steelboy

i'm glad to see he's gone but i hope the samaratians are doing double shifts in the motherwell area for those who thought he was the messiah. it was clear from the very start that we had got a man with a huge ego and an extremely high opinion of himself and it's this vanity that has clearly been his downfall. it must have been galling for boyle to see gannon slating everyone in scottish football and ruining the good name of the club while at the same time whoring himself around jobs down south and refusing to commit to motherwell. the guy isn't the tactical genius he likes to think he is and anyone who is out coached by gus mcpherson twice in the space of four days needs to take a look himself. the second st mirren game was particularly horrific, why the hell were we man marking alan johnston who was playing his first game in a year? there were plenty other inexplicable decisions but four times in league games recently we've been in strong positions at half time and gannon's changes have handed the opposition the impetus and ended up costing us points. i don't think gannon was able to handle the change from a 24 team league to a 12 team one. there are no weekends off in the spl, every game is vital and the pressure is always on. i expect he'll head back down to the coca cola leagues with tales of poor scottish players, corrupt refs and despicable journalists. the truth is however that he couldn't handle the pressure up here, was unable to put out a team that consistently looked like it could go out and win a game and made an arse of himself in public. he was handed a great opportunity at motherwell and through his own bloody mindedness has thrown it away. at the q and a last week craig brown and chris mccart told some great stories about motherwell and mentioned legends like st john, mcallister, tom boyd, cooper, phil and faddy amongst others. it was clear that gannon had nothing nothing similar to share as he spent his career bottom feeding in the lower english leagues. two of our ex managers are flying high in the english leagues where he'd love to be, mcleish and davies weren't the most popular managers but they clearly made the most of their opportunity here. for gannon it's back to obscurity and he can start rebuilding the myths that he's a modern football mind who supports young players when in fact he's a control freak who only wants players he can stamp his authority on.

aye. have you listened to his interview? it's not exactly full of positive thoughts to take forward and improve the team. obviously al b will point out it's 713 days too early but gannon doesn't seem too optimisitc about us getting a result on wednesday.

i was very happy at halftime. we battled hard, made a few chances and were deservedly ahead. second half we had changes for no reason again. after their second goal we totally panicked and played as if we were into the 92nd minute which cost us the third goal. we've used 25+ players this year but our manager doesn't think they can do what he wants. i come closer to the conclusion that he might be at the wrong club (in the wrong league)

merry xmas to you as well. i'm a total c**t. however i do know a lot about scottish fitba and mfc.

al b you're going to have to rexplain that we need to wait until 2012 and remind the ignorant that expecting to be entertained or to compete at any time in the next two years is the sign of a phillistine.

get it up ye.

david kelly scored 7 in 21 and although he was right old you could telll he was a bit of a class act. chiba had 40 caps and played at the world cup for for morroco and stood out a mile as a good footballer in a pish motherwell side. i can never understand why his name comes up in threads like these.

i don't think there's been much change in our form it's just been that luck hasn't been with us the way it was earlier in the season. st johnstone - forbes scores a screamer, deuchar misses an empty net. dundee united - dillon goes insane and gifts us a pen, ruddy makes triple save falkirk - we get an OG, arfield's chip looks in all the way but hits the bar. celtic - they miss two free headers accies - another wonder goal and a late equaliser through defending that bad an accies player booted his own teamate. we were very much living on the edge and when you're creating so few chances it doesn't take much to go against you before you're in a spot of bother.

some good calls in there. i'd forgotten about andy smith, probably the single worst player of the decade. BJC was shite as well. you must be looking for a reaction with klimpl though. it also seems a bit harsh on kevin mcdonald who looked decent at times but didn't get much of a chance. deloumeaux was a class act as well and had folk purring when he was playing for us. corr forrest ready malcolm bollan a. smith j.davies fagan dow keegan molloy subs iain russell sengewald vaughan c.elliot dair meldrum burns

whit! spencer's contribution since the millenium: 6 goals and defrauding the club of a quarter of a million pounds. a total scumbag of the highest order.

