Mr Hahn

FWIW, that's an excellent letter. Like you say, shame the fans were consulted so late in the day and essentially in a box ticking exercise.

Roos made some decent saves but nothing you wouldn't expect him to make IMO. Defensively Aberdeen looked very solid yesterday, McDonald and Gartenmann were clearer MotM for me. Barron also had a good game in midfield and contributed a lot to Aberdeen looking tidy in possession in midfield.

Here is my issue with that, and trying to remove as much of my obvious Motherwell bias as possible. Theo's arm is in a natural position for someone jumping to try and contest a ball. Shinnie's is in a natural position for someone standing waiting to react to a ball. Neither have deliberately tried to hit it unnaturally, neither have really gained an advantage from it hitting their arm. There's no blocking it with the hand, there's barely a deflection on the ball in either incident. Same as Mackenzie the other night. His arm is in a natural place for someone jumping for a ball, he's not gained an advantage, he's not blocked anything. Football is a game where the ball is in the air some of the time (a lot of time in our case at times) so we can't be punishing players who often need to jump for a ball. Both players have their arms in natural positions for the actions they're currently doing. From the angles we've been provided, it cannot even be conclusively determined where on the arm it hits Theo, it looks like it's around the shoulder. Is that even a handball if you deliberately shoulder it?! Therefore if we can't even say where it hit him, how can we say that's a clear and obvious error? From the angle's shown, it is however clear that the ball hits Shinnie at a point on his arm that would be considered handball. Again, I stress, I don't think Shinnie's is handball either. But in my view, it's more of a handball than Bair's and if you give one, you must give the other. The handball rule is a total mess but we need to at least apply a bad rule consistently for both teams.

That yesterday just proved what a shambles VAR has been in Scotland since its introduction. IMO, the biggest detriment to the paying fan's experience since I've been attending games. Scotland's clubs rely heavily on gate receipts for their income and we are making attending fan's experience infinitely worse. When that goal is scored yesterday, no-one sees a handball. No opposition players claiming for it, none of the 1,000+ away fans behind the goal claiming for it, on-field referee saw nothing. When they were first checking the VAR, it's anyone's guess what they're actually checking for, I assumed some kind of offside at the time. When the stadium announcer says "possible handball" it's so not "clear and obvious" that no-one in the ground has any idea who's supposed to have committed the offence or even at what point in the play it occurred. Having now seen the replay on Sportscene, how that goal can be ruled out as a "clear and obvious" error in beyond me. From the angles available, it's not even clear where it hits Bair. From one of the angles they showed, it looks like it hits his shoulder and it skiffs it if anything. However, given as handball, move on. Then the Shinnie "handball" at the end of the game. To my mind, not a handball either. He doesn't really move his arm towards the ball, it's a complete accident but it does hit him around the elbow. Unlike the disallowed goal, many players claiming for it, the fans in that corner of the ground claiming for it, so at least something has been seen. If you give the Bair incident as handball, for me there is no excuses for not giving the Shinnie one as handball. In my opinion neither are handball, but we need something resembling consistency throughout the game. Collum wasn't even directed to the monitor for that one! And this isn't a Motherwell v Aberdeen thing per se, I'm not saying we "deserved" a draw, it was a remarkably even game reflected fairly accurately in the match stats and I'm fully aware that Aberdeen had a VAR shocker given against them in midweek. But I can't say I've seen a more egregious example of incompetent VAR officiating than this, both for the disallowing of the goal and the failure to apply any kind of consistency in the same fucking match, let alone across a season. VAR has been nothing but a detriment to Scottish football, with the paying fan being burdened with the overwhelming majority of the detriment. The technology might be ok but the people operating it are as incompetent as they were before it was introduced. Didn't think there was a way we could make Scottish refereeing even more incompetent than it was before but here we are. GET VAR IN THE FUCKING BIN before we ruin the matchday experience even more for those we're trying to attract to go to games.

Big Theo is quickly becoming one of my favourite players in recent years and undoubtedly his back story with St Johnstone has a bit to do with that. But agree with other posts that the whole wording and direction we’re coming from with this is getting on my nerves. I mean “zero to hero”?! The whole thing comes across to me as us saying “You were nothing Theo! Literally nothing! Wow! I mean seriously, you were so shite and now look!” Then putting fans negative tweets up on the screen? Just don’t really get why we’re continuing with this narrative. We brought in a project, he’s been smashing so far, do we really need to keep highlighting the fact that he wasn’t great before and had a few doubters? Like @capt_oatssaid, something more along the lines on “having the best season of his career” resonates far better IMO. Otherwise, doing a piece on how he’s improved using video analysis is actually quite interesting so fair play for that.

This. The shite decisions that have come from it weirdly don't bother me as much as we've always had shite decisions in the Scottish game. To me, we now just get a different "type" of bad decision for lack of the better word. Soft fouls are getting pulled up when they weren't before. The main impact has been a total spit of the face of the paying fans who go to games, who are literally the lifeblood of most clubs in the league. As a league, our clubs are more reliant than other leagues on gate receipts for clubs to make up their income. Yet this nonsense has made the experience for that paying fan so much worse. Waiting ages for decisions to be made, not being able to properly celebrate a goal for fear it's going to be chalked off. It just sucks all the enjoyment out of it. Get it to f**k now, give us the weird incompetence of Scottish officials back and let us celebrate a fucking goal again.

