Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[well fan for life]

1 minute ago, thisGRAEME said:

I thought Hartley was worse, tbh, but I could be easily convinced either way. Hartley was getting dragged out into daft positions on top of giving the ball away with roughly... every pass?

Big shout out to Peter Hartley for doing the EXACT SAME FUCKING PASS that gave the ball away twice in 30 seconds in the first game. 

[AndyRoss]

The following day and it’s still hard to make sense of that.

Major headaches for the manager after the first half display and there must be a few that he’s considering shelving on the back of it.

Though can’t help thinking if that had been a league game, it potentially could have been seen as a turning point for us. It was a remarkable turnaround given the shitshow in the first half and we had a few good chances to complete the comeback and win it in 90 minutes.

The extra half hour was far from ideal, especially on a very heavy surface and the penalties were pretty much a disaster.

There’s a fair bit of hysteria and very few aren’t being targeted for criticism, though for me it’s far from a season ender.

We’ve got a run of favourable fixtures coming up and we’re joint third with a game in hand. There’s no denying our form is poor, but the teams around us aren’t embarking on winning runs either - it’s still all to play for.

The recruitment is taking a battering too. It would be interesting to compare our success rate with that of clubs with a similar budget to ourselves. Guys like Mugabi and Manzinga, could have been fourth or fifth choice signings - it’s not as if we’ve made up tales that we’re competing against English non-league sides when it comes to recruiting. I think in the case of both of the players I’ve mentioned, they were never expected to be first-teamers, they were brought in to enhance our options.

We’ve had some poor signings which absolutely is going to happen, but I still go with Robinson getting it right more often that he’s got it wrong. His hand has been forced through injury to use players he probably would have preferred not to, but that’s just the way of things sometimes.

[AndyRoss]

I also enjoyed his steady level of shithousery from the second half on last night; lots of niggle with various St Mirren defenders which was amusing to see.

Standing beside their keeper and pointing to his imaginary watch seemed to always lead to a punt that just went up the way and not really travel any sort of distance.

[Pettigrew]

5 minutes ago, AndyRoss said:

 

Standing beside their keeper and pointing to his imaginary watch seemed to always lead to a punt that just went up the way and not really travel any sort of distance.

 

Yeah that was amusing and brought back memories of Stevie Kirk doing that week in week out, but particularly vs Goram when he was at Hibs.  But there was also a few off the ball things which seemed to get reactions every time.

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

Robinson's comments post match were almost contradictory. He said he was going to stop showing loyalty to players who had done a job for him in the first half of the season, but at the same time said we were down to the bare bones.

This season's recruitment begs so many questions, from Mugabi's charitable 18 month extension to paying a fee for Seedorf.

Hopefully we can get Chili D fit beside Gallagher and the need to use Mugabi/Hartley reduces and we can work a front three around Aarons, Watt and Long.

There's no doubt there's a lot of dross in the squad, although I do have a degree of sympathy for Robinson with the amount of players he has to recruit.

 

[thisGRAEME]

23 minutes ago, AndyRoss said:

The recruitment is taking a battering too. It would be interesting to compare our success rate with that of clubs with a similar budget to ourselves. Guys like Mugabi and Manzinga, could have been fourth or fifth choice signings - it’s not as if we’ve made up tales that we’re competing against English non-league sides when it comes to recruiting. I think in the case of both of the players I’ve mentioned, they were never expected to be first-teamers, they were brought in to enhance our options.

We’ve had some poor signings which absolutely is going to happen, but I still go with Robinson getting it right more often that he’s got it wrong. His hand has been forced through injury to use players he probably would have preferred not to, but that’s just the way of things sometimes.

I think overall that's fair, but similarly; We knew Cole was going, it seems that we were pretty aware that Scott was desired by other clubs, and we ended up with a guy who has quality, but is miles from fitness and Ndjoli who is...nowhere to be seen.

Neither are physical forward options, neither are replacements for Scott or Cole, and had Watt not been available, where are we? Starting Manzinga who is not ready to play for us, or Seedorf in a similar boat. There's also a fair chance we'll end up getting Ndjoli/Aarons/Watt fit for someone else, rather than us, so where's the benefit?

