Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[Casagolda]

30 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

He might hit 10 by the time the season ends, but he's a scorer of good goals rather than a good goalscorer. I'd love to see him score a two yard tap in. In fact, I'd love to see anyone score a two yard tap in.

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.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Casagolda

[well fan for life]

43 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

We've got two strikers in Shields and Van Veen who to my uneducated eye, look like they'd perform best in a front two, yet even when we went to a back three, we still didn't try that.

I've been wondering about this as well. We're persisting with a load of wingers who are either not wingers or bang out of form. And watching 90 minutes of us scooping pointless balls towards corner flags that have folk running away from goal is brutal to watch. Surely there's mileage in trying Shields & KvV as actual strikers and stick Tierney in behind them to attempt to pass a ball. 

The number of times we play stupid pointless passes that arrive up front at waist height on the touchline would drive you to drink. 

[DeadStar]

I absolutely hate our midfield this season. Donnelly and Goss are absolutely stinking

[Desp]

46 minutes ago, well fan for life said:

I've been wondering about this as well. We're persisting with a load of wingers who are either not wingers or bang out of form. And watching 90 minutes of us scooping pointless balls towards corner flags that have folk running away from goal is brutal to watch. Surely there's mileage in trying Shields & KvV as actual strikers and stick Tierney in behind them to attempt to pass a ball. 

The number of times we play stupid pointless passes that arrive up front at waist height on the touchline would drive you to drink. 

Would actually like to see this, but I doubt GA will bother his arse, considering it would involve dropping the undroppable Goss and relying on two full backs he appears to be trying to rub up the wrong way and alienate. 

                                Kelly

                 Mugabi  Ojala  Sol

O'Donnell  Cornelius  Slattery  Carroll

                             Tierney

                    van Veen  Shields

Edited February 10, 2022 by Desp

[Ron Aldo]

Some variation of 3-5-2 would be my formation of choice based on our current group of players. The team Desp has posted is pretty much what I would go with.

4-3-3 leaves our fullbacks hanging out to dry and its been clear for a while that they never know whether to get forward or tuck in. We try to scrape a midfield 3 together despite (in my view) Slattery and Cornelius being the only 2 who really offer us anything. KVV is lazy and is never going to work hard for the team but I think we'd get some goals out of him if he was asked to basically keep within the width of the 18 yard box and had someone like Shields alongside him to do the donkey work.

As it is, it'll be 4-3-3 on Saturday with players picked seemingly at random regardless of form (or lack of). We'll have a few chances but won't score while Aberdeen will have 2 chances and score 3 goals. Season done.

[thisGRAEME]

1 minute ago, Ron Aldo said:

4-3-3 leaves our fullbacks hanging out to dry and its been clear for a while that they never know whether to get forward or tuck in.

So, looking back at a bunch of the the goals we've conceded in the last few months as a 4-3-3, hard, hard agree. You're asking them to get forward and support, but also to defend because you know fine well the midfielders aren't going to tuck in to support. It doesn't make sense.

United 

1. Both goals from last night, fundamentally, came from full-backs getting dragged out to opposing wide players. McGinley goes to close McNulty, and you can throw a blanket over our midfield 3, leaving a huge gap in behind McGinley for Watt and Smith to play in. 

2. Mugabi has to go so far  out to Niskanen there's acres in behind.

County

1. O'Donnell wins the ball, Woolery misplaces a pass and County are in. None of the midfield have any awareness at the massive gap behind them. Mugabi and Sol don't cover themselves in glory once RCC has the ball, but f**k. Donnelly not within 5 yards of the attacker.

2. McGinley gets mugged by Samuel, RCC bursts for the centre of the box, Donnelly and Maguire get nowhere near him.

3. Penalty, whatever.

Livi

O'Donnell goes to press Longridge (I think) out wide. Penrice runs into that space and Maguire watches him do it. Ball comes in to Panayiotou to puts it right back out to Penrice in acres of space, goal.

Dundee

Adam immediately looks for the pass wide. Maguire and Mugabi initially do well, Marshall arrives wide, free cross in, followed by a shit show of defending and a goal.

The other two are set piece calamities.

 

[Allroy for Prez]

I wouldn’t agree that season is over if we lose on Saturday. Obviously in any sort of positive sense it will/could be but all the teams, and I mean all the teams, look more likely to win 2 games before we do. 

Could go into the split only 6 points ahead of the bottom 2……

[Luke92]

I said earlier in the season that I thought a lot of folk will easily turn against GA when the results go south due to the brand of football and judging by this thread and social media it appears to be the case.

My view was and remains that Alexander's style of play is turgid and I don't think that it is a desirable long-term vision for most clubs. With that being said, the man knows how to grind out results. The problem is that when he doesn't, there is very little goodwill or favour in the bank for fans to give him the benefit of the doubt. This is probably an old point from a few months ago but it's something that I think is going to remain relevant for as long as we are playing the football we are.

I think some of the stuff on social media has been a bit OTT from last night but it's plain to see some fans are genuinely turned off by the football on display. I can't have any opinion on last night as I myself refused to pay for a stream for this very reason and unfortunately Hesgoal failed me.

I can't remember us being joint 4th in the league but the fans being so negative about things (myself included)

With all this being said I don't think it's the end of the world, we could easily go and beat Aberdeen on Saturday and a big bit of this will be forgetten. I think the key point for me is though that the question of style of play/entertainment factor is going to keep coming up every time we hit a negative run.