That could have been 10-0 tonight with some of the chances we missed. Glad Thelonius got a goal with the penalty after missing some golden chances. Spittal, Bair, Paton, Gent absolutely superb but Ross County were all over the place. Plenty of possession but just looked utterly toothless with it. Certainly don't miss watching Jordan White.

This would be my take as well. Wouldn't be pointing fingers at any of the staff but would absolutely expect someone to be looking twice at this situation and wondering if there's something more/different we should be doing here. If there isn't anything and it genuinely does seem to be bad luck, fine. But definitely feels like something worth further investigation. I know it wasn't universally popular but one of the reasons I was always in favour of the winter break was I felt it was a bit of leveller for the clubs our size. As you mention the gap between seasons becoming shorter, players being asked to play with increased intensity, pitches are better so the game is faster (plastic abominations aside although they present their own injury risk). The bigger budget clubs with considerably larger squads of first team players are better prepared to cope with game after game whereas we've looked pretty ragged as the injuries have grown. Always felt the winter break was an opportunity for us to get some of our players rested and get some of the injured ones back (good chance Miller will be available for games he might not have for example) that the bigger clubs maybe didn't need.

Yeh this for me as well. I've now watched it twice (I know I know) and I don't think it's as bad the second time viewing it. There is some reasonable stuff in there and the middle part of the video is actually alright. Highlighting the community benefit is a real selling point for the club and I do believe it's a big thing for potential investors in the current climate to be seen to be doing good in communities. However the Taylor Swift thing at the end... No disrespect to the wee lad and I hate to pick on a part that has a kid saying it but whatever adult thought that was a good line at the end, Jesus Christ. I get the video is supposed to be relatively light hearted (I'd rather it was less so but whatever) but that just brings the whole thing down tbh. I could almost make my peace with the rest and brush it off but tbh that line really kills it.

Oh f**k, bluff called.

Jesus fucking Christ....

This is exactly it. And surely we don't even need to look that far for precedent as to why this is the case. Furlong last year looked like a pretty nervous kid when we first started him but I think a lot of us realised 5-3-2 was an ideal set up to get him bedded in. It gave cover for if he messed up defensively and allowed him to get comfortable, playing on his natural side, to find his feet in first team football. Surely the same applies to Gent in that if he's not great defensively, or makes a few mistakes, 5-3-2 should provide decent cover for him. He's proved (in his laughably short time on the park) that he's decent enough in an attacking sense so why not try him from the start and see how it goes. It can't be any worse and surely goes without saying that if we're worried it'll make us weak defensively, we're already there. We're conceding goals for fun and at least having a natural player on the left side and freeing up Spencer to be on his natural side is trying something different that might work. Obviously preaching to the choir on this thread but I don't really understand how Kettlewell doesn't see it as we pretty much had the same situation when he arrived last season.

Likewise Holloway. He seems to have previous with Van Veen and can just see the scenario where he comes in, they have a fall out, and the outrageous run Kev went on never happens. Butterfly effect stuff but shows how knife edge our season was considering both him and Goodwin seemed to be considered at the time.

I'd agree with this. FWIW, I've actually thought Aitchison looked quite good when I've seen him, especially on Saturday. Seemed combative, went on a couple of nice runs and, like has been said, he's better than Shields for me. I'm not massively familiar with who we've got coming through unless they've turned out for the first team but Miller seems to be real prospect based on his limited appearances (given his age) and the fact he's regularly featuring for the national side in his age group. We can't afford to do the same with him as we've done with Johnston where our next highly sellable asset is stuck behind two others, particularly as O'Donnell had severely lost form for the best part of 2 years and Max didn't seem to be getting a look in. On that basis, if Miller is a #6 or even an #8, does that not pretty much decide Maguire's fate for us? I'd be looking to keep Goss and Cornelius of those OOC in CM and be trying to phase Miller into the team as he gets older and matures. Spittal is an essential player for us these days and obviously is a keep and Slattery is fine to keep for another year if no takers in the summer. For CM, if we can keep those 4 plus Miller and other youths who play there, I'd say we thank Paton and Maguire but part come season end.

That was going to be my take as well. When Penney left it was looking pretty rough for us in that area (among many). Furlong came in to a shitshow, looked understandably a bit nervous with it being his first senior games but has really grown into his role. I think our system has served him well to give him a bit of support while he grows into senior games and he’s done that. Absolutely fair play to him. Penney was a tidier, more accomplished player with the ball, but defensively, I’m taking Furlong who I thinks proven himself to be a very decent defender. Agreed with Kettlewell’s assessment of the game. Would never scoff at 3 goals and a clean sheet but think we could have played with a bit more attacking intent in that second half. KVV was superb as was Spittal. As usual, delighted with Casey, Butcher and McGinn at the back who strolled it. Think Obika is a better player than Mandron so would be good to get him back but Mandron had an injury himself so maybe still has a bit of fitness to get back.