crazylegsjoe_mfc

I imagine it must have been Grezzaball of the season before. Last season Van Been had a few of his own, plus we scored hunners of free kicks. Edit: just realised my typo there but leaving it there because it sounds like the version that Killie got.

I think the "one in, one out" nature of our recruitment last summer, along with the number of CBs he inherited probably cut him some slack. I also think that if, last summer, had you offered us Casey signing a contract extension, or a new centre half, that most of us would have opted for the former. However, I'd say given we ended the year with Casey and Blaney injured, McGinn playing in the mask, Butcher looking like a pale reflection of himself between his many injuries and Mugabi somehow still getting hooked at half time during this injury crisis - not to mention the goals against column, he definitely should've entered the market for one in January. I think the last centre back we had that was consistent over a whole season was Gallagher in 19/20 (a cut short season at that and let's not mention the following one ).

I appreciate there's far more context behind this, but it's amusing that this defence, the main contributor to us having spent a lot of the season battling for safety, is still on course to concede fewer goals than Grezza's team that got to Europe two years ago - having already scored more goals.

Lots of good points made about the defence. I would stick with the current back three for the rest of the season if possible. Probably as it'll be good to have more data on McGinn playing in the middle (on the assumption he's staying) and Blaney building up a run of games. The jury is still out on Blaney for me and I think it would be good to see as much as possible before deciding if he's a starter, a squad player or someone we'd try to move on in the summer. I think we've got the measure of just about everyone else. I actually wonder if at one point the plan was for him to be a starter all season. I wonder if we re-signed Casey because it was Casey, rather than because we wanted a centre back. Would Blaney have been first choice? Would we still have punted Lamie? Who knows, but Blaney playing 90 mins in 3 of 4 group League Cup games definitely suggests to me we planned to use him more than we initially did. Particularly as we kept clean sheets in all of the games he played. I don't know if he also got unlucky that there was a blanket decision that Casey couldn't play in the middle after the Queen's Park game, which in order to accommodate Casey in the starting XI saw him sacrificed for Bevis. Funnily enough that's now the back three we are playing personnel wise, but it took an injury crisis for Kettlewell to consider McGinn an option in the middle. In terms of Casey, there's no doubt he's had more blips than he did last season and his lack of pre season counted against him, but I think there's been an overreaction at times to his form this season and actually he is a good player. I'm fairly hopefully that next season, with a pre season behind him, he'll be able to find a bit more consistency.

Crawford's appearance against Airdrie in the league cup the following summer saw him narrowly miss out on a place in the elite club of Motherwell players who never played in front of fans. The members: Aaron Chapman, Jordan Archer, Tyler Magloire, Sam Foley, Harry Robinson, Callum Lang, Jordan White, Harry Smith. Perhaps Lang aside, a very forgettable bunch.

I remember giving Grezza a fair bit of credit for shitfesting our way to safety easily when the likes of Maguire and Crawford made up two of his midfield three. It was the next season that it sadly dawned on me that it was actually his chosen style of play.

The most memorable thing about Barry Maguire for me is how unmemorable most of his appearances were - rarely see anything good or bad from him. Him taking corners also did annoy me - if you are 6ft+ and you are taking corners you need to be class at them, IMO. He wasn't.

Maguire made his debut in April 2018, I think the week directly before the Scottish Cup semi where we beat Aberdeen 3-0. Remarkably, he's made an appearance in 7 different seasons for us. You would imagine that would come to an end this summer. It's surprising to see Slattery so high up that list. I think he will stay with us, at least in the short term due to his injury, but prior to that I had thought that this summer might have been a mutually beneficial time for him to go. Don't get me wrong, there's absolutely a player in there, but he's just as capable of an absolute stinker as he is a good game and given it seems like we bought him with the intention to sell, I do wonder if the wages v output ratio is worth it.

I think in terms of our defence, I would offer SOD & McGinn new deals and let Mugabi & Butcher go in what I'd consider to be the right balance between "better the devil you know" and trying to better a problem area from this season. I think McGinn and SOD are both versatile senior pros, which is handy in our system. I actually think that most of our centre backs would've been fine with a commanding leader and presence in the middle this season and with that being where Butcher and Mugabi primarily play, I think that offers us the chance to improve that. I'd love to keep Gent on the left but part of me does think that he, like many others, will use his stock rising up here as a vehicle to get himself a move closer to home.

