Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[Marinello]

Some suggest our problems have only arisen since the winter break. Cast our minds back to the first half of the season when we seriously lucked out at home to Dundee and RC. Also and again at home  , other than a 15 minute spell we were also rans against St Mirren. 

What I feel we are now seeing is by and large the same team full of journeymen but now no longer getting the luck of before to shield us from your dreadfullness. Nor do we have TW to bail us out .

As evidence look at our 2 recent shows vs County, our draw against a second string Dundee and yesterday when SJ played like a team drawn from the street 

In essence we are utterly dreadful compounded by tactical buffoonery , weekly tombola selections and a seemingly self defeating desire not to play our best players as per Woolery, Slattery and the seldom seen Shaw .

Fortunately our points advantage over SJ and Dundee should spare us a relegation dog fight but as for next season

 

 

[ZX1886]

Saints are only 9pts behind with us still having to play them again post-split. This has an absolute disaster written all over it.

[capt_oats]

15 hours ago, Casagolda said:

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. 

Aye, the idea that it was a poor decision to extend his deal is a complete nonsense. He'd had a good (exceptional?) first calendar year in terms of the turnaround and points collected (and we were sitting 4th in the league). IIRC his original deal expired next year so assuming we were planning on trying to create some sort of culture of stability sorting out a new deal made sense.

But he's absolutely fucked this and it's all just very, very weird in so much as it's largely on him and (bad) choices made. He's clearly a capable manager and the squad is good enough but aye, where we are at the moment is mental.

As I was posting the other day through 2021 he was broadly picking a relatively settled side and while it may not have been pretty it was largely effective - the results proved that.

Since the winter break, for whatever reason, he's stopped playing a bunch of those players - Slattery's gone from 17 starts in 20 league games to not even getting off the bench (hasn't started a game since United at Tannadice February 9th), Woolery 18 starts from 20 to getting chucked on as a sub (he's started 5 of our last 11 league games).

I've said before that I get the idea of load management and "using the squad" and that's fine if it's not adversely affecting results but right now It's like some sort of wild self-sabotage.

[Handsome_Devil]

29 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

Aye, the idea that it was a poor decision to extend his deal is a complete nonsense. He'd had a good (exceptional?) first calendar year in terms of the turnaround and points collected (and we were sitting 4th in the league). IIRC his original deal expired next year so assuming we were planning on trying to create some sort of culture of stability sorting out a new deal made sense.

Given his previous record of starting well and struggling there was no reason to extend his deal before he'd shown he'd avoid that same slump with us. On the back of the year and in particular the run up to Xmas it was hard to be mega negative about it but it certainly seemed pointless to me. With our style of football and the tight nature of the league he wasn't attracting interest from anywhere else (publicly at least) and with his previous deal we could have easily waited till now or summer to extend it. The potential reward from extending him - that he became so attractive he was poached and we would bank more money should he leave essentially - seemed a very dubious reward in contrast to the risk of costing us more should the wheels fall off the wagon sometime in the future.

In contrast to some folk I don't have major issues with the leadership of the club, I think by and large they get things right and in general we're well run. But this decision was a strange one even before our current form.

[Doctor Manhattan]

At least when I was raging about the performances, even more so than the results, I was feeling something. This morning there's just a numb sort of emptiness, though, and that's worse. The manager churning out wittering pish after every non-performance is hardly helping, and any lingering hope that he can pull a rabbit out a magic hat next game is pretty much gone now.

Even more than anger or disappointment, that's the sort of cumulative apathy that will see people stop buying season tickets, and cancelling their subscriptions to the Well Society just when they're most needed. 

[Handsome_Devil]

8 minutes ago, Doctor Manhattan said:

Even more than anger or disappointment, that's the sort of cumulative apathy that will see people stop buying season tickets, and cancelling their subscriptions to the Well Society just when they're most needed. 

Jim McMahon was sitting among the support yesterday rather than the prawn sandwich seats. I've no idea how connected he usually is to the feelings of us in the humble masses but safe to say he'll have little doubt after that display.

[ZX1886]

I don’t think any criticism of the club over this is fair and certainly not of our fan-ownership model. Although not excited by the brand of football on show, at the start of January, I along with most Motherwell fans welcomed the new contract for Graham Alexander, mainly because the idea of a bigger club coming in and taking him was creeping into place. Results were good, the club were covering their base and making sure we got a fee if someone was to show interest. There was very little, if any, complaints about this at the time.

