steelboy

i take that your in depth reading of every fitba forum in the western world doesn't actually leave you much time to actually watch motherwell? 4-2-4, are you ossie ardilles? so we're going to go easter road, tynescastle, pittodrie and tannadice and play with 4 all out attacking players, we'd get murdered. even at the pinnacle of mcghee's attacking football the 4-3-3 was actually a 4-5-1 a lot of the time, with clarkson and mccormack dropping back and even porter taking a turn. this season isn't going to be any different from any other in the spl, we might be able to play good football some of the time but a lot of what we do will be dependent on our ability to scrap and work hard as a team.

if we're playing 1 up front we need a kenny miller type rather than a kris boyd. if you think we'll be succesful next season playing a "penalty box striker" up front on his own you're mad. we'll need someone who can run the channels and hold the ball up, it'll be 4-2-3-1 formation that'll quickly changes to a 4-5-1 when we're under the cosh (which history suggests will be often).

obviously not but he's more likely to be playing in the championship on august 8th than either of the two of them.

we've still got a long way to go in terms of new signings. this boy humphrey is a total shot in the dark and has only scored two goals in his career. add that to o'brien who has one (heavily deflected) and mcgarry who's goal scoring record is abysmal and it's obvious we need more a goal scoring threat. gannon looks determined to play his 4-2-3-1 and right now i'd accept a back four of saunders-craigan-reynolds-hammell on the opening day. lasley and the new guy jennings cover the two in front of them. ahead of that we're struggling, for me mcgarry and sutton aren't capable of playing the roles they had last thursday in the spl. we've signed a right winger which is jim o'brien's best posistion and he doesn't perform as well on the left and you wouldn't want to play slane week in out so soon. for me the pivotal task for gannon is getting quality players in to play through the middle, hopefully JB will give him some cash to bring in a couple of players in the porter/hughes class for these roles. (goes without saying we need a goalie as well)

he might have to transfer the rights on that to ross forbes.

if you include mccormack you might as well include mcdonald, he was 20 when he joined. hibs have probably got the upper hand though with brown, thomson, o'connor, riordan, fletcher and o'connor.

does anyone know if this boy is right or left sided? hoping he's left sided obviously as o'brien can play well on the right (and is shite on the left)

both of the players i mentioned had only played in leagues one and two before coming here. i'm not saying it's impossible to pull a stokes esque gem but off the names mentioned don't seem very promising. the guy from swindon gets a bad rep and wiki says the guy from villa played a trial match for hereford this summer. the everton keeper seems a better bet. our squad needs some experience, not more kids. premiership cast off kids who come up here tend to be much more miss than hit, we desperately need at least 3 more proven players.

these names don't fill me with confidence, if are to be concentrating on signing players from down south it should be guys with good first team experience like porter and jennings rather than youths who can't make the breakthrough in the premiership.

i've got a feeling that although provan sports are close to the club it's technically outsourced so it'll be them that's fucked and not us.

so many short memories. hughes is and was class. he put in a fair whack of the top performances i've ever seen from a motherwell midfield player. rangers (h) sept 07 hibs (a) oct 07 aberdeen (h) dec 07 hearts (a) dec 07 dundee united (h) dec 07 hibs (h) mar 08 hibs (a) may 08 rangers (h) oct 08 st mirren (a) apr 09 accies (a) may 09 all top drawer performances. it's typical of people on here to talk him down as soon he as he leaves and forget what he gave us. it's likely the same nostradamuses that boldy predicted mcdonald and mccoramack would flop and started threads wanting clarky and quinn booted out the club. he poor at the start of last season but was playing injured and he wasn't helped by the nick of the park or having sutton, o'brien, klimpl and quinn around him rather than phil, lasley, rossco or porter. the guys a class act and we're not going to get a better player than him in that playmaker posistion.

i don't think the club will lose much here. surely with all the club shop stuff being sub contracted out to awp it's them that will take the hit rather than mfc? i don't really give a fuck what we play in as long as it's claret and amber and isn't made of wool. after the clusterfuck at the start of this thread, then the ridiculous program pictures this is quite amusing. just typical mfc, never a dull moment!

from the darkest recesses of my mind i'm sure someone in wales told me our new away kit wasn't going to be claret but they couldn't say what colour it actually was. in the europa league i'd ideally want a winnable game but there would be no complaints about hamburg.

he also played at left back under malpas. his first game there was skippy sunday i think. if we sign him it should be to play with hammell, we don't have enough money to have two expensive left backs at the club.