I like Alexander and I hate to say this but I'm starting to feel like I kind of get where Gary Neville was coming from... I know a lot of people just want results but there comes a point where the football does become a bit oppressive.

[well fan for life]

@thisGRAEME touting himself for a move to Sportscene with that analysis. 

Joking aside it's painfully true. Whatever system GA attempts to play seems to entirely hinge on making a c**t of the fullbacks. It's common sense, to me anyway, that if a fullback needs to press up the pitch a midfielder should drop in to the space or at least follow a guy in a different coloured kit from them. It's clearly a thought out decision to have the fullbacks press so I don't know if it's also a tactic to have your midfielders practically holding hands or if it's just a chronic lack of ability/awareness/both.  

 

Edited February 10, 2022 by well fan for life

[YassinMoutaouakil]

Got excited with this caption thinking we'd released half the squad

 

[Swello]

1 hour ago, Luke92 said:

I can't remember us being joint 4th in the league but the fans being so negative about things (myself included)

Having been at all the games since the split (mostly because I still just enjoy being back at away games after the last couple of years), I get where people are coming from. The number of times we've passed the ball out the park, straight to an opposition player or lost goals on *really* poor individual decisions/mistakes wears you down after a while. I stuck it out until the end last night but the 2nd half was a dismal watch to the point I couldn't care enough to lose the plot.

I don't mind the style of play as such - when we were winning games by being horrible to play against shithousers and taking our chances earlier in the season, I was all for it but we aren't even that at the moment. We're soft as f**k in fact and the number of 50/50's that have been shat out of recently is evidence of that. If we're going to play anti-football, at least commit to it and make it effective.

We've had bad spells during high finishing seasons before - the season we somehow finished 2nd on the last day at Pittodrie is ample evidence of that - so this isn't new - it's just a case of whether this is a spell we'll come out of or if we're heading for 9th.

[eliphas]

1 hour ago, Swello said:

Having been at all the games since the split (mostly because I still just enjoy being back at away games after the last couple of years), I get where people are coming from. The number of times we've passed the ball out the park, straight to an opposition player or lost goals on *really* poor individual decisions/mistakes wears you down after a while. I stuck it out until the end last night but the 2nd half was a dismal watch to the point I couldn't care enough to lose the plot.

I don't mind the style of play as such - when we were winning games by being horrible to play against shithousers and taking our chances earlier in the season, I was all for it but we aren't even that at the moment. We're soft as f**k in fact and the number of 50/50's that have been shat out of recently is evidence of that. If we're going to play anti-football, at least commit to it and make it effective.

We've had bad spells during high finishing seasons before - the season we somehow finished 2nd on the last day at Pittodrie is ample evidence of that - so this isn't new - it's just a case of whether this is a spell we'll come out of or if we're heading for 9th.

Good post and agree with it all. 

As many have said before, it's a fine line the way we are under GA 

There's no doubt we are missing a strikers touch. We're creating a lot more chances and taking a lot more about, than we did, in general, but picking up less points because we aren't converting. Add in some chornic defending and here we are. Here being 5th somehow!

[fat_tony]

I can't remember us being joint 4th in the league but the fans being so negative about things (myself included)

The two examples that spring to mind would be the post-thunderdome Robinson team where the league was called early due to COVID, and McCall's (final?) season where we scraped into third on Craig Reid day.

Both of those teams had people moaning like f**k about how bad the football was and questioning how the hell we'd managed to finish so high up the league.

[Busta Nut]

11 hours ago, ropy said:

Do you think they practice passing at training or is that am assumed skill?  5 yard passes to a team mate and keep it this side of the track.  Would go a long way in improving this team.

No chance we practice passing

[Blink182]

1 hour ago, fat_tony said:

 

 

The two examples that spring to mind would be the post-thunderdome Robinson team where the league was called early due to COVID, and McCall's (final?) season where we scraped into third on Craig Reid day.

Both of those teams had people moaning like f**k about how bad the football was and questioning how the hell we'd managed to finish so high up the league.

 

It's funny I said this the other day when discussing that clip, but actually it was when we scraped into 2nd place which makes it even funnier. 

[DukDukGoose]

13 hours ago, ropy said:

Do you think they practice passing at training or is that am assumed skill?  5 yard passes to a team mate and keep it this side of the track.  Would go a long way in improving this team.

You'd be amazed how basic some professional football training can be.

I use this Twitter page for drills for the team I coach. These boys are just starting under 9s in a few weeks.

 

[ropy]

8 hours ago, Merkland Red said:

You'd be amazed how basic some professional football training can be.

I use this Twitter page for drills for the team I coach. These boys are just starting under 9s in a few weeks.

 

That hit the bar one paid off on Wednesday, we managed that

[YassinMoutaouakil]

1 hour ago, ropy said:

That hit the bar one paid off on Wednesday, we managed that

We should get them to aim slightly lower IMO

[Ron Aldo]

The wee shooting drill we do before matches is genuinely embarrassing at times. 9/10 shots are either scuffed wide or ballooned into the Cooper Stand.

[ropy]

8 minutes ago, Ron Aldo said:

The wee shooting drill we do before matches is genuinely embarrassing at times. 9/10 shots are either scuffed wide or ballooned into the Cooper Stand.

The shots that get over the safety net behind the goal are bizarre.  The goal posts have always been on the ground since I started watching.