Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[Desp]

3 minutes ago, MP_MFC said:

He is right to. O Brien is singlehandedly the worst player I remember us having in nearly 30 years watching us.

Bobby Donnelly likes this 

[Antiochas III]

I have totally blanked Mark O'Brien out of my memory.  I have no recollection of him 

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

17 minutes ago, Desp said:

Loving the fact that @crazylegsjoe still utterly detests Mark O'Brien 

I can excuse a lot of things in a Motherwell player, but he literally kicked the ball as hard as he could, the way he was facing every time he had it.

Used to just half folk when it was easier to win the ball too.

[capt_oats]

1 hour ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

There are definitely some parallels to the McCall season, but what I would say to that is that summer we seemed to cut our cloth - for example we replaced Hutchinson with Mark O'Brien on loan - downgrades don't get much more obvious than that.

This season I'd say that on paper, each player seems to be a better prospect than the one he replaced, with the obvious exception of Fox coming in and Gillespie going out, but there is context there.

I think we are performing okay back to middle. Mugabi performed reasonably competently on Saturday and although he's evidently not best suited to left-back, so did Lamie. Felt O'Hara could have imposed himself on the game a bit more, but DT and Campbell were both absolutely fine.

The front three is where our major problems lie. Hastie, Long and White have all been given a sufficient chance and done nothing. Hylton has made no impression off the bench and for me, although he seems to be coming out with a bit of credit, I don't think Seedorf has been particularly good, just not as bad as everyone else. There was one point on Saturday where he was properly bullied off the ball, you wouldn't have got that in the thunderdome era.

Lang was the one I was holding out great hope for, but you would honestly have forgotten he was playing on Saturday. The only one that hasn't had a fair crack of the whip yet is Tony Watt, I would start him on Thursday.

There's a whole chicken and egg situation with not wanting to keep non-performing forwards on. I'm always torn between wanting to give a front-three time to build a relationship and hooking them because I actually harbour ambitions of scoring a goal in the game.

I am dumbfounded that after three friendlies (and probably more bounce games) and five league games that Robinson has as much idea as we do on who to play up front. He shouldn't have given deals to his laddie and Ross MacIver if he didn't think they had the ability to be fringe players. 

As much as Robinson is mainly to blame here, whoever sanctioned all the deals deserves criticism too. It's worrying that in June, Robinson was pleading poverty in saying "it'll be 15-16 first team players with 8 or 9 young lads making up the squad", before signing every man and his dug. I actually do wonder how we are affording all of it as a fan-owned club during a pandemic.

In fairness MacIver's 1 year extension was signed in January - so at a point where the 'Rona had only just been reported as a thing in China. When he signed we wouldn't have been anticipating a circumstance in which the league was called, the game would be shut down and there would be no Reserve league this season.

I agree that the Robinson coming out with the 15-16 first team players chat looks weird now we're sitting with 23 + 7 'young" players but again, to devils advocate - the 15-16 first team players interview was mid-May so it's fair to say the landscape may have changed since then eg: our ST sales are roughly a similar number to last season (that wasn't a given), the season has started on time (again that wasn't 100%)...what was true around mid-May didn't necessarily hold when pre-season started in mid-June and signings started being confirmed.

There's every chance our budget has been negatively impacted but as I've mentioned a couple of times on here we're still down in terms of overall numbers if you factor in the two squads and we've brought in fewer than have moved on.

As others have said back to middle we seem fine but the forward area is the obvious concern. Even at this early stage it sounds like Robinson realises he's fucked it bringing Hastie back and we're getting absolutely no impact from substitutions but we're sitting with a maxed out squad.

Edited August 24, 2020 by capt_oats

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

13 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

There's every chance our budget has been negatively impacted but as I've mentioned a couple of times on here we're still down in terms of overall numbers if you factor in the two squads and we've brought in fewer than have moved on.

Are we? I thought I could map out a "one in, one out" for basically all changes to the squad from when the season finished in March.

Tait out - O'Donnell in
Hartley out - Lamie in
Manzinga out - White in
Ilic out - Hastie in
Aarons out - Lang in
Gillespie out - Fox in
Livingstone out - McGinley in

The only other one I can think of leaving is Rohan Ferguson, but he effectively wasn't part of our squad last season, having been on loan at Linfield all season.
 

[capt_oats]

6 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

Are we? I thought I could map out a "one in, one out" for basically all changes to the squad from when the season finished in March.

Tait out - O'Donnell in
Hartley out - Lamie in
Manzinga out - White in
Ilic out - Hastie in
Aarons out - Lang in
Gillespie out - Fox in
Livingstone out - McGinley in

The only other one I can think of leaving is Rohan Ferguson, but he effectively wasn't part of our squad last season, having been on loan at Linfield all season.

