Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[Gianfranco]

Hastie and Gorrin to save the season?

[thisGRAEME]

No more mental than Turnbull saving it.

[capt_oats]

*quiet voice* have we patched the 'story of the match' this week then?

Edit: I'm totally OK with it if we have.

Edited November 12, 2018 by capt_oats

[welldaft]

2 hours ago, capt_oats said:

*quiet voice* have we patched the 'story of the match' this week then?

Edit: I'm totally OK with it if we have.

Or we could just start any video by announcing the referee is Craig Thompson and bring to halt then.  

Safe in the knowledge that whatever the result he will have awarded at least one penalty against us. Not awarded one penalty for us. And sent of anywhere between 1 and 3 Motherwell players mostly for the crime of wearing claret and amber. 

[Casagolda]

19 hours ago, Ya Bezzer! said:

We need a long term football strategy.

Which is what I was trying to get at.

Yeah, you can sack Robinson. You can get rid of half the players again as well. How many times as a club are we gonna do that though?

We’ve already had 3 managers in less than 4 years, we must have signed 50 plus players in that time as well. 

At what point do you take a closer look at how the club is actually operating. How many managers, how many players, how many rebuilds do we have to go through before someone actually says hold on, is this really working?

Edited November 13, 2018 by Casagolda

[well fan for life]

12 hours ago, capt_oats said:

*quiet voice* have we patched the 'story of the match' this week then?

Edit: I'm totally OK with it if we have.

I'd probably pish my pants if we did put one out tbf.

[capt_oats]

1 hour ago, Casagolda said:

Which is what I was trying to get at.

Yeah, you can sack Robinson. You can get rid of half the players again as well. How many times as a club are we gonna do that though?

We’ve already had 3 managers in less than 4 years, we must have signed 50 plus players in that time as well. 

At what point do you take a closer look at how the club is actually operating. How many managers, how many players, how many rebuilds do we have to go through before someone actually says hold on, is this really working?

Lifted from Wiki so if anyone's missing blame whoever did those pages. It also doesn't include contract extensions for guys like Samson and McDonald. There are a few signings for reserves/u20s in there too.

January 14/15:

• Stephen Pearson, Nathan Thomas, Marvin Johnson, Anthony Straker (loan), Louis Laing (loan), Conor Grant (loan), George Long (loan), Scott McDonald

15/16

• Joe Chalmers, David Clarkson, Wes Fletcher, Louis Laing, Louis Moult, Kieran Kennedy, Theo Robinson, Craig Samson, James McFadden, Connor Ripley (loan), Jake Taylor (loan), Liam Grimshaw (loan), Morgaro Gomis (loan)

16/17

• Ben Heneghan, Richard Tait, Jacob Blyth, Dean Brill, Carl McHugh, Craig Clay, Ryan Bowman, Lee Lucas, Elliot Frear, Shea Gordon, Stephen Pearson, Luka Belic (loan), Russell Griffiths (loan), Zak Jules (loan), Oliver Pain (loan)

17/18

• Alex Fisher, Gael Bigirimana, Craig Tanner, Trevor Carson, Andy Rose, Russell Griffiths, Charles Dunne, Cedric Kipre, George Newell, Ellis Plummer, Rohan Ferguson, Deimantas Petravičius, Liam Grimshaw, Gennadios Xenodochof, Curtis Main, Peter Hartley (loan)/(permanent), Nadir Ciftci (loan), Tom Aldred (loan), Stephen Hendrie (loan)

18/19

• Mark Gillespie, Liam Donnelly, Danny Johnson, Aaron Taylor-Sinclair, Alex Rodriguez-Gorrin, Broque Watson, Neil Watson, Christian Mbulu, Conor Sammon (loan), Tom Aldred (loan)

and breathe.

65 players since the January window of 14/15.

I suppose to make that a bit more than simply a list of names here's how it compared in the seasons prior. The irony is of course that we've brought in the guts of £3m in 'player trading' in recent seasons on what I'm assuming is a reduced playing budget compared to McCall's squads.

