capt_oats

This has been a great laugh. Well done everyone. Long live the cinch.

Aye, the other thing is that the suspensions for the front 3 are clearly in the post and with our numbers as they are it probably doesn't take much for him to see those around the fringes of the squad get an opportunity. It's just if everyone is fit and settled there seems some excess.

We've been far more secret squirrel about injuries under Alexander than we were with Robinson so Shields could be fit and just not making the squad or he could be out with a knock and no one's the wiser. It's been mentioned before but he's had a tough start to his Motherwell career, he picked up a hamstring injury and missed a chunk of pre-season then was given a couple of chances against St Johnstone in the league and Dundee in the cup and didn't really take them (literally in the Dundee game - he hit the bar). Since then we've been on good form results wise and we have a bit of depth up front - Shields has Watt, Van Veen, Woolery and Roberts ahead of him in terms of starting players and Amaluzor and the lesser spotted Lawless (who also hasn't been seen since that Dundee game in the cup) as reserves. We've a pretty big squad and I'd still kind of expect a few to go out on loan beyond Max Johnston but who knows. There are a clutch of players who are unlikely to start but are probably pretty mindful about cover given we've not been able put out a settled defence in consecutive weeks and we've even seen a couple of injuries in midfield mean Robbie Crawford's found himself back on the bench lately. Given Shields is not long in the door and has a 3 year deal I'd be surprised if we loaned him out as soon after signing but equally given the lack of reserve fitba' it would kind of make sense for a couple of those who aren't getting competitive games to get a short loan spell.

I mean, it's implied rather than outright eh?

Just look at him...

WE CANNOT BE STOPPED

Unbeaten in 6. Only team to have scored in every league game.

I'm guessing it's an acquired taste but I've been enjoying Alexander's press conferences. He has absolutely zero time anyone's bullshit. His "I don't see the difference between home matches and away matches" and cutting off whoever was asking him about County's "tough start to the season" with "I don't want to see us pulled in with a group of teams that people think they should beat" has some sass...

Just popping in to the thread to say that the 93/94 and 94/95 teams remain my all-time favourite Motherwell sides. McLeish inherited a genuinely great team from McLean then it all went sideways in a big way.

Aye, as has been said before it's not a Motherwell specific thing and they're not doing it to get people bent out of shape. It's just a natural knock on from the Twitter app evolving and we seem to be the sort of the club who pay attention to that sort of stuff (which is a good thing) and aim to get the most out our socials in terms of clicks and engagement. It's literally their job like. I was having a scroll through Leeds' timeline the other night after McKinstry came on and it's the same thing. Updates on kick-off, goals, subs and a wee summary here and there. The play-by-play approach is pretty much the equivalent to VHS & Betamax now.

I got the impression he was in as a trialist to have a look at rather than it being a case of us being "close" to signing him. There's also the fact that Alexander had him at Scunthorpe so there's a chance we were doing him a turn to get him back involved given he'd taken a step away from the game after he left Dundee. He played a half in the friendly against Dumbarton but I don't think was ever really mentioned again after that. From memory we played 7 "trialists" of varying degrees of "trial" in that game eg: KVV got a run out but was pretty much signed, he just hadn't been announced, Tom King the GK played while we were waiting on Kelly being confirmed (King ended signing for Salford as soon as we announced Kelly). O'Connor also played but we didn't sign him until we needed bodies for the LC groups on 13th July (18 days after the Dumbarton game). Looking at Viva Motherwell's Twitter feed the others were Paweł Żuk, Joe Muscatt (who Alexander had on loan at Salford from Bolton) and an unnamed player.

On one hand from the way Alexander's talked about us "using the squad" it feels like horses for courses is kind of an option for him, on the other he's been vocal about the whole if you're playing/training well you get the jersey bit. So f**k knows re: the Toby/Carroll conundrum. No doubt Carroll offers delivery and is the natural full back of the two but also he got himself a fucking daft red card and Toby's not done much wrong when he's filled in. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Goss seems an easier one in so much as he arrived at the club later but unlike Sondre hadn't been playing regularly. If he's coming back from a knock I'd imagine he'd take Crawford's place on the bench and we'd look to get him on for 30 mins rather than break up the midfield 3 who have been getting a run together..

