crazylegsjoe_mfc

I’m sure there was a season Man Utd finished outside the top four and won the Europa League and got the last champions league place for England at the expense of the team that finished fourth, so I don’t think there are extra places.

I think McCall was fortunate he inherited a team with Randolph, Hammell, Hateley, Hutchinson, Craigan, Jennings, Lasley, Murphy, Humphrey and Sutton. That was certainly a decent start. I also think he was fortunate that he didn’t suffer any long term injuries that adversely affected his starting XI that I can recall. (No disrespect to Steven Saunders). However, you really can’t ignore that he got us 3rd, 2nd and 2nd and gave me the best Motherwell team to watch that I’ve ever seen. I think he created a good atmosphere that players liked playing under and had the resource to sign good players. I don’t think it was a coincidence when Sutton’s partner up front went from either Faddy or Anier to a non-league right back that he started to suffer. I think inheriting a squad of decent players and making it enjoyable environment is style. Kind of the opposite from Robinson, his style seems to be solving a crisis (be it someone else’s or one he’s made for himself). What I would say has changed most since then, is probably the drop off in quality between the starting eleven and the bench. Since then, we’ve had squads filled with average players with not much between them, yet under McCall we finished high up the league with a great starting eleven with a bench of Hollis, Daley and 5 youths half of the time.

Alexander might have met his KPIs by getting to the top six, but in doing so he’s zapped all enjoyment and enthusiasm I get out of watching Motherwell. I’ve missed several home games this season with other things on, so it is making me think twice about renewing my season ticket next season and just paying at the gate. Part of me thinks I’ll get a season ticket to support the funds at the club, but there’s really nothing else in life, with low value for money with an unenjoyable end product that you’d consider. Another thing that’s worries me next season is how little our team looks set to change. If we are running with a smaller squad next season, say if it’s 22 with backup everywhere, to me that means we’re in the market for a centre-back, two centre mids and two forwards. You wouldn’t be surprised to see two of those five vacancies being filled by Cornelius and Lamie either, so you’re potentially looking at 3 signings. Obviously that could be upped if some under contract players move on (you could see Carroll moving for example) but still. Normally, at this stage of the season, if on the park is grim watching, you at least know a rebuild is around the corner, but this year it’s not.

In light of that, in hindsight, would you say it was a bad move pushing the boat out to get Kelly and offloading Carson in the summer there? Or does the age difference and Carson's injury record mitigate that? I would definitely place him below Ruddy and Randolph. They're undoubtedly the best two keepers we've had in recent history. Gillespie and Carson, I'm perhaps more on the fence. That said, I don't see Newcastle signing Kelly on a four-year deal when his contract expires, but I think Kelly hasn't yet had the fortune of playing behind a good Motherwell side, that Gillespie and Carson perhaps have/did. Pretty much every game Kelly has played for Motherwell, the team has had a lot of defending to do.

I think any criticism of Kelly is pretty harsh. I don't think he's the answer to Scotland's goalkeeping future, or capable of nailing a place down at a much higher level, but he is absolutely up there with, if not, the best goalkeeper Motherwell can attract. You also have to remember that our tactics for a good part of the season have been just to allow the other team to have the ball. When you have to defend that so relentlessly, it's only human that a mistake comes in now and then. Fortunately not on twitter, so I'm unable to see what mile out stuff he shares there.

Very similar timeline to me. That was the first game I saw us win. Had seen us draw 1-1 with Accies in the cup and concede a late goal to lose 1-0 to Hearts.

I've never been the biggest fan of claret away tops for some reason and for me, that one is up there with the worst of them. The jester strip is up there with the worst Motherwell home tops design wise, but it holds a certain nostalgia for me, as it was the strip we wore when I first started going to games.

Retrofcshirts on instagram are taking pre-orders for a remake of this. With any remake, I would always wait until I see the product rather than pre-ordering right enough.

Not so sure about this new scouting model we have if it was lauding the fact we signed Ojala, Efford and Solholm. We went to all that bother to sing two centre halves who have proved to be worse than the considered fourth choice in the summer. Efford over Woolery baffles me. Efford offers nothing and with Woolery, we strangely appeared to wait ages on him hitting a good run of form, then when he did, we’ve dropped him.

The timing of us getting into Europe was great for me. Between the ages of 18 - 24, we were in Europe 6 years out of 7 and I was fortunate to get some great memories on trips away. The game in Stjarnan was guff, but chilling in the blue lagoon with a pint the next day is the perfect tonic to any defeat. Now I’m into my 30s with different commitments than I had back then, if you were to offer me winning a cup or a run in Europe, having already done one, I’d definitely take the other now.

There was a time when he’d have been a very good signing for us, but It’s not aged 35 having just recovered from a cruciate injury.

That was my thoughts exactly too. I was hoping we'd maybe get a fast striker or a skilful striker to compliment what we already had and we ended up with another one exactly the same.

@Handsome_Devil’s point about Goss isn’t something I’d joined the dots about, but is spot on. I was actually warming to him before Slattery went out the team. Maybe Goss has been partially a victim of his environment. Oh and whilst he wasn’t the best passer we’ve ever seen, if Sol can be a fraction of the player that Stephen Craigan was for Motherwell, we’ll be doing alright.

