Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[steelmen]

Serious? McLeish got second with McLean’s team and then dismantled it completely. He was an awful manager and has proved throughout his career he has no clue when buying players. Does well with teams he inherits but as soon as he gets his own players he gets punted.

McCall took an ok team and improved it. He got us best of the rest 3 years running. During that time we were playing lovely football and were a pleasure to watch.

Sure his last half season was awful but his budget was cut and he lost some of his best players.

He’s not one of my favourite managers but he did really well with us and did the right thing walking away when he did because he wasn’t turning us around

[MJC]

My views as well Desp.

I was never a fan of McCall as our manager and believe he was one of the luckiest managers in our history, not just in that he found himself with the best squad out with Celtic at a time when Rangers went bust, Hearts were in financial turmoil and Aberdeen were basically a bottom six side. Yes he oversaw some of our best finishes in the league but stats don't tell you everything. We only really played good football under him in the second half of 2012/13 and the following season we were dreadful throughout. How we never mind managed top six that season, never mind snatched 2nd in the final few seconds at Pittodrie was unbelievable, if utterly hilarious at the time.

He was probably a good man to have at the club in terms of keeping the ship steady and the players loved him, but I suspect slot of that was down to him letting them away with murder in terms of fitness, preparation and tactics. It was no coincidence that whenever we had to step up our game in important Cup ties and Europe that we and McCall fell flat on our faces. His cup record for a side with the resources available to him was a disgrace and hung like a black cloud over his tenure because I firmly believe that that period from 2012 to 2014 was our best chance of winning silverware, but McCall failed us time and again. 

His attitude to European games and big games was a downright disgrace and in the case of Europe, our efforts under him were pathetic and we never looked like we believed we could get anything, thus completely undoing our previous good work in the league the previous season.

The Stjarnan debacle spoke for itself and was the beginning of the end for McCall as his luck finally ran out, but I firmly believe that, rightly or wrongly, McCall lost a significant section of the support the night we rolled over at Ibrox and lost 2-0 to a newly reformed Rangers side full of kids...and he never got them back afterwards. If ever a single match encapsulated everything that was wrong with Stuart McCall's approach to managing big games, that was it.

For me personally, he should have walked/been shown the door after the Albion Rovers Cup defeat, that was the cherry on the massive cake of cup failures under his watch.

I was not sorry one bit when Stuart McCall left us.

[harry94]

7 minutes ago, MJC said:

My views as well Desp.

I was never a fan of McCall as our manager and believe he was one of the luckiest managers in our history, not just in that he found himself with the best squad out with Celtic at a time when Rangers went bust, Hearts were in financial turmoil and Aberdeen were basically a bottom six side. Yes he oversaw some of our best finishes in the league but stats don't tell you everything. We only really played good football under him in the second half of 2012/13 and the following season we were dreadful throughout. How we never mind managed top six that season, never mind snatched 2nd in the final few seconds at Pittodrie was unbelievable, if utterly hilarious at the time.

He was probably a good man to have at the club in terms of keeping the ship steady and the players loved him, but I suspect slot of that was down to him letting them away with murder in terms of fitness, preparation and tactics. It was no coincidence that whenever we had to step up our game in important Cup ties and Europe that we and McCall fell flat on our faces. His cup record for a side with the resources available to him was a disgrace and hung like a black cloud over his tenure because I firmly believe that that period from 2012 to 2014 was our best chance of winning silverware, but McCall failed us time and again. 

His attitude to European games and big games was a downright disgrace and in the case of Europe, our efforts under him were pathetic and we never looked like we believed we could get anything, thus completely undoing our previous good work in the league the previous season.

The Stjarnan debacle spoke for itself and was the beginning of the end for McCall as his luck finally ran out, but I firmly believe that, rightly or wrongly, McCall lost a significant section of the support the night we rolled over at Ibrox and lost 2-0 to a newly reformed Rangers side full of kids...and he never got them back afterwards. If ever a single match encapsulated everything that was wrong with Stuart McCall's approach to managing big games, that was it.

For me personally, he should have walked/been shown the door after the Albion Rovers Cup defeat, that was the cherry on the massive cake of cup failures under his watch.

I was not sorry one bit when Stuart McCall left us.

You guys are spoilt.

[Desp]

22 minutes ago, steelmen said:

Serious? McLeish got second with McLean’s team and then dismantled it completely. He was an awful manager and has proved throughout his career he has no clue when buying players. Does well with teams he inherits but as soon as he gets his own players he gets punted.