[Busta Nut]

I think the problem is that Robbo chnages nothing about our initial approach. We've play two seperate ways, Thunderdome for about 18 months. Then this 433 was from Jan.

With thunderdome we are found out after a year and persisted with it for another 6 months. We've played the 433 relentlessly for a year without changing much at all. We're now at a point where we need to change things again. I am not sure we can.

[scmwell]

Change of formation to more or less what we ended with last night

Carson

Donnelly Gallagher Dunne

Tait Campbell Ohara Polworth Aarons

Watt long

 

[Ron Aldo]

17 minutes ago, Busta Nut said:

I think the problem is that Robbo chnages nothing about our initial approach. We've play two seperate ways, Thunderdome for about 18 months. Then this 433 was from Jan.

With thunderdome we are found out after a year and persisted with it for another 6 months. We've played the 433 relentlessly for a year without changing much at all. We're now at a point where we need to change things again. I am not sure we can.

This is spot on.

With our budget our squad is never going to be perfect but a mix of this current team and some personnel from the thunderdome team would be ideal. I've said similar but we've gone from having a team of cloggers with no plan B to having a team full of decent footballers but still having no plan B.

Robinson was (rightly) praised for changing our style at the start of last year but if you were to be critical you would say that, once he finds a style, he tends to stick to it a bit too rigidly and it always gets found out.

[Archie McSquackle]

I'm hearing that Hartley was ill last night and went home at half time. Shouldn't have played but needs must.

[AndyRoss]

I think overall that's fair, but similarly; We knew Cole was going, it seems that we were pretty aware that Scott was desired by other clubs, and we ended up with a guy who has quality, but is miles from fitness and Ndjoli who is...nowhere to be seen.
Neither are physical forward options, neither are replacements for Scott or Cole, and had Watt not been available, where are we? Starting Manzinga who is not ready to play for us, or Seedorf in a similar boat. There's also a fair chance we'll end up getting Ndjoli/Aarons/Watt fit for someone else, rather than us, so where's the benefit?

I suppose the issue with Scott was he left on the deadline day. We managed to get Aarons in at the close of play, but perhaps got caught by surprise at the value offered?

[Desp]

10 minutes ago, Archie McSquackle said:

I'm hearing that Hartley was ill last night and went home at half time. Shouldn't have played but needs must.

I was fucking ill watching his performance. 

Has he put in a good performance since his six month loan ended?  The centre half version of Kevin McBride.

Manzinga is 25 (TWENTY-FIVE) years old and he doesn't seem to be able to understand how football works. If he's not ready now, he never will be.  I'm beginning to think we only signed him because his goal in a pre-season kickabout got big numbers for our social media department.   I genuinely burst out laughing as it took him three attempts to kick the ball away. 

I'd echo the Mark O'Hara shouts.  I'll be honest and say I haven't been convinced with him so far (the feedback I received from mates who support Dundee & Killie was very accurate) but he was sensational when he came on last night.  More of that please.  Get Donnelly in beside Gallagher until Dunne is back, O'Hara in the midfield and run with that.

Also, fair play to Tony Watt.  Reminds me of Ciftci in a way that he'll be decent on the ball, bring others into play, shithouse the opposition players but won't chip in with too many goals.  Would like to see how he gets on in a front three with Aarons & Long. He was clearly on his arse after about an hour last night but continued to put a shift in. 

Edited February 19, 2020 by Desp

[Hendo]

Your dip in form seems to coincide with your manager being charged with domestic assault. Not making any judgement on it as the legal process needs to run its course, but do you think it's related or just coincidental?

[capt_oats]

1 hour ago, Hendo said:

Your dip in form seems to coincide with your manager being charged with domestic assault. Not making any judgement on it as the legal process needs to run its course, but do you think it's related or just coincidental?

