Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[well fan for life]

13 minutes ago, Swello said:

There is a sentence that shows the biggest decline in the team and - again - underlines the folly of not being able to sign a forward of real quality in the summer.

While nonsense defending is killing us at times, this is what is brutal. We have an entire squad with nobody who gives any sort of spark. Moult was, ultimately, a complete anomaly out of the conference leagues. It's unlikely we'll find a second one of those jobbing around somewhere. But when we had him we had someone who could score from basically nothing. McDonald was a moaning git but he was good at holding up play and linking midfield and attack. Marvin Johnson on his day was outstanding. Pace, power and, latterly, finishing. Christ even an Ainsworth, while being wildly inconsistent, at least could produce a ridiculous 35 yard strike out of nothing.

Admittedly this next part is riddled with bias as I absolutely adore the man and worship the ground he walks on, but even Ciftci had a knack of pulling us up the park last season. He could trap a ball like a bag of cement and seemed almost impossible to nudge off the ball when he had it under control. 

This season we've got Main who has zero confidence, Bowman takes a first touch like a brick wall, Sammon is Sammon and Johnson fell away after a couple of goals. Coupled with Cadden playing about 50 yards further back than when he was at his best, Tait playing out of position and Elliot Frear impersonating a footballer there's nobody providing any decent crosses at this point. Indeed the first time we have shown anything like creativity is from a 19 year old from the reserves.

It seems like we recruited with a quantity over quality approach which is proving to be a disaster. This "improving 12-18" stuff has been an abject failure as we've just brought in a load of bench warming jobbers instead of anyone who looks like they might force their way into the first team. 

[Desp]

17 minutes ago, well fan for life said:

While nonsense defending is killing us at times, this is what is brutal. We have an entire squad with nobody who gives any sort of spark. Moult was, ultimately, a complete anomaly out of the conference leagues. It's unlikely we'll find a second one of those jobbing around somewhere. But when we had him we had someone who could score from basically nothing. McDonald was a moaning git but he was good at holding up play and linking midfield and attack. Marvin Johnson on his day was outstanding. Pace, power and, latterly, finishing. Christ even an Ainsworth, while being wildly inconsistent, at least could produce a ridiculous 35 yard strike out of nothing.

Admittedly this next part is riddled with bias as I absolutely adore the man and worship the ground he walks on, but even Ciftci had a knack of pulling us up the park last season. He could trap a ball like a bag of cement and seemed almost impossible to nudge off the ball when he had it under control. 

This season we've got Main who has zero confidence, Bowman takes a first touch like a brick wall, Sammon is Sammon and Johnson fell away after a couple of goals. Coupled with Cadden playing about 50 yards further back than when he was at his best, Tait playing out of position and Elliot Frear impersonating a footballer there's nobody providing any decent crosses at this point. Indeed the first time we have shown anything like creativity is from a 19 year old from the reserves.

It seems like we recruited with a quantity over quality approach which is proving to be a disaster. This "improving 12-18" stuff has been an abject failure as we've just brought in a load of bench warming jobbers instead of anyone who looks like they might force their way into the first team. 

Any chance of sticking that in a letter to Mr S Robinson, Fir Park Stadium, Motherwell?

[Swello]

All the guys mentioned - Moult, McDonald, Ainsworth, Ciftci & Johnson had the arrogance needed to try stuff that was out of the ordinary and add a bit of entertainment - and these are the types of players I've always valued above the others - Cooper and Coyne are my favourite ever players for precisely that reason. The downside is that only the very best of that type of player is at all consistent of course - but to me, it is essential to have players like that and you deal with it when they are aff it by having another inconsistent genius to send on after an hour

We are in a position where we've got a bunch of very hard working but ultimately quite limited players (although I liked my first proper look at Turnball on Saturday) and the blend simply has to be changed in January regardless of manager. No team we play are looking at us and worrying about what they are having to defend against and as much as the workrate and (assuming it ever returns) organisation gets you so far, you need someone that makes a defender shite themselves. It's the extreme example - but when other teams saw Higdon, Ojamma, Murphy and Humphrey lining up against them, they were anything but comfortable....