McCall took an ok team and improved it. He got us best of the rest 3 years running. During that time we were playing lovely football and were a pleasure to watch.

Sure his last half season was awful but his budget was cut and he lost some of his best players.

He’s not one of my favourite managers but he did really well with us and did the right thing walking away when he did because he wasn’t turning us around

Happy to have differing opinions and agree to disagree but aye, that's my view on him.  MJC has went into it a bit more in depth and certainly matches my views.

The bit in bold does my tits in?  "Best of the rest" is a horrible term.  We were 3rd and runners-up twice. 

The second season we were runners-up we were horrible.  McCall, like McLeish, lost some of his best players and replaced them with shite.  Hollis, Reid, Vigurs, Angol etc etc.  As MJC points out, McCall was in the right place at the right time to take advantage of Rangers not being there, Celtic auto-piloting their way through a couple of seasons and Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen all going through horrible spells.

He will get credit from me for some of the work he did, because you can't deny him that, but his preparations for the big games (Cup Finals, European games) were diabolical.  Hammell in midfield in our biggest game in 20 years?  The lack of preparation for the Stjarnan game.  I went to Levante, paying a fair whack to do so, and McCall filled half his team with back-up players.

He also "walked away" several months after he realised it wasn't working.  His half-arsed approach from July to November that season laid the foundations for our near-miss with relegation.

For me, he was a decent manager who got lucky with certain circumstances and took advantage of that.  I'm not surprised he hasn't succeeded in a job since.

Edited February 6, 2018 by Desp

[thisGRAEME]

22 minutes ago, Desp said:

Anyone any sympathy with McCall getting the bullet at Bradford?

I've got to be honest and say I don't like him.  I never really took to him as Motherwell manager, despite his success, and I wanted him out of our club following the Albion Rovers fiasco.  He remained though, followed it up with the Stjarnan shambles and left the club, IMHO, in as much of a mess than McGhee did.

For me, he gets far more credit than he deserves.  You don't see McLeish getting credit as Motherwell boss when he was just as relatively successful. 

Little bit. I'm not shedding a tear for him, but I more or less take that view with most folk that leave us. He's not our manager, so I'm not massively arsed.

I take both your, and MJC's point about the Cup/European records, but I had stacks of fun during those seasons. We absolutely demolished teams a bunch of times, Dunfermline away, that mental run we had against St Johnstone, beating Hearts with ten men,  the cup run (up to the fuckin final, aye), going to Athens, Higdon's overhead kick against Hibs, Omar Daley in general, Ojamaa skinning everyone, twice and turning Neil Lennon's piss to steam when Higdon won POTM, before spending a night in the cells.

He was fortunate in the make-up of the league at the time, but he still had us finishing ahead of that Dundee United team that every c**t bangs on about, and like I say, it was fun. I've got a lot of good memories from those seasons.

Going out to Albion Rovers was an absolute disaster, and highlighted our flaws massively. Given that we could have very feasibly have won the cup that year, it looks even worse in hindsight. He did manage Rangers when we absolutely battered them though, so that was nice.

[MJC]

We did have some good times under McCall, but also some absolutely awful ones too. He owed a huge amount to guys like Higdon and Sutton (especially in 13/14 in the latters case) for helping us scrape by on numerous occasions, likewise Darren Randolph who saved us from many a drubbing. 

History will be very kind to Stuart McCall and his time as Motherwell manager as we managed to pull of some great results to disguise the poor ones. Take the end of 2010/11, yes we reached a Cup final with some cracking wins over Dundee Utd and St.Johnstone, but we didn't kick another ball that season from the minute we went 3-0 up in the Semi Final. Our Cup final preparation was appalling as McCall chopped and changed the side week to week and we ended up finishing the season with an aggregate score of something like 4 goals scored to 23 conceded. Then of course he played Hammell in midfield in the Final and the rest is history.

The following season did we not have a horrible home record for a long spell? We did recover though and at one point could easily have snatched 2nd off Rangers before we collapsed towards the end and very nearly ended up losing 3rd.

Our best season was 2012/13, but even then we were pretty poor for the first half, again had a dreadful home record (I'm sure we went there months without a home win between September and December), whimpered out of Europe, had a disgraceful capitulation at Ibrox in the league cup and an equalling bad Scottish Cup exit to Aberdeen. The second half of that season was very good, I'll give him that.