the only decent thing about signing him is we'd get 3 or 4 games of heckling him before he skulked off plus all the fun and games that would spark online and in the media. i say let's get him in! we need something to keep us ticking over until 2012.

top six away wins celtic 0 - motherwell 1 - 40 trips to the old scum and we only managed one win . it was a belter though and it emptied parkhead in double quick time and got the knives out for strachan. great celebrations with free drinks for well fans in the sevenways afterwards as well. hearts 0 - motherwell 1 - wins at tynecastle are always good but having a decent wedge on foran to score first at nine to one put a cherry on top. big marsh made a world class banksesque save as well. hearts 1 - motherwell 2 - one nil down at half time and playing gash. heavy snow comes on at halftime and the 'well come out a different team and run over the top of the jambos. kilmarnock 1 - motherwell 4 - the first game after we went into admin and the team came out firing. a great turn out of 'well fans and an indicator the club wasn't going to lie down and die. hibs 0 - motherwell 2 - we looked and played like real madrid ripping the pish out of hibs for 90 minutes. congas, beach balls and a massive party in the motherwell end as well.

it was a baaaaaaaaad choice of words.

buzz isn't the most popular guy on here but his first 6 months at the club in 2005 was on a level with what ruddy has been producing during his loan spell. his final 18 months were excellent as well, he played a huge part in us getting third and barely put a foot wrong in his final season.

we're 9/12 for total shots and 10/12 for shots on target. a word of warning for saturday is that st johnstone are joint third with hibs for total shots and have had 43 more shots than us over the season so far.

teale played his last game for motherwell in december 99. i can't remember all the details but he had a bust up with davies after we got a pummelling off rangers. suprised to see brannan remembered so fondly, my recollections of the end of his time at fir park was that he only turned up when the tv cameras were there and that he fucked us about big time with that cayman islands debacle. i hope all the threads on the site are being archived somewhere, it'd be a good resource to have when we're doing this again in ten years time to look back at what people were saying at the time and what opinions have changed over the years.

i love simo but he only played 19 games in 2000 then left, i'd say leitch with near enough 150 did far more. i also never knew that leitchy's name is really donald and not scott until i was having a glance round soccerbase just now. my team. smith corrigan craigan reynolds hammell hughes lasley pearson mccormack mcdonald mcfadden

i'd say most goals in the spl are scored by either putting opposition defenders under consistent pressure near their own goal forcing them into mistakes or happen when the play changes and players are caught out of position. if we can go to parkhead and hold our shape for a clean sheet any team in the spl can do it to us. i don't neccesarily think we need sutton to play long balls. we used to have success playing long balls to down the channels to mcdonald and clarkson, they used intelligent movement to get in behind players. it also must be a hard shift for saunders, reynolds and hutch having to defend when we don't have ball and do the majority of the work when we do have it.

