Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[well fan for life]

26 minutes ago, ropy said:

Any successful appeal for Polworth would see the card down graded to a yellow, a second yellow which means a red card.

The league when we get an appeal accepted only to still have it be a red card:

 

[YassinMoutaouakil]

7 hours ago, ropy said:

Any successful appeal for Polworth would see the card down graded to a yellow, a second yellow which means a red card.

After 3 months

[supermarv]

11 hours ago, well fan for life said:

This is the only way I can think of us having anything creative between midfield & attack. Between Campbell, Crawford, Maguire and O'Hara there's hunners of running and kicking folk but not very much actual football.

Not a bit of fight in them this season, they all think they can play actual football when in fact they should stick to the kicking folk, with the exception of Campbell however maybe not in recent weeks. Miss his driving runs and bullying people. 

[Desp]

I'm of the opinion that we will be fine this season. I think we've good the players to get out of things and we're just going through an awful spell. 13 wins without a win and we're still not bottom. The others in the bottom six are rank as well. 

If we're able to shift a few out of the door over the next week, I'd hope that Alexander sees a necessity for a centre half and a midfielder.  Our midfield is really a struggle at the minute. Campbell is miles off it (understandably to an extent with the shite round about him) and Crawford is a stop gap. Polworth isn't what you're looking for if you're going to be involved in a relegation scrap. Getting Donnelly back soon will help but another one is needed IMO. 

I think we've enough quality up front, in Cole, Watt & Long, to get us goals. We just need to get them the fucking ball. 

When we get that next win, we'll go on a wee run I think. Wednesday is fucking massive to be fair. 

[welldaft]

I wish I had your confidence Desp.  I am sure Hearts fans were thinking same last season and they also thought they had quality in the squad. 

You make your own luck but we have really been bereft of any last couple of months. Not many times could we come away and say we lucked out there and got a refereeing decision in our favour. Conversely we have been on the wrong end of several blunders / decisions which had they not happened might have given us a win. Yesterday I would have been confident of making a game of it 2nd half without Polworth self destructing. 

Even yesterday we are without Lawless and OHara forcing us to play Seedorf which we all know by now is not a good thing. 

We seem to have found a decent Carson replacement in Kelly which is a start. Really hoping Lawless and OHara are available midweek as we are likely to be without Polworth. To be missing all 3 would mean a very weak midfield. 

Might even see Smith get a start v R County. However we line up this is our biggest game this season without a doubt. With 2 games in hand a draw would not be a disaster but a loss most definitely would be. I hope the players battle from the 1st minute as Ross C absolutely will. 

Edited January 24, 2021 by welldaft

[capt_oats]

19 minutes ago, Desp said:

I'm of the opinion that we will be fine this season. I think we've good the players to get out of things and we're just going through an awful spell. 13 games without a win and we're still not bottom. The others in the bottom six are rank as well. 

If we're able to shift a few out of the door over the next week, I'd hope that Alexander sees a necessity for a centre half and a midfielder.  Our midfield is really a struggle at the minute. Campbell is miles off it (understandably to an extent with the shite round about him) and Crawford is a stop gap. Polworth isn't what you're looking for if you're going to be involved in a relegation scrap. Getting Donnelly back soon will help but another one is needed IMO. 

I think we've enough quality up front, in Cole, Watt & Long, to get us goals. We just need to get them the fucking ball. 

When we get that next win, we'll go on a wee run I think. Wednesday is fucking massive to be fair. 

This is kind of it for me as well. I mean, it's naive to try and argue that it's all been bad luck. There are games where we've been absolutely mince and the obvious argument is "well we should have scored more goals" but this feels like it has just been one of those seasons.

Even Chapman having *that* game against Accies feels cursed in so much as he managed to keep clean sheets in his sub appearance against County and his full debut against Livi. Stick Archer in goals for that game and we probably take a point but that's very much coulda, should've, would've.

After the 4-0 against County and 2-0 against Livi, I think most would have been surprised if you'd suggested we'd be 13 games and counting for our next win.