January 10/11

• Francis Jeffers, Steve Jones (loan), Gavin Gunning (loan)

11/12

• Nicky Devlin, Michael Higdon, Nicky Law, Adam Cummins, Steven Hetherington, Zaine Francis-Angol, Hermann Mboa Mekongo, Tim Clancy, Omar Daley, Stephen Hughes, Omar Daley, Henrik Ojamaa

12/13

• Simon Ramsden, James McFadden, Fraser Kerr (loan), Kallum Higginbotham (loan)

13/14

• Paul Lawson, Iain Vigurs, John Sutton, Fraser Kerr, Gunnar Neilsen, Stephen McManus, Ben Hall, Henri Anier (loan)/(permanent), Craig Reid, Lionel Ainsworth (loan), Dan Twardzik (loan)

14/15

• Josh Law, Dan Twardzik, Lionel Ainsworth, Henrik Ojamaa (loan), Mark O'Brien (loan)

35 players.

Edited November 13, 2018 by capt_oats

[well fan for life]

I mean we've always signed our fair share of complete huddies but that's life I suppose. Treading old ground but out transfer window was supposedly about "strengthening 12-18" which blatantly didn't work. Especially when you consider the standard of players that we lost in Kipré, Moult, Ciftci, Tanner, Dunne etc. through transfers and injuries and have never come close to replacing.

My main beef with Saturday's results is how big a set of shitebags we are. I'll admit that I think McHugh's two bookings were soft but unless Craig Thomson banged in a hat trick up the other end he's not to blame for losing seven goals. We were right in the game then the red card came around and the other 10 folk just completely chucked it. 10 men isn't the end of the world and you'd still expect us to be able to sit in and at least be hard to break down but you'd see better defending in primary school football.

I still don't think we should give Robinson the boot yet as I'd be concerned who the f**k we'd bring in to replace him. Another Baraclough and end up in the same state as St Mirren now?

[Swello]

23 hours ago, Casagolda said:

To be honest, it’s all beginning to feel rather familiar isn’t it?

Since Les took over and we adopted our new strategy, we seem to have been caught in an endless cycle of relegation scrap, sack the manager, mass rebuilding job in the summer- rinse and repeat. First Baraclough, then McGhee and now here we are again with Robinson, with some fans already wanting a 4th new manager in just under 4 years.

We’re so busy patting ourselves on the back because ‘the model’ saw us sign and sell Moult, Johnson, Kipre etc that we don’t seem to even acknowledge the utter shite we had to wade through in order to find them(see all those listed on this thread last week). How much money was actually wasted in order to find and sell those 3?

Is this strategy really taking us anywhere long term other than the Championship? It feels like we’ve been treading water for years now and surely there’s only so many times you can chop and change the manager while bringing in half a new team before it eventually catches up with you. 

Or do we simply just lay the blame firmly at Robinson’s door, sack him and start the whole process all over again?

I agree with the thrust of this - but where I might differ is that I think "success" for clubs like ours is very cyclical by nature and I think it is pretty much unavoidable that we tread water fairly regularly (although that makes it no less grim to sit through every week) - I think a review of the past 25 years of any town club of our size would clearly bear this out and that cycle will only be broken/improved if the ratio of home grown players to imports from the nether regions of English football changes for the better.

In very simplified terms, we have a good period, our players get noticed and move on, we replace accomplished players with less accomplished ones and we have a poor period - and repeat. There are lots of other factors at play of course - like budget, how well you recruit, how you build on successful seasons (ahem) - but I think the task is the same for every club of our size. You could credibly argue that over the years, we have been as good as anyone at constantly rebuilding. I guess our biggest issue is that we have hit a low point at precisely the time that the league has had a noticeable increase in quality and competitiveness....

The wider question is how we are doing against our strategic aims. Ya Bezzer mentions that we need a football strategy but I guess the club would argue that they have one already that involves developing young players as part of the "Elite" academy programme (which is staffed by qualified coaches and aimed at producing technically good players). Like any strategic decision - we need to wait to see how it bears fruit in 4 or 5 years time - it's not something that can really be rushed.

