steelboy

You actually need to have access to the information to come up with players. That doesn't mean you can't criticise it though. That argument is as stupid as saying no one can say NHS waiting lists are too long unless they start doing hospital rotas.

We spent 5 million pounds on wages last year. We are hardly skint. We have a manager, assistant manager and head of recruitment who are all paid to find players for a living. If the best they can come up with is Bair, Paton and Obika then you need to question if they are up to the job. We have 10 days to find out.

The fact that we are a week from the window closing and we are 4/5 starters short is criminal. Right from the moment when he brought Paton to the club it was clear Kettlewell didn't have a clue what he was doing in the transfer market. I said at the beginning of the window he had never made a good signing and with a week to go it remains true. 10 days to turn it around.

Massively slowed down.

That's a shit angle of it. You could see at the game he intentionally slammed his knee into Mika's knee. Saying it's a great tackle is fucking idiotic.

Blaney is actually worse than Bevis when it comes to defending.

Aye Bowman done Cardoso in retaliation to the elbow on Moult. We should be looking to retaliate in kind when these pricks come to Fir Park or it's open season on our players with zero consequences.

There's a big difference between some rough stuff in the air and throwing your full body weight at an opponent's knees. It's karma for us because we brought the rats to Scotland but they are still way out of order. Robinson dodged his post match interview after Kettlewell accused him of targeting Mika which tells you everything.

That has been worrying. I suspect we have invested decent money into Wilkinson and Kettlewell is desperate to justify it.

He was brutal on Saturday. Cost us the goal, positional sense was horrific and woeful on the ball. Bair and Wilkinson despite both scoring have been terrible as well.

Scott Burns is saying Biereth could be out for months. I doubt we will see him again if it's that's the case. There's no benefit to the player or Arsenal to playing in a league where technical players are targeted. We were 7th last season, St Mirren were 6th, we have 4 league games against St Mirren to come. Seriously injuring Beireth is a huge boost for them.

That's how fans look at things and I agree with that. However it's got nothing to do with the performance of the manager and players when a knockout game comes round. None of the players on the park on Saturday would have a clue about either teams results 20 years ago, it's all about on the day and Kettlewell had us beat before we even arrived in Paisley. A good example of a similar thing is Celtic in Europe. They haven't won a European knock out tie in 20 years now and taking their budget and access to UEFA competitions into account they are clearly the worst performing team on the whole continent in European results over that spell. Their fans should be up in arms about it but have been conditioned to accept it by the club and media to the extent it seems to have spread to the playing side of the club.

In three games versus Rangers, Hearts and Celtic Kilmarnock have only allowed 6 shots on target and have three clean sheets. In our three games against Dundee, Hibs and St Mirren we have managed 7 shots on target and scored 3 goals. Given how little we are creating this is going to be another struggle.

Celtic out. A real missed opportunity for us. Does anyone at Fir Park even care?

Even just talking about trophies any of our fans younger than late 30s won't have seen us lift a trophy. Guys the same age who support St Mirren, Dundee United, Killie, St Johnstone, Ross County, Inverness have seen it. That's a big disapointment for a lot of our support and every Motherwell manager should be told no weakened team pish in cup games.

I didn't say that. And it's not just about trophies but as MJC says our record in cup games overall is poor. You can look at individual managers like McGhee, Robinson and Alexander and see big differences in the standards they enforced across different periods of their tenure. Right now standards seem to be slipping and it's a big finish to the window for Kettlewell to recover that. If the manager is happy with Bair and Wilkinson as strikers and SOD and Souare as attacking wingbacks then it'll be the usual mid season change.

It's down to the manager. My impression is that our managers are usually quite happy to come into the club and not challenge the external impression that we are middling club who won't do much other than make up the numbers. It makes their far job easier. You look at yesterday and we had 1 shot on target from 25 yards in a cup tie but after the game Kettlewell sounded quite cheerful on the radio then his mates talked him up in the segment after it. If Hearts, Hibs or Aberdeen had put in that performance their would have been some discussion of why they played so poorly but with us it's expected and the manager seemed to go along with it. He actually said it played out exactly as he imagined which should pose a few obvious questions about what the fuck he was doing last week but as there's no scrutiny of Motherwell managers there is no follow up.

I'm not counting Casey because Hammell brought him to the club.

It was the only decent ball we put in all day. The big plank can't head the ball so there's no point in him being in the middle anyway. He wanted to take the next couple of set pieces as well but Blair Beckham pulled rank.

The window has been a disaster so far. Every player we have signed is substandard. The Arsenal loan player is the only bright spot. As I said months ago we were pissing money up the wall signing Paton and Obika and it's somehow only got worse. We are still 4 or 5 players short despite bringing in so many bodies. Transfers were the big question mark against Kettlewell and he's failed it at the moment.

Robinson giving Dunne his instructions.

We aren't creating any chances. Over the 3 games so far our attacking play has been woeful.

When Dunne came on I said it was a certainty Robinson sent him in to half Mika if he did anything dangerous. Robinson is a snide prick but most of our fans loved him for it so it will be ironic if he has put our only decent attacker out for a while.

They are as bad as I've ever seen. Spittal is honking at crossing a dead ball and either under hits it or chips into the box like a rugby restart. They need to be far better.

Kettlewell giving it we're skint then playing a weakened team in a cup tie is sheer stupidity.