Casagolda

Did Watt ever actually say that though?

We had our academy director in charge(for a day), being aided by a guy who’s only senior managerial experience was getting Albion Rovers relegated. We’ve a lot of work to do but we’ve still got a new manager to get and several new signings to make. Until that happens, there’s little point making predictions about how our season will go. Todays game wasn’t about performance, you can’t change things in one training session. It was about bouncing back from that shitfest on Thursday and we did. Three points, clean sheet and away up the road.

I think this is it for me. I didn't see the point sacking him last season when we weren't in any immediate danger. To be fair to him, we stumbled over the line and I was prepared to draw a line under it and let him rebuild this summer. These last two games though show nothings changed, except we might actually be getting worse. For all you could criticize the quality of Alexander's team last season, I always felt at least they had a bit of fight and dig about them. Even during the 2nd half of last season there was Ibrox, Almondvale, Dingwall, final game against Hearts etc where we pulled out some big results when required(through character more than good performances). Last night though, the players looked liked they'd chucked it and at that point there's really no return. Is it a surprise though? Constant rumours of fall outs have plagued his tenure and now he's stripped our captain of the armband and benched him before a ball had even been kicked this season. I can't imagine that had a positive influence on moral in the build up to a big European tie. The summer business has been poor, no harm to them but all 3 have started both legs and we'd have been no worse off if we'd just went with Sods, Goss and Efford. Alexander seemed to hint there wasn't much to spend but given he spent big last summer I'm not surprised the board aren't trusting him with any more money. We spent good money to recruit Ojala and Sol only for them to become back ups to the two guys they were supposed to be upgrades for- one of which was culpable in 2 of the 3 goals we conceded during the tie. Then there's the fans, there's literally nobody left fighting his corner. Even McGhee had more people supporting him towards the end. He's too far gone, there's no way back for him now and it's genuinely a case of when the board pull the trigger. The longer they wait, the less attractive we become. In summary, thanks for keeping us up Graham but don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out.

About to be signed on a permanent deal by all accounts, with Connelly heading back out on loan. Also KVV has signed a new deal as well apparently.

Middlesbrough set to sanction exit with Scottish trio in pursuit Not much but it’s an actual rumour I suppose. Does feel more like the kind of signing I would expect Robbo or Martindale to make right enough.

Looks like Lamie is staying then.

A decent player who seems to have had a good season in Dingwall, is he an upgrade on what he have?

O’Connor will be 23 by the start of next season and he’s only played about 30 games of professional football. I’d say for the good of his own career, he needs to go somewhere where he can play 30-40 games next season. We already have Mugabi, Ojala and Sol all signed up as well as seemingly trying to keep Lamie- so he’d be hanging about as 4th or 5th choice again at best. Even when the inevitable injuries and suspensions come, the club probably see more long term benefits to someone like Campbell(5 years his junior) getting those minutes than O’Connor.

I’d say so. I think cause it was the Covid season, people have tried their hardest to forget last year or pretend it didn’t happen. However we were an absolute gang, a squad filled with utter charlatans who showed a fair amount of disdain and disrespect for the football club. Seeing Gallagher floundering below us down in 10th while the likes of Lawless, Long and Polworth have all been relegated this season should be a reminder of what he walked into. One thing I think Alexander has done a good job of is getting rid of that poisonous element in the dressing room. This lot may lack quality, especially since Watt left but they clearly have a decent attitude, there’s a togetherness and a bit of fight about them. They seldom give in and the number of times they’ve fought back recently proves that. So does winning a crucial must win game in Dingwall yesterday with only about a dozen fit senior players. This was a rebuild season for me, top six with the possibility of Europe is probably beyond what I was expecting. Next season in my opinion, I’m now looking for Alexander to take the next step. Add some quality and progress the style of football to something a bit more pleasing on the eye, especially at Fir Park. This was the part Robinson struggled with at the end of his first season and unfortunately for Alexander, he has neither the goodwill of the support or the luxury of a David Turnbull to bail him out if he gets it wrong.