Slightly disingenuous on my part including Ferguson I grant you but here's my working (you forgot about Ndjoli):

Out:
First team: Hartley, Tait, Ferguson, Gillespie, Livingstone, Ilic, Manzinga, Aarons (end of loan), Ndjoli (end of loan), O'Hara (end of loan) = 10
Reserves: Hemfrey, Brown, Kettings, Starrs = 4
Total: 14

In:
First team: Lamie, White, McGinley, Fox, O'Donnell, O'Hara (loan made permanent), Hastie (loan), Lang (loan) = 8
Reserves: n/a
Total: 8

Edited August 24, 2020 by capt_oats

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

26 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

Slightly disingenuous on my part including Ferguson I grant you but here's my working (you forgot about Ndjoli):

Out:
First team: Hartley, Tait, Ferguson, Gillespie, Livingstone, Ilic, Manzinga, Aarons (end of loan), Ndjoli (end of loan), O'Hara (end of loan) = 10
Reserves: Hemfrey, Brown, Kettings, Starrs = 4
Total: 14

In:
First team: Lamie, White, McGinley, Fox, O'Donnell, O'Hara (loan made permanent), Hastie (loan), Lang (loan) = 8
Reserves: n/a
Total: 8

I absolutely did forget about Ndjoli  but I think that just about sums up how forgettable his spell was. I would still imagine, all things considered, our wage bill is probably up from last season. 

 

 

[thisGRAEME]

1 hour ago, Antiochas III said:

I have totally blanked Mark O'Brien out of my memory.  I have no recollection of him 

Sorry but I refuse to believe you don't remember this:

 

[Sinner-to-Saint]

Good luck for your European game this week. I always want Scottish sides to do well, but Kilmarnock's exit last season was particularly embarrassing and I'd hate to see that replicated this year. 

[Casagolda]

5 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

Sorry but I refuse to believe you don't remember this:

 

Or this.

 

[thisGRAEME]

2 minutes ago, Casagolda said:

Or this.

 

This was the final day wasn't it? McDonald sent off and convinced we were going down.

[Antiochas III]

For f**k sake guys.  There was a reason I blanked him from my memory 

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

2 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

This was the final day wasn't it? McDonald sent off and convinced we were going down.

It was the day we were confirmed in the playoffs. I remember after this performance from O'Brien we were all praying that Louis Laing would be fit for the playoffs. Looking back, Laing's best attribute was probably not being Mark O'Brien, the same way that Russell Griffiths' was not being Craig Samson.

[Mr Hahn]

5 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

It was the day we were confirmed in the playoffs. I remember after this performance from O'Brien we were all praying that Louis Laing would be fit for the playoffs. Looking back, Laing's best attribute was probably not being Mark O'Brien, the same way that Russell Griffiths' was not being Craig Samson.

I actually didn't mind Louis Laing. He wasn't the best defender we've ever had but thought he was serviceable at our level (cue those with better memories than me posting clips of him scoring OGs). How Mark O'Brien ever made it into professional football let alone a club as famous and magnificent as ours is beyond me.

[Busta Nut]

1 hour ago, Desp said:

Loving the fact that @crazylegsjoe still utterly detests Mark O'Brien 

I don't think there is a week where I don't hear a Mark O'Brien reference!

 

 

So can we get Polworth to step up now that Turnbull is off? I don't think his set piece assists, as important as they are, will cut it 

 

 

[Ron Aldo]

I'm not having Mark O'Brien being our worst defender ever when we've since had to endure Zak fucking Jules.

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

11 minutes ago, Ron Aldo said:

I'm not having Mark O'Brien being our worst defender ever when we've since had to endure Zak fucking Jules.

They would definitely be partners in my all-time back four. Flanked by Tony Straker and Yassin Moutaouakil.

[Busta Nut]

Who is the worst goalie of the last 30 years? Not having it as Stevie Woods.

[Desp]

9 minutes ago, Busta Nut said:

Who is the worst goalie of the last 30 years? Not having it as Stevie Woods.

Meldrum. Without doubt. He made Craig Samson look competent. 

[well fan for life]

Craig Samson was utterly fucking hopeless. I don't tend to be a particularly angry individual but the circumstances around which we gave Samson the number 1 jersey still leaves me absolutely fucking seething. 

Mark O'Brien still astounds me that teams have actually paid him real money to play for them. A total shambles of a player. I'd say he was a carthorse but I think carthorses actually served some purpose in the world.