As for Tony Watt. There is one person to blame for that entire situation and that’s Tony Watt. After a promising couple of months he left us for Dundee f***ing United. Not only that, he was clearly pushing the club for the deal to go through immediately and completely lost the fans. There is absolutely no way he should’ve been kept anywhere near the club after that.

We lost the league’s top goalscorer and should’ve replaced him, instead GA pushed the idea that we didn’t need to... clearly we did. That’s on the manager.

[YassinMoutaouakil]

If there's one silver lining it's that I think the squad is, by and large,  pretty decent.  There's a few- Kelly, Slattery,  maybe Cornelius and Tierney- that could potentially step up a level at some point, then the vast majority of the rest are acceptable midtable top flight players. 

We've been pish in the past because we've been relying on guys like Craig Clay and Josh Law who clearly just weren't up to the standard required,  but I don't think that's the case here. 

[boozyBJ]

Gave Alexander leeway before the start of the year because of our league position, albeit our poor style of play, but watching last few games it’s clear he’s not got a clue how to set up a team to win a game. His remit when he came into the club was to keep is in the league, he did that, but it looks like he’s only keeping to that ideal as he has no recognisable ambition to see us progress as a team in this league, continuing to play players that are underperforming and refusing to play players (that he signed) that us the fans are screaming out to play. We’ve not been this bad since that Malpas season, but at least that could be forgiven as most the players at that time were, to put it politely, shite. Wouldn’t normally post things like this but truly scunnered with results and way we  are playing just now 

[Londonwell]

2 hours ago, capt_oats said:

Aye, the idea that it was a poor decision to extend his deal is a complete nonsense. He'd had a good (exceptional?) first calendar year in terms of the turnaround and points collected (and we were sitting 4th in the league). IIRC his original deal expired next year so assuming we were planning on trying to create some sort of culture of stability sorting out a new deal made sense.

But he's absolutely fucked this and it's all just very, very weird in so much as it's largely on him and (bad) choices made. He's clearly a capable manager and the squad is good enough but aye, where we are at the moment is mental.

As I was posting the other day through 2021 he was broadly picking a relatively settled side and while it may not have been pretty it was largely effective - the results proved that.

Since the winter break, for whatever reason, he's stopped playing a bunch of those players - Slattery's gone from 17 starts in 20 league games to not even getting off the bench (hasn't started a game since United at Tannadice February 9th), Woolery 18 starts from 20 to getting chucked on as a sub (he's started 5 of our last 11 league games).

I've said before that I get the idea of load management and "using the squad" and that's fine if it's not adversely affecting results but right now It's like some sort of wild self-sabotage.

See this is undoubtedly true but tbh I've never enjoyed watching GA's Motherwell team, even when things were going 'well'. Personally, actually occasionally enjoying the game I'm going to watch is quite important, that's why I was gutted when that new deal was offered and signed - I accept I may have been in the minority with that.

I've never had a more miserable time at games than I've had under Alexander to the point that I can't summon any sort of motivation to watch the team under him and I'm never usually that sort. In a weird sort of way I actually hold quite a bit of resentment towards him for that. I mean, imagine getting into football management with the aim of playing the most brutal football imaginable in a search for results? Surely you must spend most the working week utterly depressed at what you're watching. That might seem a weird sort of take from me but I challenge anyone to watch this team and tell me the players being nervous wrecks and launching it into channels (poorly) for 90 minutes isn't down to Alexander. I didn't like him as our manager when we were 4th and I don't like him now we're plummeting down the table.

Does he need to go? Absolutely. Will he? probably not. Utterly miserable set of circumstances that it's difficult to see a way out of in the short term. 

Can anyone suggest some other hobbies for a Saturday afternoon maybe?

[YassinMoutaouakil]

I've only actually been to 4 games this year (St Mirren, Celtic,  Aberdeen x2) so I've only really seen us lose once. Honestly think I'd need to section myself if I'd been watching this in person with any regularity. 

['WellDel]

2 hours ago, Doctor Manhattan said:

At least when I was raging about the performances, even more so than the results, I was feeling something. This morning there's just a numb sort of emptiness, though, and that's worse. The manager churning out wittering pish after every non-performance is hardly helping, and any lingering hope that he can pull a rabbit out a magic hat next game is pretty much gone now.