Same Tweet seemed to suggest that big Sondre not being involved was a precaution.

+1 on the de-hype for the County game. I've no real expectations here. It's still early days in the season and it's still pretty much a brand new squad. We might win, we might lose. It's absolutely the sort of fixture we've fucked up in the past (a 1-2 loss from being 1-0 up after winning 3 on the bounce in 19/20), equally it's a fixture we've won comfortably (4-0 last season coming off the back of a 1-5 scudding by Rangers). Broadly that's a different conversation to being pleasantly surprised with how the start to the season has gone given the scale of the turnover of players and fairly high-risk shift in transfer strategy. This was a window that needed to be spot on given we needed to replace/improve on half our starting XI. As it stands we're sitting 4th, are the only team in the league who have scored in every league game and from our last 5 unbeaten of the 3 goals we've conceded 1 was an OG and another was offside. That all feels very different to where we were this time last season (literally bottom of the league after 6 games and failed to score in 5 of those 6). So for me right now it's very much a case of life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. To touch on the point that we've scored in every league game so far as part of a broader trend, Alexander's been in charge for 24 league games so far and we've failed to score in only 3 of them (12.5%). One of those we were down to 10 men and another was the 17 players injured/unavailable game (the third was a 0-0 draw):

Absolutely.

He's just scored the winning pen in their shoot out. Does make me wonder if a first team appearance triggers an add-on or the like.

McKinstry makes his Leeds debut.

To that point, here's the shot map from the Aberdeen and Rangers games. Of Aberdeen's 7 shots on target 5 of them were from the edge of the box or further. Of Rangers' 7 shots on target 4 were from the edge of the box or further(and the one they scored was offside). All shots in the spoiler. Aberdeen 13 of 21 outside the box. Rangers 13 of 24 outside the box.

It's not the same thing but I've been thinking for a while about the difference between this team/set-up and the positions we found ourselves under Robinson where post-match he'd have the excuse (for want of a better word) about us being a "young" side and talk about naivety or whatever. That game against County where we were up with 15 to go and ended up down to 10 men and shipping 2 springs to mind. This version of the team and #Grezzaball seems to put us in a much better place in terms of "game management" and a player like Slattery (who's still only 22 and has a handful of first team games) seems to be absolutely massive in making that work. I suppose the point I'm getting at is that while teams are having a shitload of possession against us it feels less "backs against the wall" than it would have previously because there's more of an element of control in what we're doing. Or something. Also, just to add, it was an absolute treat to find @thisGRAEME was doing The Terrace pod after the result on Sunday and after my initial caution I'm more than happy to fall in line with his shout that we've had the best window of any team in the league.

Not to wilfully give "RangersReview55" traffic but in light of the whole 'dead time' narrative that was being pushed yesterday this breakdown of our goal tickled me. We've been taking our cues from Mancini's Italy lads...I mean, maybe we have IDK. Perhaps the media team can ask #Grezza or get him on The Coach's Voice to do a bit, you can't avoid Jack Ross on that account at the moment. In fact Lasley was a speaker for them the other week as well.

Something that will be interesting is how we progress this group. Assuming Alexander is still here next season etc. One of the problematic aspects with Robinson was that he'd tend to settle on his "best XI" and that would be that...which led to the various "12-18" recruitment windows. I thought it was notable that Alexander was talking up the "squad" in his post-match yesterday: "There's a work ethic from the players not in the team, to support and compete and try and get in the team. We have 20 players, 20 odd players competing together and competing against each other to make each other better." It'll be interesting to see what sort of business we do in January and similarly whether we replicate the more "patient" approach of bringing players in or if having a solid core of players contracted means we might focus on pre-contracts. On the face of it we've got a good base of players tied down on long term deals and tbh, it feels like there are a handful with a year to go that we'd be relatively happy to extend again based on their current involvement (acknowledging we're only 6 games into the league season). As an aside, here's the breakdown of goal timings for and against this season. Taken from SoccerStats. Last season for context.