Not really. The alleged incident was on 13th December, he was in court on 16th January - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/51137769

In that time our record is: P 12 W 4 D 3 L 5 - two of the losses were to Rangers and Celtic.
15th December: L - Rangers (h) 0 - 2
21st December: W - Kilmarnock (a) 0 - 1
26th December - W - Ross County (a) 1 - 2
29th December - L - Accies (h) 1 - 2
18th January - W - Dundee (a) 0 - 3
22nd January - W - Aberdeen (a) 0 - 1
25th January - X - Hibs (h) 0 - 0
1st February - L - Livingston (a) 1 - 0
5th February - L - Celtic (h) 0 - 4
8th February - X - St Mirren (a) 1 - 1
12th February - L - St Johnstone (a) 2 - 1
18th February - X - St Mirren - (h) 4 - 4 eliminated on penalties

If you're looking for a correlation in the dip in form then it's that we lost Devante Cole during the January window and sold James Scott on the 31st January. Our form since the window closed is P 5 W 0 D 2 L 3.

Up to the end of the window it was P 7 W 4 D 1 L 2.

Edited February 19, 2020 by capt_oats

[AndyRoss]

I was fucking ill watching his performance. 
Has he put in a good performance since his six month loan ended?  The centre half version of Kevin McBride.

No getting away from how poor he was last night, though I think that’s pretty unfair. I think he’s been fairly solid this season.

His distribution is poor, but I don’t have many complaints when it comes to the defensive side of his game whatsoever.

[boozyBJ]

Hartley needs a better centre half partner (Gallacher) playing beside him, to make up for his deficiencies. Pairing him up with big Mugabi was a mistake waiting to happen

[Ron Aldo]

9 minutes ago, AndyRoss said:

 

No getting away from how poor he was last night, though I think that’s pretty unfair. I think he’s been fairly solid this season.

His distribution is poor, but I don’t have many complaints when it comes to the defensive side of his game whatsoever.

 

Playing alongside Gallagher or Kipre (i.e. - defenders who can actually defend) in the past has probably helped Hartley look better than he actually is.

As shown last night, Hartley alongside Mugabi (or even Dunne) is a disaster waiting to happen.

 

Edit - @boozyBJ has just said pretty much the exact same thing.

Edited February 19, 2020 by Ron Aldo

[Al B]

1 hour ago, Hendo said:

Your dip in form seems to coincide with your manager being charged with domestic assault. Not making any judgement on it as the legal process needs to run its course, but do you think it's related or just coincidental?

I totally agree. If only the Robinson family had stayed at home that day and had a cozy evening watching telly, then Bevis Mugabe and Christy Manzinga wouldn't be utterly dugshit at fitba. Must be so frustrating for the boys, sitting in their house thinking "I used to be able to do this, but then the gaffer got in an argument with his wife and the ability to tackle, pass, know where i'm supposed to be, or just generally look like I know what i'm doing, just drained right out of me".

Also on an unrelated note, the bold Rolando caused no end of problems for St Mirren 2nd half last night, always looked like something was going to happen everytime he got the ball, BUT....it's just a matter of time before he dislocates his own hip.

Edited February 19, 2020 by Al B

[Lobby Dossar]

1 hour ago, Ron Aldo said:

This is spot on.

With our budget our squad is never going to be perfect but a mix of this current team and some personnel from the thunderdome team would be ideal. I've said similar but we've gone from having a team of cloggers with no plan B to having a team full of decent footballers but still having no plan B.

Robinson was (rightly) praised for changing our style at the start of last year but if you were to be critical you would say that, once he finds a style, he tends to stick to it a bit too rigidly and it always gets found out.

Correct and teams will do there homework on you 

Which is exactly what has happened and we’ve been found out yet Robinson still plays 4-3-3

[thisGRAEME]

1 hour ago, AndyRoss said:

I suppose the issue with Scott was he left on the deadline day. We managed to get Aarons in at the close of play, but perhaps got caught by surprise at the value offered?

 

It is, aye, and I understand that, but the chat seemed to be that Hull came back multiple times with raised offers for him. I like Aarons and think he's got a good bit about him (and I think he'd have been dynamite on our pitch around July) but he isn't the same type of player, and as I mentioned, neither him nor Ndjoli are a Cole replacement, which we certainly did know for at least a month.