mental to me. what's the difference?

don't forget the cypriot! he had the day off from washing dishes to go on the bench on saturday. progression.

i don't think we can be too choosy at the moment. it's not like we'll be over run either, there's only 7 players at the club who didn't come through the ranks.

every time i'm in an airport i wonder exactly who buys the raffle tickets for the sports cars. now i know

the previous three attendances against hearts were 4830, 4448 and 4928. unless you know how many stay aways were ST holders you can't figure out what we lost but the very worst case scenario it could be is 30 grand.

we were we budgeting for a scottish cup game being on sky? that's £80k coming in that couldn't have been forseen. the same goes for the semi, even after vat and costs we are still likely to make a six figure sum.

you'd think that with a bonus 80 grand banked from the cup game on sunday plus 1/4 of the combined gate from the semis we'd have a bit of money to get someone in.

sign some players, unless we get some new faces there's not much that can be done. sutton and murphy up front as a pair is a must. then you've got to solve the left mid problem which is pretty much down to pollock or forbes. i'd be tempted to go with pollock and give him a chance to get on the ball and link with hammell and murphy. if it doesn't work you can always bring forbes on at half time, he's only (kinda) good for 45 minutes anyway. it's a totally different game on saturday anyway. we'll have plenty of possesion and territory, it'll be down to whether or not we can create and take chances (and that doesn't mean just giving the ball to murph and expecting him to make something happen)

a disapointing night. a left sided midfielder is a must, we changed the shape of the team from saturday to accomodate forbes and we looked lost for the first 20 minutes. i thought we came back into a bit more after that and were at least competitive until russell scored. we constantly allowed united to bring the ball out from the back and put us under pressure, not a good night for mccall. the players were under clear instructions to keep the ball on the deck and randolph rolled it out short more last night than he has all season. it was probably a plan to stop kenneth from dominating too much in the air but it didn't really work as we were never managed to get any sustained pressure in the final third. it actually wasn't too unlike the game up there under gannon where we had five in midfield and created no chances but the breaks went against us rather than for us. sutton cannot play as a lone striker. he was almost as ineffectual last night as he was in nancy. casagolda actually looked better suited for playing there. forbes made some decent passes but in a lot of ways is a man down. in the second half he completely unravelled and every time he got the ball the united midfield expected him to give it away. if we had anyone to come in i'd say it was time for humphrey to get a rest. that seems unlikely just now so he needs some serious coaching on his movement off the ball. last night he did nothing to support sutton and made it very easy for dixon to cover him when hateley had the ball. the highlights aren't up on the beeb website yet but it'll be interesting to see if our chance at the end crossed the line.