It was certainly ugly early doors but I suppose that wasn’t a surprise. We were bedding in a lot of new players, a fair number of whom like Slattery, Sol, Ojala, Shields etc missed most of pre-season. It was always going to be a bit clunky and getting a few wins on the board by any means was fine. Then after a wee wobbly spell in October, I thought we hit our stride in November/December and were beginning to look like a decent outfit. I mean that Dens Park game aside, we only conceded 3 goals in the other 7 games and kept 4 clean sheets. We battered the likes of Hearts, Utd(in farcical conditions) and were comfortable winners against Saints and Livi. Other than Watt leaving, f**k knows what’s happened? How you go from that to one clean sheet and one league win this year is genuinely fucking mental.

Unfortunately for Alexander, I don’t think he has the luxury of having a 3 million pound player sitting in our reserves ready to come in and transform the team. Funnily enough, I do think he’s in a similar position to where Robinson was in the summer of 2018. A good first half of the season was followed by a much poorer second half after we’d sold our best player in January. Robinson made a complete arse of it that summer though with his signing of Sammon and the whole improving 12-18 nonsense. Think we’d lost something like 5 games on the spin when he eventually decided to chuck Turnbull in around late October. I mean I quite liked Robinson but in retrospect, he was extremely lucky he had Turnbull to bail him out otherwise I don’t think he’d have even made it to January to change his ‘philosophy’.

Recruitment Came across this interview from our head of recruitment which I thought was quite intriguing. Seems like we could be going back down the Scandinavian route again this summer. Also thought the line - “This is still a new team… and you will have some bumps in the road putting it together. For us there was a plan in place last summer, but the plan did not necessarily come together.” - was quite interesting. Wonder what the general consensus of our summer recruitment is now. It seemed to flip flop throughout the season depending on how we were playing at the time but overall it seems to have gone alright? January however definitely felt like more of a lucky dip and I’m not sure any of them would truly be considered a success. Big Victor’s played once, Shaw has hardly played and despite a few goals Efford has been far from convincing. Suppose you could argue they all looked like short term measures though while the one long term investment in Tierney would probably be the only success.

Blackburn Rovers man emerging as target for Scottish Premiership duo Wonder what Eddie Nolan and Harry Smith are up to these days.

Not being funny(cause it’s not just you) but what’s the obsession with judging him over 13 games by the way? What about over 12 months last year when we had the most points of any team outside the OF in the entire calendar year? That’s despite us being bottom, having not won a game in 2 months when he arrived in January. Not by a small margin either, Hibs were the only other team who got within 14 points of Alexander’s total in 2021. We’ve went on our first proper poor run this year and questions can definitely be asked but even still, we’ve lost less than half of those 13 games stated and have lost back to back league games once since October. It’s been disappointing considering where we were on Boxing Day but we’ve hardly been in total free fall. So yes, Alexander can very much expect to keep his job. He’ll be getting judged on the job he’s done since he took over by those in power and top 6 I imagine will very much be seen as a successful season in their eyes- only our 3rd top half finish in the last 8 seasons btw. Put it this way, if Alexander did leave Fir Park tomorrow, he’d leave the club and team in an immensely better position than he found it in.

Could being the key word though. They could be worth millions. They could be playing for East Fife like Jamie Semple. Who I’m sure was being chased by hundreds of clubs and playing for our U20’s when he was only 14. By the time he was 20 he was released having only made half a dozen or so first team appearances. I’m sure between Turnbull, Campbell Scott, Hastie, McKinstry and MacLear the club must have made about 5m plus over the last few years. Not to mention what we could make in the future or what the first few contributed to the first team. As above, even this season Cornelius is coming onto a game and currently establishing himself as a regular. While Maguire has recently signed a new deal and shown at worst that he’s a decent squad player at this level. Johnston seems to be doing well on loan as well and will surely be in the first team mix for next season etc. I think people get too worked up about sensationalist articles about teenage wonder kids. It can go either way for a multitude of reasons at that age, a lot of which are out with the clubs control. What we can control, the club seems to do a pretty good job of and going by recent years they seem to get a lot more right than they get wrong in that department.