I personally think that the strategy is fine in theory at least and our problem is more short-term/tactical and one that has been mentioned endlessly - we basically failed to build on a financially strong season and made the tactical error of going for a quantity-over-quality approach and look to have been overly timid in introducing '20's players into the "12-18" positions. Despite the (popular) plan of signing a core of players on longer deals, we still live or die on each summer transfer window and until we have a genuine stream of self-produced players augmented by some quality imports  instead of bench warmers, the consequences of getting it wrong are going to result in seasons like this. 

 

[capt_oats]

Aye, I mean you can absolutely caveat that post I made to f**k.

Baraclough's rebuild came after McCall's squad had us in the play-off and we ended up releasing 12 players at the end of it.

Robinson's rebuild last summer was pretty much universally acknowledged as being necessary given the need to reduce the average age of the squad and clear out some of the huddies McGhee signed.

100% agree re: the shitebaggery.

[Swello]

29 minutes ago, well fan for life said:

I still don't think we should give Robinson the boot yet as I'd be concerned who the f**k we'd bring in to replace him. Another Baraclough and end up in the same state as St Mirren now?

This is my position. It's been really notable for the past 12-18 months how rarely the "new manager bounce" has happened in any meaningful sense. I think unless there is a genuinely outstanding can't-believe-he'd-manage-us type of figure waiting in the wings a la Steve Clarke, it is extremely risky when we are not in imminent danger of finishing bottom. The open application process showed us the last time where we stand in terms of quality of candidate....

As I've also said before - I think that having 'Well in 9th in November whilst a bit grim, probably isn't a sacking offence in the eyes of the board. I know there are some on Steelmen, etc that feel it's imminent but I still think that short of a meltdown (ie - another couple of houndings to follow Sunday's), we're not at that point.

[Casagolda]

Was some laugh though wasn’t it?

[capt_oats]

1 minute ago, Casagolda said:

Was some laugh though wasn’t it?

Good times...

 

[well fan for life]

1 minute ago, Casagolda said:

Was some laugh though wasn’t it?

One of the greatest days in the club's history. #strakerday

[BigTamMuller]

In amongst those two beautiful games against Rangers, we also dished out some absolute pastings to St Mirren and Accies at FP towards the end of that 14-15 season that actually made that ultimate 11th place finish an exciting run in - any other season Ross County would not have gone on the run they did to pip us to 10th! 

Was on holiday over the weekend there, so thankfully haven't brought myself to watch or read up on any more on the result from Sunday - scrolled past the odd heads gone post that's appeared on my Facebook from Well Fans 2 so got a general gist of the main points. After the St Mirren and Dundee wins, viewed Rangers away as a "free hit" of sorts, but that's not the manner you want to see your team lose a match - was actually half confident we could steal a result from Ibrox after their Thursday night loss, and long travel back but alas not. 

Agree with an above point, I don't think sitting 9th in mid November is a sackable offence by any stretch. Adding to points made above, if we do replace, I'm meh about the scenario of an older head who'll do what needs to be done short term, but then leave us back at square one in 12-18 months time, or the Kearney/Barraclough approach which may leave us exactly where we are, or take us even further backwards. I'll even add the Owen Coyle scenario from last season too, where who you bring in backfires completely. 

[capt_oats]

5 minutes ago, BigTamMuller said:

In amongst those two beautiful games against Rangers, we also dished out some absolute pastings to St Mirren and Accies at FP towards the end of that 14-15 season that actually made that ultimate 11th place finish an exciting run in - any other season Ross County would not have gone on the run they did to pip us to 10th! 

The highlights of that St Mirren game are almost 20mins long.

Lionel's goal against Accies btw...some boi.

 

[Swello]

That Accies game proves why Lionel was the subject of so much man-love despite all the times where he was crap/couldn't be arsed.

SIGN MORE UNDERPERFORMING MAVERICKS

[thisGRAEME]

see even in the thumbnail of that Accies game, wtf is the Accies defender doing?

[Swello]

1 minute ago, thisGRAEME said:

see even in the thumbnail of that Accies game, wtf is the Accies defender doing?

Aiming a kick at Dougie Imrie?

[Ron Aldo]

The 14/15 season was one of the worst I can remember.

Are things now that bad that we're looking back on it with fondness?