6pm

Motherwell slumped to their third consecutive defeat thanks to a last minute winner from Hibs at Fir Park this afternoon.  It was a poor game played between two distinctly average sides in atrocious conditions, and was possibly a match that neither side deserved to win.

David Partridge missed the match due to a groin strain, with Martyn Corrigan moving to centre half and Jason Dair coming in to the side at right-back.  Other than that we were unchanged from the team which played at Partick last week, with Scott Leitch recovering from his Achilles injury to take his usual place in the middle of the park.

The first half was fairly uneventful, with both sets of players struggling to adapt to the awful conditions of torrential rain and wind.  Our best efforts were long range shots from David Clarkson and Keith Lasley, which were both well saved by the Hibs' goalkeeper.  At the other end, the main threat came from Gordon Marshall's apparently inability to deal with cross balls, and one such occasion Riordan almost took full advantage but his shot came back off the post.

The second half began in a similarly scrappy manner, with Marshall again causing panic in the home penalty box with his inability to deal with crosses, however he did redeem himself later on with a couple of decent saves.  Stevie Hammell produced a tremendous long range shot which the Hibs' goalkeeper did well to push round the post, but other than that were was very few incidents of note until the match finally came to life in the closing stages.  The visitors had two decent looking penalty appeals turned down before Corrigan's 12 yard shot was again well saved by Andersson, and then Motherwell themselves had a strong penalty claim which was similarly waved aside by the referee. Then in the dying seconds, Riordan slotted home from a narrow angle to give Hibs all three points and simultaneously empty the East and Davie Cooper Stands.

This was poor stuff all round even accounting for the conditions, and I don't think we strung more than two passes together all afternoon.  Once again our tactics seemed to consist of thumping high balls up the park in the general direction of our lightweight strikers, which was food and drink to the Hibs defence.  Our midfield was virtually posted missing today with no-one making a telling contribution, and if Stephen Pearson is no longer interested in playing for the club then the sooner he leaves the better.  There were a few times today when he appeared to pull out of challenges for fear of getting injured, which in my mind is totally unacceptable.  Mind you, I'll guarantee he'll play a stormer next week in an attempt to impressive his potential future employers.  I'm afraid I can't think of anything positive to say at all about today's game, but at least we're still in the top half of the table and today's other results mean that (hopefully!) we don't need to worry about relegation.

Team (4-4-2): Marshall, Dair, Corrigan, Craigan, Hammell, Lasley (Quinn), Adams, Leitch, Pearson, Burns, Clarkson.
Subs not used: McDonald, Ewings, Wright, Fitzpatrick. 

Booked: Leitch.

Attendance: 4,500

Terry Butcher's port-match comments were as follows:
"I felt there wasn't much to choose between the teams and we deserved a draw. Full credit to Hibs they kept going and we gave a chance to score.  We didn't play as well as we know we can, the belief and confidence appears to have gone - I'm absolutely gutted."

Pearo's agent has been at it again.  Here's what he had to say following reports of an imminent £300,000 bid from Celtic for the 21-year-old:
"Motherwell might be hoping to start a bidding war in January.  But that is not going to happen, because Stephen has made it clear Celtic is where he wants to go.  Hopefully, the clubs can thrash out a fee because, if that doesn't happen, Stephen will sign a pre-contract agreement to go to Celtic in the summer."

However, Terry Butcher hit back, saying he was getting fed up with all the speculation:
"Somebody said to me last Sunday that a deal had already been done with Rangers for Pearson and then on Friday you are told that a deal has been done with Celtic. You get fed up with it because at the end of the day you just hope it doesn't unsettle the players. You have to get on with it.

"Two weeks ago a deal was done with Everton surprisingly enough. It's like what happened with James McFadden - it is speculation.  It has not unsettled the players but it definitely unsettles the fans because they only see what's in the media. They think that things are happening and it's not which is the most disconcerting thing."

TB also says that the club's imminent emergence from administration would not change much at all from his own point of view:
"It's not on my agenda.  It's on the agenda of the board and the administrators.  As far as we're concerned we're just plodding along as we normally do. Hopefully the club will come out of administration eventually. It will be good to have light at the end of the tunnel but from my point of view it wouldn't change much at all."

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