Even more than anger or disappointment, that's the sort of cumulative apathy that will see people stop buying season tickets, and cancelling their subscriptions to the Well Society just when they're most needed. 

The bois do an admirable job down in the corner trying to make a positive atmosphere, but it's the apathy amongst a quickly growing section of the support that the club need to worry about. 

It's looking increasingly likely that our final position will be in the lower reaches of the table, but while the league is so incredibly shite and we still somehow have a chance of top 6 or even Europe, we will just rumble on being served the same poor fare in the hope that we can luck our way to the top of a very poor pile.

However, it doesn't matter if we finish 4th or 10th, it's not entertaining, it's not enjoyable and it's not value for money. If I didn't have my season ticket I'd have wrapped it long ago, and stumping up a few hundred quid in the coming weeks for the privilege of doing it all again next season isn't something I'm going to be in a hurry to do. I'd imagine there are more than a few thinking similarly. 

[thisGRAEME]

1 hour ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:

We've been pish in the past because we've been relying on guys like Craig Clay and Josh Law who clearly just weren't up to the standard required,  but I don't think that's the case here. 

This is what's ripped my knitting in particular. Maybe I'm wrong, dunno, but there's no chance these players are that bad. 

[rowsdower]

Maybe the club have got better at marketing the players to us, and we really do just have a bunch of Craig Clays and Nathan Thomas's.

Talk about getting rid of the board/fan ownership is silly. The latter is funny, because it's not as if we just need to stick an ad in the paper and some rich guy will buy us.

I'm going to watch DVDs of the mid 90s team with Coyne, McKinnon, et al. GA can't take that away from me.

[EK2DK]

First time caller, long time listener. 
After 30 years of watching Motherwell, I can safely say that this is the worst I’ve seen.

We have absolutely nothing about us. 
I genuinely had more joy watching Butchers side that finished bottom than this crap. 
We are rudderless and yes, Alexander needs emptied however this problem is far more fundamental than the club would care to admit.

We’re relying on managers coming into the club to set the direction in terms of signings, investment and style.

That puts us in a position of tremendous vulnerability and why the ‘rollercoaster’ continues. With the greatest respect to other clubs, Motherwell are probably the 8th biggest club in the country but we don’t act like it. We are left open to the whims of managers because they are given free reign. That’s why you have Robinson’s thunder dome and laterally a plethora of lower league English crap, McGhee’s second spell nothingness and now Alexander’s brand of eye bleed. 

The core problem is that there is no football leadership within the club. With the greatest respect to the board who I’m sure are all trying their best, they are a group of grey haired accountants with a media man as CEO. No harm to burrows either however what we don’t have within any of them is a vision for football and what we want it to be. 
That’s why we often end up with a group do out of contract duds in clusters and is probably the definitive reason for disconnect between supporters and club. 
A fan ownership model dictates the need for longevity in relationships between supporters and the club - it is hugely risky to have a situation where we have now where our main source of income feel apathy towards the club. 
 

The only way to address this is for a director of football to be introduced before we change a manager - it’s the sticking plaster before the next shitshow otherwise. 

[dezz]

Totally agree - There’s no way the squad we have are this bad, no doubt in my mind they are underperforming due to the managers tactics and instructions. I think it says it all that the majority of the fan base still seem to generally be behind the players despite 4 months without a win. Imagine being a professional footballer and told to play that way every week, it must be grim as f**k playing for Motherwell just now.

[capt_oats]

Did this a while back but since we're now 9 games into R3 of fixtures...

We're 8 points down compared to the results against Aberdeen, County, Dundee and St Johnstone from the first round of games.

