We were truely terrible today, until Black, McSwegan and Markus came on, and McCallister came off.
CC gets my backing, but he makes some decisions that baffle me. The first one was allowing McCallister to stay on the pitch for the amount of time he did. He missed arguably our best chance of the game, a free strike in the box with no pressure and he blazes it over. Also, in the first 10 minutes of the game, gave the ball away twice in dangerous areas that Motherwell nearly scored from. He doesn't have the quality to be an SPL player, and he looked like he didn't care most of the time.
As soon as Black came on, we were a totally different team he was moving, looking for the ball and it also allowed Barry to stay on the right, as he was having a tendancy to drift inside because no body was working there. Markus had a good attempt that was well saved and Rankin had a shot that the keeper made an absolute mess of - but alas, no body following it in.
He needs to change it next week, and with it being such a high profile game, players needed to show that they had the fight. Rory, sorry, but you don't. Blackie however did.
The only time I have ever seen Caley play worse was earlier this season at Love St where we drew 1-1 and didn't exist in the second half.
The goal furiates me, because of who scored it and how much space he got. There wasn't even anybody thinking of marking or making a challenge on him, and for a player like Scott McDonald, the biggest threat, it baffles me as how he got so much room. That said, he could have easily been sent off for an elbow (which he was booked for) and then a rash challenge down near our box. Tokely will become a new hate figure as well for a crunching tackle that led to a motherwell boy going straight into the boardings at speed, 'Well fans wanting us to put the ball out (the guy was off the pitch) as he was supposedly writhing around in agony, but cue the magic sponge and he was as fine as day. Good to see that Tumulty booked the Well player for diving. We were as far away as you can get and I saw it was a dive.
The ref (Tumulty) had a good match in my opinion, allowed it to be a physical contest, a proper old school game of football and let the game flowed alot. Played some good advantage once or twice that could have led to goals from either side and was fair. Good to see a difference from referees who want to get involved, he tended to take a step back unless it got proper ugly. All his bookings were justified.
On another point, this is the first game I have been to that Black played and wasn't booked.