Just looked it up. Yann Soloy scored in a 2-1 defeat at Fir Park the previous season. Just those two.

Harsh, perhaps, but he already has enough of a chequered history past for me to want us to give him a wide berth next season. I know he's a lot younger and a different profile of player, but I'd hope we had learned our lessons from watching someone with bad hammies occupying our treatment table (or Celtic's) whilst on loan before signing him permanently from Obika's situation.

I'm happy for you that you've managed to block out the 5-1 defeat where Stevie Woods was standing at the corner flag as one of the goals hit the back of net Great goal by Khaled Kemas that day right enough. Edit - didn't notice @Handsome_Devil's identical post!

If I'm honest, I'm not the biggest fan of the chasni pie. The filling is too tomato soup-like for me.

I'm not going to sit here and tell the Netflix guy how to make a documentary, but I have been thinking about this and wondering to myself how a BTS Motherwell documentary would be marketed. I do enjoy those types of programmes and have watched most of them that are available. There seems to be the ones that follow really big clubs like Arsenal, Man City, Spurs, Juve etc. Then the others that follow smaller clubs seem to have some kind of USP. Sunderland 'till I die was obviously targeted at them going straight back up, but they went down. Wrexham got bought by two actors and are trying to go through the divisions. Fort William were the worst team in the world or whatever it was. Real Kashmir had a pale, swearing ginger Scotsman in the Indian league. I know people use the "rollercoaster" patter about us, but 40 years in the top flight and 33 years without a trophy probably dismisses that to an extent. One of those two ending would probably make a good documentary and I'd fear it would be the former!

I don't doubt that they do. My point was that I don't think you can call the club apolitical. The voting demographic of the area, the community ethos of the club and the continuous nods to deindustrialisation definitely point to a left of centre narrative. A lot of that will contribute to why people take pride in supporting Motherwell, a fan owned club in a working class area. Someone's political leanings don't infer how good a job they would do on the 'Well Society board, however they perhaps would infer how well they would uphold values that make people buy into what the club does and what the 'Well Society does. I'm not saying that Nick Mackie shouldn't have stood - I questioned why he bothered wasting his time doing so - his LinkedIn page was floating about very publicly at the time, which showed people who his current employer is and I certainly know enough 'Well fans personally who would be put off by that. Again, that's down to an individual's choice whether that puts them off or not. We had a marketing campaign for season tickets not long ago (which I actually found to be quite crass, personally), in which the synopsis of the video was basically "the Ravenscraig closed, people from here are resilient, we are putting our prices up". You simply can't use that as a selling strategy and then say the club is apolitical. Furthermore, doing that and having a 'Well Society board member who works in Holyrood for the Tories does have an air of hypocrisy. I do agree that football and politics is a dangerous cocktail (I think my last post earned me my first red reaction ever on p&b ) but in many cases they can't help but overlap.

100% with @capt_oats's statement. I don't think you can say that we are apolitical given how much the Ravenscraig has been at the forefront of a lot of things we've done. That's why I was surprised that Nick Mackie guy stood for the 'Well society given he's a current Tory staffer.

I agree with this wholeheartedly and to be honest, I'm glad that this wave of spending that appears to be upon us has come at a time where we are trying to tighten the purse strings. I'm not saying we'd have gone all out the way other teams have, but if we had Turnbull's £3m arriving freshly in our account, I could've seen us entering a bidding war for KVV on deadline day etc. I'm glad we've gone down the more frugal route. On the former strikers returning to the league in January topic, I see KVV, James Scott and Curtis Main have a combined 0 goals between them.

Strikes me as a stick on signing for Aberdeen or Hearts next season.

I actually do kind of get it. He came on in the 87th minute as the last throw of the dice and bundled the ball over the line. In the weeks and months that followed that we had nothing but forwards on the bench and actually used our substitutes to decent effect. He's still only 17 as well, so there's no real need to rush him. What did confuse me to an extent was Dylan Wells bumping him in the pecking order in the meantime, but given the news story yesterday, it's perhaps now a bit clearer that it was a sweetener for him to sign a new contract with the EPL vultures around him. Shaw has only played six minutes himself since he returned, so we clearly have been working towards being in a position not to use him.