i'm sure i read on pie and bovril that tesco didn't actually give st mirren the full amount, they got around £1.5 million in cash and tesco actually built the ground for them using their construction partners. the ground also probably cost less to build than has been touted around in the media.

after the OF games the most attractive matches are rangers and celtic playing away from home. as long as the smaller clubs stick together the old firm can't do anything without the rest, it's not like they can broadcast from our grounds without permission. i'd go even further and say that no traditional media coverage would hurt them far more than us. we only have to keep 4000 odd interested, the OF have legions of armchair fans and if newspapers, radio and tv were all blacked out it would effect them badly.

to be fair if another team had lost most of their best players and had also lost their manager and replaced him a guy 95% of people hadn't heard of then got beat by two welsh league teams i'd be tipping them for relegation as well. on paper right now we're the weakest team in the league and it's up to gannon and boyle to change that and for the players here at the start of the season to prove what they can do.

we definitely need to exercise a bit of caution on this. if paterson has barely played for the year or so there's a fair chance he'll be a little bit mumford. get him on the scales before we sign him. if he is in decent shape i say bring him back. i'd stick with hammell at fullback and play jim in midfield. if we're actually going to play this daft 4-2-3-1 formation he could be handy in the left of the 3, his best performances before he dropped back into defence were playing on the left hand side in an attacking 4-5-1. but definitely get him weighed first. he ripped the piss out of us by being out of shape for three years then suddenly managed to get fit when mcghee started cracking the whip.

there's a lot of easily entertained people on here these days.

the team i'd start kosorowski saunders craigan reynolds hammell o'brien lasley mcgarry slane sutton murphy i'd drop fraser cause he looks poor under cross balls which is this mob's only weapon. i don't rate mcgarry or sutton but i'd play them a sutton can grab a goal and mcgarry should be able to play in centre mid against this level of oppostion. i'd drop forbes even though i like him, he's got a wand of a left foot but also a lot to work on. however i've got a feeling that gannon will stick with his own 4-2-3-1 formation and that he'll try to put his own stamp on the team. fraser saunders hutchison reynolds hammell forbes mcgarry o'brien murphy slane mchugh

i would take any figures with a pinch of salt, what you need to remember is that 'flow is the joseph goebbels of fir park. a master of propaganda. and if anyone say's we took less than 7000 down to wales their post will be fired on the first train to a holiday camp in poland for re-education by a crack squad of mods.

fitzpatrick was diabolical in the friendly against rhyll town, he looked as if he had never seen a ball before. he also looked to me as if he had been bulking up in the gym which isn't the best idea for a player who's best quality is getting around the park and making challenges. i wouldn't boot him out as he can be a useful player but it's obvious gannon has come in seen him in training and thought this guy is never a footballer. i also think fraser won't be no.1 come the first day of the season. he looks uncomfortable under crosses and is never as tall as he's been listed on the website. at caley he had a land of the giants defence in front of him, he won't get that here and i don't think he'll be able to cope. if it was up to me i'd punt john sutton and mcgarry, out of the two of them i think sutton might be in danger if gannon sticks to his guns about his formation as sutton is incapable of playing up front on his own. in general i'm a bit uneasy about where we're headed. by the start of the season we're likely to have a new bunch of english, welsh or irish players and be playing an unfamiliar formation. it might work or it might not but with gannon being abit of a stubborn bastard and the 'well faithful being what we are i can can it turning ugly quick if things start badly. personally for me it would be a huge negative to move on lasley and craigan, it's been hugley enjoyable over the last 7 of years to watch a team with mfc at heart and most of the guys who came in (buzz, partro, foran, mcgarry, hughes, ports) seemed to buy into that. i'm not sure how much leeway i'd give a bunch of outsiders and a manager who seems to have a my way or the highway attitude.

there's a big fuck off car park just outside the ground. take it you weren't at the scottish cup tie in '07 or the league cup game in '01? you didn't miss much anyway they were both shite.

and you think john boyle, lee ann dempster and stewart robertson just thought we'll leave it up to mark? buzz and hughes (who still might sign) knew they would get more money elsewhere. klimpl is over expensive for what he is and we probably value brain mclean lower than he values himself due to the amount of money we've paid him for hobbling about on crutches. mcghee should take the blame for wasting money on malcolm rather than strengthening last summer and for not blooding youngsters but it's not his fault that those guys didn't sign new contracts.

we need to get PJGB signed up