[capt_oats]

21 minutes ago, well fan for life said:

While nonsense defending is killing us at times, this is what is brutal. We have an entire squad with nobody who gives any sort of spark. Moult was, ultimately, a complete anomaly out of the conference leagues. It's unlikely we'll find a second one of those jobbing around somewhere. But when we had him we had someone who could score from basically nothing. McDonald was a moaning git but he was good at holding up play and linking midfield and attack. Marvin Johnson on his day was outstanding. Pace, power and, latterly, finishing. Christ even an Ainsworth, while being wildly inconsistent, at least could produce a ridiculous 35 yard strike out of nothing.

Admittedly this next part is riddled with bias as I absolutely adore the man and worship the ground he walks on, but even Ciftci had a knack of pulling us up the park last season. He could trap a ball like a bag of cement and seemed almost impossible to nudge off the ball when he had it under control. 

This season we've got Main who has zero confidence, Bowman takes a first touch like a brick wall, Sammon is Sammon and Johnson fell away after a couple of goals. Coupled with Cadden playing about 50 yards further back than when he was at his best, Tait playing out of position and Elliot Frear impersonating a footballer there's nobody providing any decent crosses at this point. Indeed the first time we have shown anything like creativity is from a 19 year old from the reserves.

It seems like we recruited with a quantity over quality approach which is proving to be a disaster. This "improving 12-18" stuff has been an abject failure as we've just brought in a load of bench warming jobbers instead of anyone who looks like they might force their way into the first team. 

[YassinMoutaouakil]

fwiw I reckon if there's one team in the league I'd confidently predict us to beat it's St Mirren. They look soft as shite even after signing a bunch of lads from the 2011-12 Football League Show. If we don't body them all over the park then we are in massive fucking bother.

Edited October 23, 2018 by YassinMoutaouakil

[capt_oats]

1 hour ago, Swello said:

All the guys mentioned - Moult, McDonald, Ainsworth, Ciftci & Johnson had the arrogance needed to try stuff that was out of the ordinary and add a bit of entertainment - and these are the types of players I've always valued above the others - Cooper and Coyne are my favourite ever players for precisely that reason. The downside is that only the very best of that type of player is at all consistent of course - but to me, it is essential to have players like that and you deal with it when they are aff it by having another inconsistent genius to send on after an hour

We are in a position where we've got a bunch of very hard working but ultimately quite limited players (although I liked my first proper look at Turnball on Saturday) and the blend simply has to be changed in January regardless of manager. No team we play are looking at us and worrying about what they are having to defend against and as much as the workrate and (assuming it ever returns) organisation gets you so far, you need someone that makes a defender shite themselves. It's the extreme example - but when other teams saw Higdon, Ojamma, Murphy and Humphrey lining up against them, they were anything but comfortable....

Again, I feel like I'm prefacing most of my posts with "I like Robinson...but" these days.

I like Robinson but...this, and @well fan for life's post, pretty much nail it for me.

Robinson's got a lot of his transfer business right IMO. The thing that's interesting to me is that a lot of those successes have been quite specific types of players. Kipré, Dunne, Carson, Aldred, Hartley et al...all enthusiastic thumbs up from me. Guys like Plummer ended up broken in the Thunderdome and Hendrie was only ever brought in as cover.

Bearing in mind he intro'd Andy Rose by billing him as an attacking midfielder then it seems a bit less clear that he knows what he wants in terms of 'creativity'.

The forwards he's signed are:
Fisher (19 apps, 0 goals)
Tanner (36 apps, 9 goals)
Newell (10 apps, 0 goals)
Petravicius (14 apps. 0 goals) 
Main (34 apps. 12 goals)
Ciftci (15 apps, 3 goals) 
Johnson (14 apps, 4 goals)
Sammon (11 apps. 3 goals)

The fact that he's signed guys like Tanner, Main, Ciftci and Johnson suggests that Robinson's got an idea of the sort of mix you need. Even signing the competition winner suggested that he saw the benefit of adding a bit of pace it's just a bit unfortunate that as a fitba' player he was an absolute huddie and what we've been left with to go into this season is limited.