R1:
01/08 - Hibs (h) 2-3 (L) = 0
08/08 - St Johnstone (a) 1-1 (X) = 1
21/08 - Livingston (a) 1-2 (W) = 3
28/08 - Dundee (h) 1-0 (W) = 3
11/09 - Aberdeen (h) 2-0 (W) = 3
19/09 - Rangers (a) 1-1 (X) = 1
25/09 - Ross County (h) 2-1 (W) = 3
02/10 - Hearts (a) 2-0 (L) = 0
16/10 - Celtic (h) 0-2 (L) = 0
23/10 - Dundee Utd (a) 2-1 (L) = 0
27/10 - St Mirren (h) 2-2 (X) = 1

Total = 15 points - P 11 W 4 D 3 L 4 F 14 A 15

R2:
31/10 - Rangers (h) 1-6 (L) = 0
06/11 - Aberdeen (a) 0-2 (W) = 3
20/11 - Hearts (h) 2-0 (W) = 3
27/11 - Dundee (a) 3-0 (L) = 0
30/11 - Dundee Utd (h) 1-0 (W) = 3
04/12 - Hibs (a) 1-1 (X) = 1
12/12 - Celtic (a) 1-0 (L) = 0
18/12 - St Johnstone (h) 2-0 (W) = 3
26/12 - Livingston (h) 2-1 (W) = 3
18/01 - Ross County (a) 3-1 (L) = 0
01/02 - St Mirren (a) 1-1 (X) = 1

Total = 17 points - P 11 W 5 D 2 L 4 F 13 A 16

R3:
26/01 - Hibs (h) 0-0 (X) = 1
29/01 - Hearts (a) 2-0 (L) = 0
06/02 - Celtic (h) 0-4 (L) = 0
09/02 - Dundee United (a) 2-0 (L) = 0
19/02 - Aberdeen (h) 1-1 (X) = 1
27/02 - Rangers (a) 2-2 (X) = 1
02/03 - Ross County (h) 0-1 (L) = 0
05/03 - Dundee (h) 1-1 (X) = 1
19/03 - St Johnstone (a) 2-1 (L) = 0

Total = 4 points - P 9 W 0 D 4 L 5 F 5 A 14

Spoiler

On 02/02/2022 at 10:34, capt_oats said:

Sort of related to that, last night was the conclusion of the 2nd round of fixtures and we took two more points from that set than the first. Scored one fewer and conceded one more.

R1:
01/08 - Hibs (h) 2-3 (L) = 0
08/08 - St Johnstone (a) 1-1 (X) = 1
21/08 - Livingston (a) 1-2 (W) = 3
28/08 - Dundee (h) 1-0 (W) = 3
11/09 - Aberdeen (h) 2-0 (W) = 3
19/09 - Rangers (a) 1-1 (X) = 1
25/09 - Ross County (h) 2-1 (W) = 3
02/10 - Hearts (a) 2-0 (L) = 0
16/10 - Celtic (h) 0-2 (L) = 0
23/10 - Dundee Utd (a) 2-1 (L) = 0
27/10 - St Mirren (h) 2-2 (X) = 1

Total = 15 points - P 11 W 4 D 3 L 4 F 14 A 15

R2:
31/10 - Rangers (h) 1-6 (L) = 0
06/11 - Aberdeen (a) 0-2 (W) = 3
20/11 - Hearts (h) 2-0 (W) = 3
27/11 - Dundee (a) 3-0 (L) = 0
30/11 - Dundee Utd (h) 1-0 (W) = 3
04/12 - Hibs (a) 1-1 (X) = 1
12/12 - Celtic (a) 1-0 (L) = 0
18/12 - St Johnstone (h) 2-0 (W) = 3
26/12 - Livingston (h) 2-1 (W) = 3
18/01 - Ross County (a) 3-1 (L) = 0
01/02 - St Mirren (a) 1-1 (X) = 1

Total = 17 points - P 11 W 5 D 2 L 4 F 13 A 16

R3:
26/01 - Hibs (h) 0-0 (X) = 1
29/01 - Hearts (a) 2-0 (L) = 0

Total = 1 point - P 2 W 0 D 1 L 1 F 0 A 2

Edited March 20, 2022 by capt_oats

[Handsome_Devil]

26 minutes ago, EK2DK said:

The only way to address this is for a director of football to be introduced before we change a manager - it’s the sticking plaster before the next shitshow otherwise. 

I'm pretty sure that's the medium-term plan with Lasley. 

I'm also in favour of it but it's hardly a silver bullet.

[eliphas]

2 minutes ago, Handsome_Devil said:

I'm also in favour of it but it's hardly a silver bullet.

If Lasley isn't a silver bullet I don't know who is.....if ye get me guys. Guys? Anyone?

[Handsome_Devil]

2 minutes ago, eliphas said:

If Lasley isn't a silver bullet I don't know who is.....if ye get me guys. Guys? Anyone?

Honk!