Lovely Weather - Draw the Curtains

The playing side of the club are sunning themselves on exotic beaches and only the tinkling of tills for season ticket sales and the purr of grass cutters from the ground staff disturbs the calm at Fir Park. No doubt the new management team will have their mobile phones to hand by their respective swimming pools and the signing targets for next season will be stalked.

Most fans will be shunning the fresh air and bright sunny evenings to concentrate on the festival of football from Germany. Curtains will be drawn to eliminate that annoying ray of sunshine from the TV screen as we get our football fix.

At a stretch we can claim some perverse interest in keeping an eye open for some of the World Cup participants who have played against us at Fir Park. Southampton's visit for a pre season game a year ago introduced us to a pair of English strikers, Prso and a few of the Trinidad and Tobago team are familiar but in the main we can look on as detached observers.

The games to date have been refreshing in a few respects. Every team has set out to score goals and very few defensive formations have been employed – though this may change towards the end of the group stages. The standard of refereeing has been excellent and this has been helped by the sporting attitude of the players. There have been very few cynical fouls, very little in the way of ‘simulation' and no arguing with the officials. It would be a bonus if this attitude was to become the norm in the SPL.

There might be a lesson to be learned for fans who are quick to criticise Motherwell players who suffer a dip in form – anyone who saw the mighty Ronaldo failing to shine against Croatia might have been reminded of Stevie Cowan on a bad day!