For me, it would have been in McCall and our best interests had he taken the Sheffield Utd job in the summer of 2013 as he failed miserably to rebuild the squad that summer after losing several key players. He filled the squad with overpaid dross like, Nielsen, McManus, an aging Faddy (whom he tried to turn into a right winger) and the football that season was dire but as I said, Sutton's goals helpe us scrape many an undeserved win. That was the season where we lost 2-0 at home to 10 Man Aberdeen in a then Celtic free League Cup in the Quarters and then to 2nd bottom of the 3rd division Albion fucking Rovers in the Scottish Cup on a day when McCall AGAIN rested key players to the point he didn't even fill the subs bench. Had he been removed from his position that very night he could have no complaints.

The following summer was another clusterfuck with no pre-season worthy of the name, the squad taken on a jolly to Portugal for some much needed footgolf in preparation for a European tie where finally the draw was kind to us and pitted against a part time Icelandic mob....but we all know how that panned out.

By the time McCall left in November 2014 we were in serious relegation trouble and it was somewhat fitting that he was in charge of Rangers when we faced them in the playoff, given that he had played a massive part in getting us there. Winning that tie was special on so many levels for obvious reasons, but for me was somewhat poetic because I can guarantee you this much, had Stuart McCall been in our dugout for those ties rather than theirs we would not have won it. The tie would have been dead and buried by the end of the 1st leg never mind us actually thumping them 6-1.

[The_Judge]

59 minutes ago, Desp said:

I'm not surprised he hasn't succeeded in a job since.

There can't be many that have

Edited February 6, 2018 by The_Judge

[Swello]

58 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

I had stacks of fun during those seasons

This. It's one of the best teams I've watched and some of the best times I've had watching us. It more or less co-incided with the start of the 'Well Bois I guess but the atmosphere at away games was fantastic when McCall was here. In players like Higdon, Ojamma, Law, Murphy & Randolph, we had some of my favourite Motherwell players. With some 'Well fans currently agonising about our style of play even when we win - it's worth thinking back to the number of attackers and football players that McCall was prepared to field.

This isn't a hagiography as there is plenty in the debit column too - the Albion Rovers game being pretty much the low point of my 'Well watching career (excepting the recent half time interview with Tommy Sheridan) and the Rangers sycophancy drove me mental - but MJC is far better qualified to rhyme them off than I am

I totally get the negatives - but I just can't see a situation where a *motherwell manager* leads his team consecutively to 3rd-2nd-2nd league finishes, european qualifications, cup semi's and a final and has a team with the POTY in it for the first time and isn't seen as a success. If I were a supporter of any other club, I'd find it utterly bizarre to argue otherwise.. 

Edited February 6, 2018 by Swello

[thisGRAEME]

1 minute ago, Swello said:

I totally get the negatives - but I just can't see a situation where a *motherwell manager* leads us consecutively to 3rd-2nd-2nd league finishes, european qualifications, cup semi's and a final and has a team with the POTY in it for the first time and isn't seen as a success. If I were a supporter of any other club, I'd find it utterly bizarre to argue otherwise.. 

Along side this, I always find how Motherwell managers are perceived by folk to be dead weird.

As an example;
McCall - As we've seen here...questionable. I'm certainly more with Swello than Desp/MJC. 
Butcher - Seems well thought of by many. My memory of it was that it rained in pretty much every game and we lost loads of them. Ditched us to f**k off to Australia.

Obviously not that either is right or wrong (except my views which are obviously correct), I just always find it interesting, and that's before you even mention Jim Gannon...

[WellView]

Just now, Swello said:

This. It's one of the best teams I've watched and some of the best times I've had watching us. It more or less co-incided with the start of the 'Well Bois I guess but the atmosphere at away games was fantastic when McCall was here. In players like Higdon, Ojamma, Law, Murphy & Randolph, we had some of my favourite Motherwell players. With some 'Well fans currently agonising about our style of play even when we win - it's worth thinking back to the number of attackers and football players that McCall was prepared to field.

This isn't a hagiography as there is plenty in the debit column too - the Albion Rovers game being pretty much the low point of my 'Well watching career (excepting the recent half time interview with Tommy Sheridan) and the Rangers sycophancy drove me mental - but MJC is far better qualified to rhyme them off than I am

I totally get the negatives - but I just can't see a situation where a *motherwell manager* leads his team consecutively to 3rd-2nd-2nd league finishes, european qualifications, cup semi's and a final and has a team with the POTY in it for the first time and isn't seen as a success. If I were a supporter of any other club, I'd find it utterly bizarre to argue otherwise.. 

