...because they are awful away these days. Of their past 5 away matches, they have lost 4 of them. Pretty dire! Fortunately for Motherwell, their last 7 to 9 matches will be 4 home, 2 away, and 1 to 3 neutral matches. If they can win all of their home and neutral matches, they will be league and SESL cup champions and nobody will remember the away struggles.  If they start to also falter at home and at neutral grounds...it may end up as a season where they will have underperformed compared to talent and expectations.

The big away loss to Raith Rovers was fairly typical for how MOT have performed lately. Weak goalkeeping and a defense that is giving up more shots than it would be expected to. Kevin Budinauckas' poor form is having fans question whether he is already over the hill. Can he hold on a couple seasons more and keep MOT in contention for more trophies in season 63? It's a tough question to answer.

Another question for the Well is finances. MOT are in a particularly tight spot when it comes to bank balance. It looks like they will end up well over the minimum required for 30 CP, but for a club of Motherwell's ambitions, not hitting 50 CP would be a bit of a disaster. How close are they to 50 CP? Well, with 678k to their name, MOT can expect 400k from sponsorship, 300k from press officer duties, 840kish from matches, and about 200k from participation. That would put us a bit under 600k shy of the 3000k needed for max CP. More if MOT have to spend on extra TP slots. That puts a lot of pressure on making the cup final and getting max payouts from betting. Repeated failures on the 3rd leg of MVP pushes has further hurt our hopes of reaching 3000k.

But, the news is still mainly good coming from Fir Park, even if expectations are sky high. A league trophy, which looks likely, will be MOT's 3rd ever, and would be all coming within a 4 season span. A large chunk of the squad will have been at Motherwell for all 3 and will be club legends forever. We have ELG coming up in the SESL cup quarterfinals, and making another semifinal in the quest for 3 SESL Cups would be huge for the club. Lots to play for, and lots of excitement around the ground. Management can worry about the finances and the future of some of our older players...for now everyone else can just enjoy the good times.

Motherwell have started to struggle with away matches, losing 3 of their past 4 away matches. The good news? They only have 3 more on the schedule. The bad news? These struggles come with them about to face a very tough opponent in Fraserburgh at a neutral ground in the SESL Cup.

The 2-3 loss at Dundee United this weekend had a couple costs - it meant that FRA were back within 10 points in the league, so Motherwell can't completely bin off the final 8 matches and focus on the cup. But, often overlooked, that loss on the 3rd leg of an MVP push is also a financial hit for Motherwell, who are very finely poised on the edge of having an appropriate amount of cash in the bank for the offseason. Should Motherwell go out of the cup now, it could lead to difficulties getting the resources needed for next season.

The loss somewhat fell to bad luck with shot allocation - with the opposing side having 5 shots fall to their star striker while Motherwell's Bland got 0 out of 9 sent his way. But, these types of results are always going to happen when we are riding the fine edge of training up youth and rotating players for the cup. I think we will be able to turn it on in the home stretch when needed, but we will need to pick ourselves up from the disappointment and give the match against Fraserburgh our all.  We know what to expect from the opponent in terms of very high OFF numbers. Budinauckas will have to forget his struggles in the league (A 57% save percentage would make sense if he were facing an average ShSL of 32 [higher before MSA]. But, no GK is facing nearly that high of an average. He has had a flat out bad season in net), and he will need to actually make some big saves in this one. Let's hope he delivers the goods on the day.

Is this Motherwell's biggest match of the season? No, that probably goes to the quarterfinal second leg against Stranraer, but this is definitely the second biggest. Win and Motherwell will have optimism towards securing a double. Lose and supporters will wonder what could have been, given where they sat two months ago.