capt_oats

I thought the interview Burrows gave after the St Mirren game where he spoke about us not being a "hiring and firing club" was quite instructive in that respect. As was his point about it being very much a mutual decision rather than a straight up sacking. It's been discussed plenty on here but it's pretty difficult to sack a manager who has met all the KPIs given to him by the board. As it is he was given the opportunity to replace a few of the players who left from a squad that needed trimming anyway (eg: McGinn in for Grimshaw, Spittal in for Roberts and Morris in for Woolery (?)). He had a fairly low bar to clear in so much as he needed to beat a side sitting 5th in the LOI over two legs with a 24 man squad that he'd assembled. Tbh, I'd imagine that even the board would have been surprised that he failed against Sligo the way he did and from Burrows POV seeing us choke at home in front of 3 pretty much sold out stands of home support would have been a tough one to take given it's that sort of thing that we've been trying to build towards since the transition to fan ownership. The optics for the club sacking him now are very different to how it'd have looked had he been binned after finishing 5th and qualifying for Europe. To that point I don't think I've seen anyone other than Chris Sutton suggest that it's a harsh parting of ways.

As expected.

To me the Sligo games feel like Airdrie in the Betfred group writ large in that respect. Except without the get out of jail card of being able to qualify as group winners regardless. It's a moot point now but the impression I have is that the plan was to finish off our recruitment this month when you'd imagine some of those issues were planned to be addressed. Which is fine if you win the games you need to and you can sell the big picture thing. From the guy who brought us "we don't need to 'directly' replace Tony Watt" came: For all you needed to take whatever Alexander said to the press with a crate load of salt, to follow that up with losing both Sligo games to nil and conceding 3 with Bevis' clownshoes contribution means that in hindsight it's really another in the line of judgement calls Alexander got wildly wrong. Curiously a lot of those calls seemed to come in situations he was new to (competitive games in the LC groups in July, European qualification in July) and scenarios where he seems to have overestimated his own team and underestimated the opposition. Who knows who we might have been targeting to bring in this month but from where we were it feels like a fresh pair of eyes coming in and looking at the squad before the window closes is almost certainly welcome.

His record since January was 5 wins in 23 games (only 4 wins from 23 in 90 mins). There was a fair bit of chat about Alexander over on our thread yesterday after a statement was released on his behalf by the LMA in England. The consensus is pretty much that he's salvaged a fair part of his reputation by leaving when he has. Davidson's right in so much as the Sligo games cost Alexander his job but it was very much a "final straw" situation. Burrows was keen to point out that while the board were planning to discuss the manager as a result of getting bodied out of Europe it was actually Alexander that came to the board last Friday AM and it was that conversation that expedited his leaving and it's definitely a mutual decision rather than a straight up sacking. The word of the day last Friday was "toxicity" in so much as it was apparently the toxicity towards Alexander from the fans that prompted him to mutually consent. Which is fair enough, he'd clearly realised that he'd run out of road and it was pretty sensible reputation management on his part. Tbh, I'm not sure that the Motherwell fans reaction was any more "toxic" after Sligo than the reaction from Saints fans after Kelty but it seems like Davidson's been more willing to dig in while Alexander's definitely seen the bigger picture and realised that he'd no room left to manoeuvre (possibly even with the board). It's been interesting reading the parallels between Alexander with us since January and Davidson with you guys since...actually I've no idea how long it's been.

Aye, it seems to be a *thing* the LMA do. Here's one from Gary Monk. Others from: Lee Bowyer - https://leaguemanagers.com/news/lma-latest/lee-bowyer-statement/ Dean Smith - https://leaguemanagers.com/news/lma-latest/dean-smith-statement/ Sean Dyche - https://leaguemanagers.com/news/lma-latest/sean-dyche-statement/ Daniel Farke - https://leaguemanagers.com/news/lma-latest/daniel-farke-statement/ Darren Ferguson - https://leaguemanagers.com/news/lma-latest/darren-ferguson-statement2/ Gary Bowyer - https://leaguemanagers.com/news/lma-latest/gary-bowyer-statement/ Sabri Lamouchi - https://leaguemanagers.com/news/lma-latest/sabri-lamouchi-statement/ Frank Lampard - https://leaguemanagers.com/news/lma-latest/frank-lampard-statement/ Chris Wilder - https://leaguemanagers.com/news/lma-latest/chris-wilder-statement/ Grant McCann - https://leaguemanagers.com/news/lma-latest/grant-mccann-statement/ Lee Johnson - https://leaguemanagers.com/news/lma-latest/lee-johnson-statement-feb-22/ Paul Tisdale - https://leaguemanagers.com/news/lma-latest/paul-tisdale-statement/ Martin O'Neill - https://leaguemanagers.com/news/lma-latest/martin-oneill-statement/

For me Alexander goes down as a relatively successful Motherwell manager albeit not a particularly popular one. As @Swello says, it was absolutely the right time for him to leave and tbh, I don't really take issue with that statement Alexander's put out via the LMA. He's not said anything there that isn't true and as it's effectively a calling card for future employment I don't really blame him for glossing over the last 6 months or whatever.