+1 

To be honest, I wonder about the mental state of some of our fans.  

[Al B]

15 minutes ago, Swello said:

This. It's one of the best teams I've watched and some of the best times I've had watching us. It more or less co-incided with the start of the 'Well Bois I guess but the atmosphere at away games was fantastic when McCall was here. In players like Higdon, Ojamma, Law, Murphy & Randolph, we had some of my favourite Motherwell players. With some 'Well fans currently agonising about our style of play even when we win - it's worth thinking back to the number of attackers and football players that McCall was prepared to field.

This isn't a hagiography as there is plenty in the debit column too - the Albion Rovers game being pretty much the low point of my 'Well watching career (excepting the recent half time interview with Tommy Sheridan) and the Rangers sycophancy drove me mental - but MJC is far better qualified to rhyme them off than I am

I totally get the negatives - but I just can't see a situation where a *motherwell manager* leads his team consecutively to 3rd-2nd-2nd league finishes, european qualifications, cup semi's and a final and has a team with the POTY in it for the first time and isn't seen as a success. If I were a supporter of any other club, I'd find it utterly bizarre to argue otherwise.. 

That absolutely sums up my view of that period. An absolutely fantastic time to be a 'Well fan, with just enough shitty bits of absolute randomness thrown in to remind you that we're still Motherwell.

[capt_oats]

I'm largely on the same page as MJC and Desp re: McCall. Though having said that, I've a degree of sympathy with him as the Bradford job seems to have had a lot of behind the scenes issues. He's left them 6th sitting in the promotion play-off spots and 6 points off 4th. He's also leaving with a 45.8% win rate.

Overall I'm completely comfortable saying that I never liked McCall as Motherwell manager which is slightly different to not rating his achievements. I wrote quite extensively about it on here when he took over at Rangers in the play-off season but I've always felt that he was someone who was more a decent coach benefiting from circumstance that he was a good manager. You can point to the mothballing of the youth side of things and the short-termism that was a big part of that era. It's curious to me that Robinson gets a kicking for recruiting from the lower leagues in England when McCall was cutting about signing players from Bradford (League 2), Rotherham (League 2) Tottenham reserves and Alfreton Town (f**k knows what tier they were).

Obviously finishing 2nd, 2nd and 3rd is undeniable but rightly or wrongly he's best summed up for me by the build up to the league cup game against the newly formed Rangers. We were sitting top of the league and he's sitting telling the press that Rangers (with a team comprising youth players and the handful of pros they'd cobbled together) are favourites largely because they're Rangers. It's an attitude that still sticks with him as well. He was in the paper the other week and he's still banging on about how they'd have won the play-off if it hadn't been for a daft 20 mins.

Equally, he inherited a good core of players and was benefitting from Dempster's top 6, cup run and a player sale budget; Randolph, Hammell, Hutchinson, Law, Hateley, Murphy, Ojamaa, Higdon, Sutton et al are all good players.

To me McGhee taking a side that finished 10th the season before under Malpas and qualifying for Europe in 3rd place outstrips anything McCall did as a manager.

[MJC]

It always comes back to the fans with some of our support.

Now fair enough, there were *some* Motherwell fans, and by no means a majority, who disliked Stuart McCall from the word go because of his connections with a certain Glasgow based side and I defy ANYONE to contradict that. It was there, and shouts/posts of him being 'a Rangers b*****d' etc were not uncommon during his tenure. If you want to talk about the mental state of folk, that's probably a good place to start.

However, the majority of the support were fully behind McCall and if anything, gave him a fairly easy ride of it when things went tits up. The problem I had with him personally was that he did have a good squad of players at his disposal for a large portion of his time with us yet failed to step up at crucial times, like the Cup Final in 2011 for example, or the Rangers league Cup tie in 2012, or any Cup game against Aberdeen and we had to watch sides like St.Mirren, Kilmarnock and St.Johnstone pick up trophies even though we had easily outperformed them in the league during that time yet we flopped in the Cups due to poor tactics and just not wanting it enough on the days. That is down to the manager.

If you were to ask me t describe McCall's tenure in just two words I would answer "missed opportunity".

