capt_oats

It's a phrase I've become familiar with from listening to the Bill Simmons podcast on The RInger where it's generally used in reference to basketball: I'd imagine that the principle is the same with the way The Athletic are using it.

Hmmm...

It may have entirely been coincidence but I clocked that McPake up and left pretty much after Shields was subbed although looking at the timings on those teamlines it was a double sub with Barry Maguire which I had forgotten about. Like I say, that may just have been coincidence and he wanted to get back up the road with 20 mins to go. Shields is a weird one in that we signed him on a 3 year deal but it hasn't really happened for him at Motherwell. We've got plenty of graft from him but he's 3 goals in 38 games now. He started the season in our starting XI but he lost his spot to Joe Efford and Hammell has prioritised bringing in forwards, brought Stuart McKinstry and Rolando Aarons back to the club and that saw Shields bumped to the bench. Whether it was injury related IDK but Shields didn't even make the squad on Sunday - that said both Efford and Aarons went off injured so that may be a way back in for him.

Mentioned this on our (Motherwell) thread a couple of weeks ago, McPake was at our Reserves game against Queens Park. I don't know if he was taking a look at anyone or just fancied an afternoon out in Lanarkshire. These were the teams fwiw: Motherwell: Oxborough, Mugabi, Devine (Dunachie, 45′), O’Donnell, Gould, Maguire (MacDonald, 71′), Cornelius, McKinstry (Hunter 45′), Shields (Moult, 71′), Aarons (Ross, 45′), Mahon. Subs not used: Connelly, Wells, Ferrie Queen’s Park: Heraghty, Mauchin, Naismith, Bannon, Bruce, Nicol (Thomson 80′), Jarrett, Brown (Biggar 65′), Longridge (McQuaid 73′), Moore (Fairlie 65′), McLeish (McCormick 45′). Subs not used: Graham, Russell, Reid, Lind.

One of the most interesting things about what we've seen in the early stages from Penney is what Hammell's asking him to do on the ball. He's mobile and dynamic - he had more passes (63) than anyone else on the park on Saturday and the 2nd highest number of touches (85) behind Goss (89) - shout out the Sean Goss redemption arc: This isn't a sideways dig at the bold Toby but even if he was fit there's absolutely no chance that he's a fit for what Hammell seems to want from his fullbacks. I think it may have been @crazylegsjoe_mfc who mentioned it a while back but it felt like Alexander wanted his full backs to be narrow centre backs which is probably why Mugabi and McGinley were better fits than SOD and Carroll who were getting instructions that were counter-intuitive to their natural game. Hammell's approach is a complete flip of that. Incidentally it's worth taking a look at our average positions from Saturday with Maguire closer to Sol and Goss the more advanced of the two:

I mean, did he? Not to white knight Alexander (or overly post about Motherwell in the Dundee thread) but he took us from joint bottom of the league to a comfortable 8th (we finished on the same points as 7th - 15 points clear of relegation and 9 points clear of the play-off). In his only full season he secured Top 6 and qualified for Europe. He finished 2021 with the 3rd highest points total in the league for the calendar year. He's the only manager outside the OF teams to win MOM 3 times in a calendar year - the only other managers to have done so have been Neil Lennon, Steven Gerrard, Alex McLeish, Brendan Rodgers and Gordon Strachan. He was by no means a popular manager and everything we've heard subsequent to his departure suggests that he'd lost the dressing room. Like every Motherwell manager he hit a poor run of form (Jan 22 - March 22). It seems the board had reservations about the direction we were going with him and the Sligo result put the tin lid on it but his win % as Motherwell manager was 39.1% compared with other "successful" Motherwell managers like Stephen Robinson (42%) and Stuart McCall (42.5%). As I say, he wasn't popular, neither fans nor it seems players enjoyed his specific brand of murderball and he misjudged a fair amount of stuff but I don't think he "struggled".

It's probably a moot point because everything we've heard has suggested that Hammell was a lock for the job and the others we spoke to were part of process but either way this was a really weird thing for CCM to Tweet out from their official. It seems we had Nick Montgomery on the shortlist to replace Alexander and according to the article that's linked it was off the back of a recruitment algorithm.

I'm not sure that's entirely fair given the only time we've seen SOD play RB under Hammell was when he was subbed on for McGinn against St Mirren in Hammell's first game in charge. Every other game he's been played out of position at LB.

It's probably worth watching the highlights of the Hearts game just to be astounded by McGinn's miss. I know the photo shows Gordon trying to block it but in real time from behind the goal we couldn't believe it hadn't gone in. There was a dreadful miss by Aberdeen's striker late on against Hibs but I think this eclipsed that. GIF'd it so @YassinMoutaouakil doesn't have to watch the highlights back.

I watched it back. Right on 44:29 he goes down and reaches for his knee. I don't know if his studs got caught in the turf or something but he doesn't go for the ball when McGinn passes it to him at 45:12 and is basically asking for the ball to be put out then walks off when the ball goes out of play at 45:28. Given he missed the whole of last season with an ACL injury it's probably not a surprise if he didn't want to risk it.

On the McGinn thing. Should he score? Absolutely. It's not quite the open goal folk are making out though. He still has to beat Gordon who's a big laddie, he can't go near post and tbqh he does the right thing going across him. Still though...fucking hell.

Aye, it was a debenture scheme. It's mentioned in the Wiki about Fir Park.