Aye, broadly this has been my reservation about Valakari since he was first quoted for the job years ago. It feels like there's a risk of him pitching up and trying to change the way we play overnight - "Right lads, we're a possession based team now. Go out and do that". It's all well and good having a style of play you're committed to but invariably for a Motherwell manager, given our relative position in the league, you need to be pragmatic enough to be able to work with what you have and adapt accordingly. To me, as @well fan for life alludes to above, between KVV, Spittal, Slattery, Goss and Tierney (especially Tierney) we have a handful of players who should allow us to play a bit of football but you're not going to change the overall culture immediately. Tbf, @Al B put it best the other day in saying:

Your boy Greg Marshall's done a report on Valakari.

Tbf, the article Scott Burns published the other day re: timeline suggested that there were options the club wanted to "sound out". I took that as the implication that it was people who wouldn't necessarily apply but we'd like to speak to in order to gauge interest from them in taking the job. Someone like Lambert is probably a good example of that. I'd put Ferguson in that category as well. As I mentioned before, the suggestion was that Alexander was approached by us rather than him applying. Given the fact Alexander had been on relatively thin ice as long as he had it'd be a surprise if the board didn't have a wish list of potential replacements floating around. For all I get the impression Lambert would be an awkward fit with the brief Burrows outlined for the job the other day I'd like to think that we'd at least speak to him given his level of experience.

There was a news story published at the time.

To that point, it's probably worth revisiting the past decade or so of finances and it's always worth remembering Dempster's wacky approach to budgets/budgeting. Here are the P&L figures going back to 2010/11: 2010/11: £541,863 2011/12: (£600,000) 2012/13: (£184,500) 2013/14: (£184,854) 2014/15: (£1,150,000) 2015/16: (£412,000) 2016/17: (£104,000) 2017/18: £1,720,000 2018/19: (£436,000) 2019/20: £346,590 2020/21: £3,575,615 The transition to fan ownership happened earlier than planned in 2016 with Hutchison bailing - I'm sure it's no coincidence that it's around that point where things start to turn from red to black.

Page 1991 is it?

Pretty sure I posted this before years ago but here's Simo in discussion with fans when he'd just taken over at Tromsø. Tbh, I'd imagine this is pretty much his spiel for a job interview. He speaks well and again, talks fondly of his time at Motherwell. For some reason I also found myself with an urge for a thirst-quenching Fanta.

I take it we played Dundee in a bounce game today given that looks very much like Dalziel Park.

Just did a quick Google search and it turns out Simo's been asked about the job by the Finnish press. He didn't exactly rule it out. Google translate-tastic.

Fwiw, here's quite a nice article from Nick McPheat about the general situation.

It's a slightly unusual circumstance with this recruitment process in so much as for the first time in ages we're not parachuting a manager in mid-season or asking them to oversee a massive squad overhaul. Baraclough was appointed 13th December 2014 after 16 games with us 10th on 11 points McGhee was appointed 13th October 2015 after 10 games with us 9th on 10 points Robinson was appointed as caretaker 28th February 2017 after 26 games with us 11th on 24 points and permanent on 15th March after 28 games on 27 points Alexander was appointed 7th January 2021 after 20 games with us 11th on 17 points As it stands we've played 1 game (which we won), the window is still open for another month, though the squad is largely in place it's still incomplete - we'd have been expecting to add a few more bodies even if Alexander hadn't mutually consented and there's scope for whoever gets the job to bring in their own assistant and probably a coach. I'd always felt that the circumstances in which we were recruiting previously had us erring on the side of caution with us looking for the safe pair of hands/familiar option which isn't a criticism but in turn it meant that someone like Simo might have been viewed as too much of a risk given he'd be coming in from Scandinavian football and from the interviews I've seen of him he's someone who seems to have an idea of how he wants to play the game rather than the more 'pragmatic' approach that's worked reasonably well for us in recent years. I know it's generally accepted by the realists on here that in terms of the Motherwell job "style" is pretty far down our list of priorities but with the general fall out from the Graham Alexander Experience I half-wonder whether it's a point that may be discussed a bit more this time round than it has previously

For avoidance of doubt please add me to the "Not Kevin Thomson thank you very much" list.

Was just away to post that. The only thing that article really tells us is that Kevin Thomson's agent is desperate to let everyone know his client has sent his CV in and that Scott Burns reads Motherwell Twitter. That said it does give an idea of timeline - 50 "serious" applications so far, longlist by midweek, shortlist by the end of the week, interviews next week. The club have people they want to sound out as well, which I'd guess would be candidates who wouldn't necessarily apply. IIRC Alexander was a case of us approaching him via his agent asking if he'd be interested rather than him getting in touch with us. If I was to put 50p on our next manager it'd be going on one of the group that the club already have earmarked rather than someone soliciting their CV.

Posting this in here from our thread, it's been pointed out before but you have to go back to the early 80s for the last time we appointed a manager from another Scottish club. Broadly speaking there's a profile that has served the club reasonably well in making managerial appointments.

re-upping this post from May about the general profile of managers we've tended to go for.

A Sam Levinson HBO show produced by A24? Sign.me.fucking.up...