[Mr. Brightside]

McCall was shite, didn’t even win the league.

[Swello]

I'll settle this:

That's a picture of Micheal Higdon scoring *an overhead kick* - how can you not look at that and think "Stuart McCall was an unqualified success"?

[thisGRAEME]

1 minute ago, capt_oats said:

To me McGhee taking a side that finished 10th the season before under Malpas and qualifying for Europe in 3rd place outstrips anything McCall did as a manager.

FWIW, I fully agree with that as well. Again, on perceptions, good luck finding ten Motherwell fans that don't think he's a roaster.

I like him, and I certainly think he's a roaster.

1 minute ago, MJC said:

If you were to ask me t describe McCall's tenure in just two words I would answer "missed opportunity".

"Michael Higdon", for me.

I totally see where you're coming from, btw, I just don't agree! Different seasons mean different things for folk, those ones were some of my favourite.

[WellView]

Just now, MJC said:

It always comes back to the fans with some of our support.

Now fair enough, there were *some* Motherwell fans, and by no means a majority, who disliked Stuart McCall from the word go because of his connections with a certain Glasgow based side and I defy ANYONE to contradict that. It was there, and shouts/posts of him being 'a Rangers b*****d' etc were not uncommon during his tenure. If you want to talk about the mental state of folk, that's probably a good place to start.

However, the majority of the support were fully behind McCall and if anything, gave him a fairly easy ride of it when things went tits up. The problem I had with him personally was that he did have a good squad of players at his disposal for a large portion of his time with us yet failed to step up at crucial times, like the Cup Final in 2011 for example, or the Rangers league Cup tie in 2012, or any Cup game against Aberdeen and we had to watch sides like St.Mirren, Kilmarnock and St.Johnstone pick up trophies even though we had easily outperformed them in the league during that time yet we flopped in the Cups due to poor tactics and just not wanting it enough on the days. That is down to the manager.

If you were to ask me t describe McCall's tenure in just two words I would answer "missed opportunity".

What was the boards' role in all this?   Easy to blame the manager when the owner is posted MIA, and the chief executive was over-budgeting.  

McCall alluded to his failure to raise the required £250,000 per year when he resigned.  It was the board that allowed players like Higdon and Law to walk on frees due to their contract cowardice. 

And you know what? This year we signed Kipre on a one year under-20 contract . He started off well, and was promoted to a first-team contract with a years extension.  Then you see nutters like Ya Bezzer moaning about the club giving him an extension as he had a few off games.  How would ya'll have felt if he had signed a pre-contract with another club this January, as he was entitled to do under his initial contract?  That's the kind of stunt that the Dempster board would have allowed to happen. 

Edited February 6, 2018 by WellView
clarity

[Swello]

11 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

league cup game against the newly formed Rangers

The angriest I can remember being at a football match*.

 

 

*that wasn't against late-80's Hearts.

[Desp]

I posed the original question to see what folk's opinions of McCall were - I wasn't really looking to go into detail about whether he was a success or not.

Certainly, with McCall's team we had some wonderful moments, some great results, some great players.  I think from my side of things, the negatives hurt that bit more because I firmly believe we had a such a good side at the time, we should have done more! Maybe that's why I'm so critical of McCall.  I certainly he got lucky during his time as Motherwell, and he took advantage of it to an extent, but he had the scope to a helluva lot more with it.  It almost came across at times he was happy enough to sit back and enjoy the lucky situation rather than grab it by the bollocks and get more.  IMO, we should have won a cup with the side we had (particularly 2012/13).  We should have had a very good stab at qualifying for the Group Stages of the Europa (rather than taking the piss against part timers and getting your arse handed to you).

Was McCall better at being Motherwell manager than most others?  Absolutely. 

Was he successful?  Define 'success'...

[Al B]

That league cup game actually doesn't anger me at all, at no point did I expect to win it. For me it was the perfect storm of that whole seige mentalitywhich as delusional as it might be, was on an influential scale and stoked by the media. At Ibrox.

Im sure most will argue the case and put forward good reasons to oppose this which are all totally valid, but I genuinely think that whichever top league team (outwith Celtic) was to be the first to play them in that type of fixture, they would have lost. It just happened to be us.

Never once thought we'd win it, and have never really cast a thought back to it since.

On an unrelated point but seeing as he's just been mentioned, Michael Higdon is my favourite ever Motherwell player.

Edited February 6, 2018 by Al B