When you consider the service and support he’s been getting at times recently, I actually think Van Veen has been pretty decent ever since he came back into the team. He was excellent and scored against Aberdeen in the cup. He ragdolled big Dec with one arm to set up O’Hara’s equaliser the following week. He created our two best chances against County only for Shields and Woolery to fluff their lines. He set up Efford’s goal against Dundee. He scored and had our only other effort on target in Perth. Then on Saturday he gave a textbook performance in leading the line. Set up two and played a big part in another. If he’d tucked that chance away at the end instead of hitting the Cooper stand roof it would have been a just about as good a display as you could expect at our level. He’s far from perfect and he certainly won’t perform at that level every week but if you get the ball into his feet/chest and get runners off him he’ll do a decent job. Launch aimless 40 yards balls at him with little in the way of support and like most players he’ll struggle. For all the hype Watt was getting the first half of the season, KVV is now only a goal behind him and doing it for a fraction of the money Tony was looking for.

I thought the goals we lost while they could definitely have been defended better, were also a bit unlucky. O’Donnell does well to read the danger and tuck in but needs to put more height in his header for the first. Even still, the ball ricochet's off him and Sol 4 times before landing right at the feet of Brophy. Even the 2nd while I think Kelly has to be stronger, Sol heads it off Cornelius back and it drops right to the foot of a St Mirren player who’s a yard out. Alexander often gets criticised for being overly negative, where as yesterday we seemed much more open and as a result looked susceptible at times to being caught on the break(see the first goal). You can’t have it all ways and personally I’d rather see us win 4-2 than 1-0 so I had no real problem with how we approached yesterday. Even his subs were positive, there was no bringing off of a forward for another defender and sitting back for the last 20 mins. He chucked on Tierney and we went in search of more goals. Yesterday was far from perfect, it actually quite chaotic at times but at least it was exciting and enjoyable. It was only one game but between Slattery starting, to ditching the pointless long throws and actually scoring some goals it certainly felt like a step in the right direction.

I’ve never been his biggest fan. Has good physical attributes certainly- good engine, strong, decent in the air etc. The fact he runs about a lot seems to win a lot of plaudits among certain sections of our support. However he’s a fairly limited footballer, doesn’t see anything that isn’t 5 yards in front of him and lacks any sort of positional discipline. He’ll have the odd good game and pop up with a goal every so often but overall he’s a fairly beige mid-table jobber. Supposedly one of our top earners as well and I don’t think he’s ever come remotely close to justifying that.

To be fair we were joint bottom when he took over last January, we finished the year in 4th having taken more points than any non Old Firm team in 2021. Whatever you think of Alexander, he done an excellent job last year and a contract extension in January was hardly unmerited imho. As for the here and now, yeah today was probably the tipping point for me. We made a decent start, got the early goal etc all the things we ‘needed’ against a team at the bottom of the table and there was still no improvement. The largest and probably most expensive Motherwell squad assembled for some time and he used 1 of his 5 available subs today(with 10 mins to go) despite an insipid 2nd half display. When he took over, I felt Alexander done a good job getting a tune out of a poor and fairly limited squad. Now, on paper anyway, he has a pretty decent looking squad with plenty of options at least and he’s suffocating the life out of it. His stubbornness and negativity has driven him to this point and I don’t think he can have anyone to blame but himself. His previous 3 jobs all started well but ended up with him eventually getting sacked and I’m starting to think it’s not a coincidence.

He doesn’t overly convince but he’s now scored 2 in 2 I suppose? He’s scored twice as many goals for us as Watt has for Utd for a fraction of the cost! They were saying post match Hibs paid about 300k for the boy Melkersen and he along with Jasper looked a cut above anything we had going forward. Both defences looked suspect but the difference was we lacked any real quality when we got into the final third to take advantage. Can’t really fault the effort and we made a decent game of it in the circumstances but we shot ourselves in the foot with a wild first 5 mins. Mental for Mugabi as well as Roberts to be flying into challenges like that and we could easily have been down to 9 men. We done well to stay in the match but it felt like we needed a spark as the 2nd half began to drift. We played a full match a man short but for some reason Alexander waited till 10 mins to go to bring Woolery on? He still had another 3 subs to make as well but didn't use them until he somewhat pointlessly chucked Shields on in injury time. Don’t think this team had any real chance of winning the cup anyway but it felt like a win today could at least reignite our season and give everyone a bit of a lift for the run in. Another defeat though and with each passing week it looks like very much like we’re just going to limp to an 8th or 9th placed finish.