Just had a look, seems like his teams scored 3 or more regularly enough. There was even a 5-4 game when he was at Fleetwood. In his last full season at Salford, they only scored 3 times or more twice in 37 league games before the pandemic. I wonder if that was the shift in his mentality. This bit of his wiki about him leaving Scunthorpe seems particularly familiar. They only won 1 out of his last 13 games there.

KVV has 10 goals in all competitions, 8 in the league. Saturday was his only league goal since Boxing Day. It would be interesting to see how Alexander managed victories at his other teams. The only time we’ve scored 3 in the league under him was a 3-1 win v Livingston last season and even then, he chucked Gallagher and McGinley on as late subs. That Brophy game mentioned above was a good example of it. O’Hara on for Woolery when we were 2-0 up still with 25 minutes to go.

It would genuinely take a lot for me now to be moved about a player that's not Liam Kelly leaving. It's been covered above, but for having paid a nominal fee and had him as a reported high-earner, I'm disappointed with the output we've had from him over the past two seasons. That said, he would get in my starting eleven just now. Take from that what you will.

It was the season before I started going to games, so it’s probably easier for me to mention not having lived through the trauma!

Saturday saw Alexander reach an almost twenty year record in the period of time that a single Motherwell manager has gone without a league win. The last time we went this long without one was between September and December 2002. At that point, we were deep into administration and Butcher was forced to play youth players and the likes of Daniel Sengewald. Granted, Grezza's winless spell has had five draws to Butcher's one, but I can't see us ending our winless spell like with a 6-1 win like we did back then. The next record in his sights is Alex McLeish's 15 games from 1995/96. Personally, I think Grezza has dug himself a hole that he didn't need to dig that's made his position pretty untenable. Before the break, we just about had a formula that was working. The defence was changing more than we'd like, but in midfield there was that run of six games where the midfield was the same and even after that, the midfield was consistently made up of Slattery, Goss and one other, with the front three set in stone. Why did he feel the need to rip all of this up, when we were 4th in the table? Why not give Roberts a run of six games in Watt's place and let him bed in? Before the break, if any members of our starting eleven weren't the standard of footballer we'd like them to be, at least they were focused, match-fit, well drilled and used to playing with each other. We're now in a catch twenty-two situation. The more the team gets changed, the more it needs to get changed. With the talk about winning ugly and losing ugly, what I would say is that whilst losing ugly is never nice, you can be consoled a lot better when you know your team are capable of producing better, but when winning ugly is as good as it gets, it will lead to easier disgruntlement. I watch Motherwell games to see us win, but if I had to ask myself which games this season I've genuinely been entertained by our style of play, other than the 2-0 win over Hearts in November, I would struggle to pick one.

I’ve just dropped the good lady at an ABBA night at the centenary suite and I have to say even that visit to Fir Park sounds far more appealing than sitting through the St. Mirren game next week.

To be fair, I’ve always been against Las getting the job. I thought like Goodwin, if he wanted to be manager at the club where he was held in high regard, his best bet was to go away and prove himself down the leagues then get the job on merit, rather than chance. However, that Accies game in question, I feel is harsh to judge him by. I don’t think you could really look at who was available to him that day and see much different. No manager could have compensated for how Chapman played that day. I’m actually at the stage where I don’t think giving him it is a bad idea. This time I think a lot of our better players aren’t playing - Woolery, Slattery etc. I get absolutely nothing from watching us these days. The results are shite and there’s barely even a passage of play that’s exciting to watch, never mind an entire game.

Robinson left of his own accord. Alexander strikes me as someone who may wait until he gets pushed.

The thing I’ve always found peculiar about all this tinkering that he’s doing is that in any interview you hear from him, he talks about demanding and wanting to play every game. The guy got to quadruple figures in career games and played 61 games in a season aged 37. He’s either got a totally different mindset now or he doesn’t think players far younger than that, playing at what you’d probably call a lower level, aren’t capable of that.

That's the one. In this run of form Watt, Woolery, Ojala and Kelly started all six matches and Mugabi started 5. That also uncoincidentally is our best run of six games all season - 13 points from 18. I'm not for a minute suggesting that we all of a sudden start Grimmy again, I know that Ojala didn't look as slow and cumbersome then as he does now and I know that we no longer have Watt and we're quite evidently missing him - but I think this does show at that moment in time, Alexander knew what his best team was and relationships were forming on the park. The problem now is that the side has been tinkered within an inch of its life and is in terrible form, which makes it very hard to settle. If we go out tomorrow and don't get a good result in Perth, there will be calls and temptations to change it again for St. Mirren. Looking back on that six game spell, I think replacing the departing Watt with Roberts and probably Cornelius for Grimmy, that wouldn't be a million miles off a settled team that could compete.

I make it 20 I think. However, chopping and changing is fairly recent in midfield. The first half of the season we played the same midfield 6 games in a row. I guess it’s a lot easier to get a combination of 3 in midfield than it is a 4 or 5 at the back.

I think having a settled defence is massively important in any team and I think that's been one of our downfalls this season. Having looked at it, we've made at least one change to our defence in 24 / 38 competitive games this season. We've had 21 different combinations used in defence. The longest we've gone without a change to personnel or shape is three games.