since all the papers seem to be full of retrospectives of the past decade i thought i'd fire a thread up to discuss what's happened with the 'well in the past ten years. it's been an extremely eventful period with some big lows but at the same time a lot of highs. things were fairly bleak from Y2K until admin with a couple of unpopular managers, a chief executive who seemed determined to run the club into the ground and a ridiculous amount of journeyman signings. then we went into admin which at the time seemed like the end of the world but looking back you can see it was the best thing that could have happened to us. the butcher years were a great time to be 'well fan with a team you could get really get behind, lots of good young players and some brilliant results and occasions. the painful semi final defeat by celtic seemed to be the death kneel for that team and that was turned into a thousand deaths by the appointment of malpas who in his season in charge seemed to drive most fans to their wits end. from there it was onto mcghee and despite all the acrimony of his final few months the reinvigoration and joy he brought to the fans and players in his first season can't be denied. obviously everything that season was overshadowed by phil's death and while it was indescribably tragic a lot of comfort could be took from the way everyone rallied round. last season was a bit of damp squib but thankfully we had nancy which will go down as a woodstock for 'well fans, after so many years of waiting the experiences in the square and on the march were incredible. in the summer there we had our strange decampment to airdrie and three trips that will live in the memory of everyone that went on them. and now we're at what seems like a new beginning again and trying to find our way. a very eventful ten years by anyone's standards. i'd say we've been quite fortunate with players as well having a nice mix of good pros, young players and guys with good ability. by my reckoning 13 players have made 100 appearances for us - smith, corrigan, craigan, reynolds, hammell, quinn, lasley, adams, leitch, foran, paterson, clarkson and mcdonald - and phil was very close to it as well. add in a legend like faddy and a fair number of guys who gave us great service or a bit of quality (marshall, partridge, elliott, porter, mccormack, hughes, ruddy). player of the decade - a tough one but i'd go for corrigan. faddy probably made the biggest impression but i'd say no one contributed more than martyn. game of the decade - motherwell 2 - celtic 1 from 2002. an amazing result when we were at a low ebb. goals of the decade. 1. fitzy versus hearts in the semi - sparked absolute bedlam. 2. phil versus hearts - you'll never see a better volley. 3. mcdonald's first on skippy sunday. spared us the nightmare of seeing lennon lift the league trophy on the hallowed turf. hopefully the next ten years will be just as exciting and enjoyable but a bit more stable.

not really. we're eight points off the bottom and our current form is poor. it's helpful that we have the bottom six to play next but you can't really look at any of them and think they'll be easy games for us.

we changed between a back four and a back five. thinking about it we lost 4 with the back 4 and 2 with the back 5 but one of them was a breakaway from our corner (very similar to hibs). we looked more likely to concede with the back 4 but we didn't compete with either formation.

you can't just dismiss the fact that a contract can get us significant compensation. £200k is a lot of money to motherwell. i'd also argue that a manager without a contract is a more attractive prospect to other clubs. any manager-less club is going to be attracted by not having to pay comp and it also leaves more scope to entice someone with a big signing fee. in this respect managers aren't any different from players. i don't see how anyone can argue that if you have a manager/player you rate it's not better to have them under contract.

i don't think craigan was any worse than the rest of them in the two games at love street. saunders got turned for the first goal on the saturday, hutch got beat in the air for the first on the wednesday, yassin and ruddy made a mess of the second on the saturday and reynolds was posted missing for goals in the second half of both games. everyone was poor in paisley.we've got a huge run of games coming up and going to somebody who is tried and tested and has undeniably put in good performances recently isn't a bad idea. there's no rush with hutch or saunders, they're going to be good players no matter what. and i don't think anyone wants to play aimless long balls but we need to think about where games are being played and what players in our team we want to be influencing the game. we used to have guys up front like mcdonald and clarkson who were workhorses, recently our strikers have spent most of the games as spectators. we played loads of long balls today but almost everytime it was a last resort under pressure rather than anything planned. how many goals have we scored this season building from the back? i was very impressed with what jim gannon had to say on thursday but we get points from football games not from debates and i think their has to be a point where you've got to be a bit more pragmatic. the best football team we've had in 15 years couldn't play their passing game through the winter i think it's big expectation to ask these players to try and do it.

the games i'm mentioning were the games at pittodrie (where craigan, saunders and coke were miles ahead of everyone else) and falkirk when craigan was the stand out. i've put up the stats before about how when craigan and reynolds have played together since mcghee took over we've got a great defensive record in relation to our rivals. we lost six goals today and were clearly vulnerable at the back. we lost 5 of the 6 goals with the two teenagers playing in the middle of the back 4. i can't think of any team that has ever had any success with two teenagers at centrehalf. i can think of plenty of successes we've had with craigan playing.

surely if he wants rid of the manager for a poor run of results he has a high level of expectations? i don't think gannon should go. i do think we're heading towards a point we're getting a result is a lot more important than it is now however and we'll see how we do then.