I can see both sides. The other night was dire. I can understand where welldaft is coming from in that in isolation, we probably should have taken something from that game. The problem is it wasn’t a one off and many of the problems are the same ones that have plagued our season since the break. Slow starts. Sloppy goals conceded. Missing good chances. Too many aimless punts. Seemingly random but constant chopping and changing of the team meaning we’re lacking in any sort of consistency or rhythm. On the other hand, take a look around the the league. Hibs, Aberdeen, both Dundee clubs etc all have bigger budgets than us and are all equally shite if not worse. None of them are playing good football either. There’s 5 points currently between 4th and 10th. Our problems are very much the leagues problems. People certainly have the right to voice their discontent for a product they’re paying good money for. On a basic level, the other night wasn’t good enough. However while we’re sitting 2 points off 4th with 4 games to the split and a win away from Hampden, there’s also absolutely no danger that Alexander is going anywhere.

It looks like he’s essentially just using today as an opportunity to give minutes to guys who haven’t played a lot recently. O’Donnell, Lamie, Woolery, Cornelius and Tierney all chucked in. Now Amaluzor, Shaw and Roberts getting 45 mins as well.

I think he arguably played both the best and worst football we’ve seen since McCall. The initial thunderdome era was great but between Moult’s last game in December 2017 and the change of style in January 2019, we played some of the worst football I’ve seen at Fir Park. For my money, worse than anything we’ve seen from Alexander this season. The Ross County cup exit was the absolute nadir, an utter shambles of a performance and he looked on the verge of the sack that day. However, the Turnbull inspired 5 months that followed was probably the most enjoyable football we’ve played at Fir Park since McCall’s 12-13 side . We were still a pretty decent watch the following season as well till the wheels came off in January when we lost Cole and Scott. Not really followed his time at Morecambe but it’ll be interesting to see which style turns up in Paisley.

Early days still for Efford but you can see there’s definitely something there. Having him and Shields full of pace and running either side of Van Veen worked a treat. Never been O’Hara’s biggest fan but I thought he was excellent yesterday and injected a similar energy to the midfield. It looked fairly slow and one paced on Wednesday night but O’Hara seemed to add a bit of dynamism that’s been lacking. Even seemed to rub off on Donnelly who had by far his best game of the season. Ojala took a few games to get up to speed at the start of the season and I’m hoping that explains Wednesday night and the opening 15 mins yesterday. After a shaky start here seemed to find his feet and you’ve just got to hope we can get a run of games out him without him breaking down again. Also fair play to Rickie Lamie. No throwing his toys out the pram cause he didn’t get his move and it was a match winning tackle to deny Jet at the back post in injury time. Some save from Kelly as well just after it. Our home record(outside the OF) continues to be excellent and despite our recent poor run with 3 of our next 4 league games at home to bottom half sides we have a real chance to cement our place in the top 6.

I think some of the stick he’s getting at the minute is probably a bit over the top but at times he really doesn’t help himself. He’s got 7 league goals this season and 3 of them have been headers in the 6 yard box. His double at Pittodrie were both good instinctive volleys from inside the box as well. Only really his free kick against Livi I would put in the spectacular category. The problem I think as @Al B has been saying is he just won’t keep it fucking simple. See if he just brought the ball in, laid it off to somebody and got his arse in the box- he’d be a very good striker. Unfortunately at 30 you can’t see him changing now. Which was fine when we had Watt, who could help compensate for his poorer games. Now though, we look to have backed ourselves into a corner with our January business as he’s literally the only striker at the club.