The split, along with the playoffs, ensure that come week 33, most of the league still have something to play for. Hearts will definitely finish 3rd, Livingston will definitely finish bottom and you'd say that Aberdeen have probably got a big enough gap not to get drawn in to a play-off battle. That means that 9 / 12 teams have something tangible to either achieve or avoid. Add in the fact you compete against the teams in the same boat as you, I can't see how anyone would see it as a negative.

Last season finishing clear in 7th, winning four and drawing one of the post split games and watching KVV run riot was actually a very enjoyable end to the season. I actually found it really enjoyable watching us play in good form, free from any pressure. The one I always think of on the flipside is the 2010/11 season, where we snuck in to the top six and hemorrhaged 17 goals post split, including two 0-4s and a 0-5 and then went in to the cup final in dreadful form where we witnessed a dreadful performance on a dreadful day to cap a miserable end to the season. Mind you, the next Scottish cup final we were in was proof that finishing 7th and winning games in the lead up wasn't a sure fire solution either.

I can't believe we've got another week where we are talking about Kettlewell's future, when we've won There's a post on the match thread talking about playing Conor Wilkinson centre mid against Ross County in December. Personally, I wouldn't have been gutted or surprised, had we parted ways with Kettlewell after that game. But he's turned it around and it's becoming more than tedious harping back on about it. It honestly feels a bit like reacting to Theo Bair's goal yesterday by saying "aye, but he only scored 1 in 18 games earlier in the season". Comparisons with Alexander are miles off it. When we relied on Ricki Jamie's last minute goal to get top six against Livi, we were clearly on the descent. We finished the calendar year 2021 on game 20 and we did the same this year. In the 12 games leading us to where we are now (one game from the split) 2021/22: P12 W1 D5 L6 2023/24: P12 W4 D5 L3 Under Alexander, we were clear in 4th at New Year, this season we were in relegation bother at Christmas. Going for top six on the last day when you've not been in the top six since October or whenever we were last there is a lot different to going for top six on the last day when you've not been out it all season. I also think it's unfair to compare a season where we've had to cut our cloth quite considerably, to one where we were chucking transfer fees about and had the much publicised massive staffing costs. This team quite obviously has its faults. The goalkeeper and central defence situation does need to be sorted out. We can all theorise on here about which back three / five should play, but the fact yet another new combination was tried yesterday tells me that we are just trying to amble along until the end of the season before addressing the situation in the summer and to be quite honest, 10 points from our last 15, in spite of this is quite the return. Also, looking at the first goal back from yesterday - for me it's clear that both Halliday and Blaney make individual errors. I don't think it's rational to look at that and go "sack the manager". For the second goal, there's no defending Kelly really. But again, we are just trying to navigate another six games with him in goals. He clearly won't be here next season. I doubt Oxborough will either. I imagine he's already made this fairly clear to Oxborough, so it would probably be a weird conversation to tell him he was now chucking him in. This post will no doubt make me look like a Kettlewell apologist / fanboy, but I'm really not. He has his flaws and has driven me up the wall several times this season. We are conceding soft goals far too often, but in return we are playing some decent football, scoring lots of goals and showing great character to dig out results in lots of games. That's more to be positive than negative about for me. Things aren't perfect, they never will be and this notion that the grass is greener is one of fantasy at times.

I'm sure you gauged my tongue being in my cheek, but rightly or wrongly I associate St. Johnstone with having strikers like Chris Kane, Michael O'Halloran and Stevie May (the second time) not scoring very often.

Just like Spittal, getting someone with the "numbers" that Bair has to sign a contract extension is nigh on impossible. If we do manage to get a six figure fee for him in the summer, then that represents a great example of recruiting to sell and of course, would address part of the £750k gap talked about. Equally, if he wants to chance his arm at having another good season with us to get a decent bosman and a good signing on fee, then you'd definitely say the move has been mutually beneficial. Either way, I've learned my lesson in listening to St. Johnstone fans' assessment of strikers, given that strikers don't generally score much for them anyway.

It's certainly a good thing compared to the ten team, play everyone four times league that went before it, particularly with playoffs added. You find that most teams in the league at this stage of the season have just about got something to play for. In the old format, really the two main things to play for were a third place finish and avoiding bottom. Those are probably the only two final positions that you'd say are nailed on at the moment, which would mean there would be a lot of teams going through the motions (I know we now have more European slots than we did then, but still).