I don't know what our budget is like in relative terms so who knows we may have been priced out of our targets, the chat that St Johnstone are chucking around six-figure salaries was an eye-opener, but while this may be unfair it's difficult not to feel like Robinson's got a conservative streak and if he'd be more inclined to shy away from the mercurial players. It's almost as if our position is that there's room for one Tanner-type player and that's it.

Similarly right now it just seems unlikely that he'd go out and sign a McDonald, a Marvin Johnson or even a Pearson.

Edited October 23, 2018 by capt_oats

[YassinMoutaouakil]

I'm half expecting us to hand all our social media accounts over to Tommy Sheridan the way they keep misjudging these tweets. 

[AndyRoss]

Wrote this last night - https://ajr2022.wordpress.com/2018/10/22/one-year-on-things-arent-so-good/

[MJC]

17 hours ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:

fwiw I reckon if there's one team in the league I'd confidently predict us to beat it's St Mirren. They look soft as shite even after signing a bunch of lads from the 2011-12 Football League Show. If we don't body them all over the park then we are in massive fucking bother.

That's true though I'm never confident playing St.Mirren no matter how bad they are. That said anything less than a win against them next week will be completely unacceptable, though not in any way surprising.

[capt_oats]

Following on from the slightly tone deaf tweet Yassin posted the other day I see that's David Turnbull front and centre in the training photos and we've even given him his own phone wall-paper. A Star Is Born indeed.

While I absolutely stan Turnbull, maybe I'm reading a bit too much into things but it seems that he's the new 'project' for the media team.

That's not a criticism btw (though it sounds pretty snarky on my part), I'd say that given our pretty poor form one of the (few) highlights that we can get away with focussing on are the #youngMotherwell bois. Even more so if we're actually going to be playing them rather than having them sat on the bench. There's more to be positive around Turnbull pinging ridiculous shroo balls about the park (albeit for Curtis Main to subsequently leather them over the bar) than Peter Hartley giving it #wegoagain. 

Fully expecting a 'Coffee and chat' interview to be incoming.

I don't know how joined up the thinking is on that sort of thing but I'm kind of curious if this mild push in terms of profile is an indication that he's been promoted ahead of your Grimshaw, Gorrin, Bigi and the like in the first team reckoning.

Having said that, given he's out of contract at the end of the season (as is Jake Hastie) it'd be nice if we could announce a contract extension before we fully jump on the hype train tbqh.

 

Edited October 25, 2018 by capt_oats

[YassinMoutaouakil]

he'll probably end up at Killie tbh

[Gianfranco]

I think we should take all of this European money we apparently got today and fire it all in a bid for Nadir.

[capt_oats]

Miss him so much...

[MJC]

45 minutes ago, Gianfranco said:

I think we should take all of this European money we apparently got today and fire it all in a bid for Nadir.

He'd provide some healthy competition for Johnson to see who could get off the bench to replace Bowman or Main/Sammon to be fair.

[well fan for life]

[YassinMoutaouakil]

hi nadir do u want picking up in the morning pal

[capt_oats]

Alfie joining Chris Humphrey at East Kilbride on loan 'til January. #alfieforthefirstteam

 

[Gianfranco]

Wee Alfie has just joined Humphrey at EK on loan.

 

[capt_oats]

Interview with Humphrey just went up on the socials.

 

[Ron Aldo]

For some reason I didn't realise Humphrey was only 31 - given he's retired from top level football I assumed he was a few years older.

Our team right now is absolutely crying out for someone like a fully fit, injury free Chris Humphrey. Although in saying that, Robinson would probably have him at right wing back in that 3-5-fucking 2.