This is something I had kind of wondered as well - especially as we seem to have pivoted to an overt 4231. Essentially could KVV work as the #10? I suppose that's largely dictated by whether Moult can get to a place where he's able to run without being concerned his knees are going to crumble. Actually paying attention to the playback of the full 90 on Saturday it looks more like KVV moved out left and Spittal dropped in to the #10. Here we are set up for a Hearts dead ball:

I think the conversations about missing Slattery or the positives of Penney in an attacking sense are important in so much as it speaks to the point about us being an extreme work in progress where we're now finding out which players in the group are suited to how Hammell's wanting us to play. Basically players who perhaps fitted Alexander's more rigid approach will be asked to operate differently going forward. Anyway, this is mildly interesting - in a Hammellball vs Murderball sense. According to WhoScored.com we are: Top 5 for possession Top for Aerial duels won 4th for shots per game KVV is top for shots per game

Also, on the point about the defence (and meant as a statement of fact rather than a for or against argument) we've played 8 games so far this season under Hammell and kept clean sheets in 4 of them. Granted after every game we've conceded in Hammell's came out post-match saying that the goals we've lost have been "poor" but still...50% clean sheet rate is something I guess and dare I say is probably better than many would have expected prior to kick off against St Mirren having just shipped 3 over 2 legs against Sligo.

I mean, you can question the motivating factors but we signed 2 full backs and Hammell also released Ojala. Granted we signed McGinn because Alexander had a fall out with SOD and Penney (who looks good) was signed because both McGinley and Carroll are broken but it's fair to say that there's been some work on the defence. Tbh, watching the Bathgate Maldini nod the ball straight to Shankland's boot on Saturday reminded me of the fact that we cut Ojala loose on deadline day and kind of raises the question of whether or not one of the players Hammell was talking about us having tried (but failed) to get over the line was another centre back. Sidebar - a rare treat to hear @thisGRAEME hosting the Monday Terrace pod again. Smashing.

True but funny as that game was and their seethe around it we were 3-1 up having played them at Ibrox where we only had 950 in a 50k stadium. Anyway, there were plenty more **** in the home end as was shown in the videos of them walking away when Cammy Bell happened. Ultimately we have a 4,825 cap stand to accommodate away fans and 8,917 seats across 3 stands for home fans so it'd be fairly daft not to fill it if there's demand. It's literally what it was designed for. Hearts have sold it out recently as well IIRC. As it goes we've been gradually building our ST base and recently our home support has been hitting 5k which is growth on where we were. Given that uptick and the good work the club have been doing on that front suggests that we're on the right track. Our position is clear on the subject and Burrows eloquently made the case for why we're not going back to giving the OF an extra allocation in the thread below:

We've already cut the OF allocation and have done for the past few seasons. Long before it was fashionable. Not sure why us giving the away stand to away fans would bother Motherwell fans tbqh. The McLean stand (away) seats 4,825 it was purpose built to allow us to just dump all the away fans in the same stand. Technically St Johnstone get the same allocation as the OF.

Aye, to me that's pretty much it in a nutshell. If you're using it to look at the quality/chances we're creating (or not) then it's instructive. Trying to infer anything else from it? Less so...

Lifted these from FotMob, if nothing else it's an interesting overview of how Hammellball is evolving - for better or worse. When he got the job I think one of the biggest questions around him was whether he could effect change on the squad and the output from them. Most recent first:

I'm not sure tbh. It's the sort of thing that folk invariably say they're fine with until they actually find themselves watching a team free-flowing their way into a relegation scrap. That said, it's far easier to get behind a team that's actually creating chances and I'd argue that for quite a few folk we're probably ahead of where they expected us to be after Sligo bodied us out of Europe. I think Hammell's likely to get more leeway given who he is and also the circumstances around how he's landed in the job but ultimately his job is to actually manage. Given the direction of travel at the moment ie: we're creating a shitload of chances but not converting them and coughing up cheap goals - then it's up to him to address and fix that. It's a different problem to solve than the one he had when he was appointed and had to pick up the pieces Alexander had left behind. Listening to his post-match his chat about our defence is almost verbatim of what he said about the St Johnstone and Killie games....there's a point at which he's going to have to do something about it.

Hammell's post-match there saying the injuries "look likely to be bad ones"...

Funny you mention xG (it's not for everyone, I know) as this came up on the TL and honestly, some laugh like...

Depends on what our ambitions are this season tbh. If it's 10th and above then roughly 1 point per game average over the season should see that happen. Right now we still have a ppg average of 1.42 although obvs we still have Celtic and Rangers still to play. As it goes we're 4 points worse off than we were after 7 games last season (and we'd already played - and drawn with - the **** at that point). These were our results for the opening round of fixtures - our total for R1 was 15 points so we're 5 short of that just now. Stating the obvious but the St Johnstone, Killie and United games have fucked us a bit (especially as we were level in injury time against Saints, up against Kilie and missed a penalty against United). Comparing with last season: Hibs = TBC St Johnstone = down 1 point Livi = no change Dundee/Killie = down 3 points Aberdeen = no change Rangers = TBC Ross County = TBC Hearts = no change Celtic = TBC United = up 1 point St Mirren = up 2 points

I mean, Morris was last on the bench against Killie on the 27th. We've played 3 games since then plus a Reserve match and he hasn't been involved in any of those squads. That seems quite a while. I suppose it kind of depends whether Hammell's still actively looking to recruit and we need to shift some bodies (the bold Rolando pulling up seems...ominous - given his injury record).