’Well fixtures fury
Motherwell blasted SPFL chiefs after claiming the fixtures released on Friday will leave them out of pocket.
The Fir Park club felt they should have been allocated two visits each from Celtic and Rangers, and queried being sent to Inverness and Ross County in midweek.
In a statement saying the situation should be reversed, chief operating officer Alan Burrows said: “Motherwell, along with Partick Thistle and Hamilton Academical, have two home‘old Firm’ games pre-split, whereas some of our closest rivals have four, something that has never happened in the history of the SPL/SPFL as far as we know.
“This has a serious financial impact on our club and we cannot and will not accept it.
“It creates a significant financial advantage for some clubs over others and, in our view just as important, compromises the integrity of the competition, both in terms of the potential/ need for adjusting respective player budgets up or down, and the amount of games teams have to play at what has historically been the most challenging venues.
“In previous seasons since the split, there has always been parity where clubs had the same amount of home games against both Old Firm sides (almost always three) and were expected to travel to both Celtic Park and Ibrox the same amount as every other team in the division prior to the split.
“In addition, whilst having sympathy around the difficulty of selecting games for certain times of the year, Motherwell believes having two midweek matches away at both Inverness CT and Ross County, the Inverness trip being three days after Christmas, sends out the wrong message.”