Given the nature of the league fine margins do come into it and yesterday Ojo blocking a goal-bound shot with his arm not being seen lands in the pile along with Rangers offside equaliser last week (marginal or not he's still off), St Mirren's non-penalty penalty equaliser, Mugabi's inexplicably disallowed goal at 0-0 against Hibs, even Jordan fucking White having 2 goals ruled out against United and Hibs back at the start of the season sums things up pretty well.

That's before you even get into chucking in an equaliser with a minute left in injury time against United.

We're midway through January and the squad still feels like an absolute bin fire but the drop off from last season (especially in midfield) is mind-blowing.

[Marinello]

Other than the 'dated' info on the MFC site are there any updates for Donnelly and Dunne?

[RandomGuy.]

FWIW, in terms of your underlying numbers this season, you're relegation battlers.

xG only higher than DU, Hamilton, County. xGc the same. 

Only Celtic/County worse for how "good" the average chance you give away, only DU/County worse for average chance you create.

You're, technically, exactly where you should be in the league, if you look at your basic numbers.

 

[Joey Jo Jo Junior Shabadoo]

[ropy]

Why can’t we score an equaliser?

[capt_oats]

29 minutes ago, Marinello said:

Other than the 'dated' info on the MFC site are there any updates for Donnelly and Dunne?

I mentioned this the other week when the last 'Inside Motherwell' went live; I was quite surprised at how involved Charlie Dunne seemed in the training footage given how little we've actually heard of his progress (we did a 40 min documentary on Turnbull, a full VT section on Donnelly, we've had a bit about Fox's rehab and there was a video about Tanner's recovery ages ago too).

Not that I'm holding out for Charlie Taxi to swoop in and solve our defensive issues but it seemed odd that there's not really been much of an update about him.

Spoiler

(In answer to your question though, not that I've seen).

Edited January 24, 2021 by capt_oats

[Mitch]

Paneer's class but the heartburn nearly fucking kills me.

Paneer is the worst thing I’ve ever tasted!

[ropy]

1 minute ago, Mitch said:

Paneer is the worst thing I’ve ever tasted!

Not sure I have tasted it but Indian cheese doesn’t sound like something I would go for

[ropy]

46 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

I mentioned this the other week when the last 'Inside Motherwell' went live; I was quite surprised at how involved Charlie Dunne seemed in the training footage given how little we've actually heard of his progress (we did a 40 min documentary on Turnbull, a full VT section on Donnelly, we've had a bit about Fox's rehab and there was a video about Tanner's recovery ages ago too).

Not that I'm holding out for Charlie Taxi to swoop in and solve our defensive issues but it seemed odd that there's not really been much of an update about him.

  Reveal hidden contents

(In answer to your question though, not that I've seen).

Could he slowly be getting integrated into the staff, pointing and looking after cones? (And taxi service)

[Doctor Manhattan]

53 minutes ago, ropy said:

Why can’t we score an equaliser?

The last time we actually scored in the second half of a league match was back on 8th November, in a 4-1 defeat. How are you at set theory and Venn diagrams?

[welldaft]

1 minute ago, ropy said:

Could he slowly be getting integrated into the staff, pointing and looking after cones? (And taxi service)

Only if we are going for a coaching team of 42 to go with our squad of 131...

We have enough staff to run the local council. Sadly at the moment not enough to get us out of relegation trouble.

 

[Doctor Manhattan]

8 minutes ago, Mitch said:

Paneer is the worst thing I’ve ever tasted!

Paneer is considerably improved by the addition of spinach, which is not a great vote of confidence in my book.

[dezz]

I’m still holding out hope we’ll be okay this season. Man for man, our squad is superior to (at least) Accies, County and St Johnstone in my opinion.

Clearly that means f**k all when the players aren’t playing anywhere near their potential, added to us ending up on the wrong side of a few ‘unlucky’ decisions, but with 15 games of the season still to go, I’m fairly confident that Alexander will see us secure more points than a couple of other teams in the bottom half.

As others have said, I get the feeling one win will set us on our way to a wee run and no better time for that to start than Wednesday night.

On recruitment, I don’t think there’s any doubt that with Lawless and Kelly we’ve got stronger this window, even Big Weird Harry looked a level up from White during his limited minutes at the weekend. Our midfield is shambles though with no creativity whatsoever if Polworth doesn’t fancy it, which he rarely has this season.

For me, the key position we need to recruit before the end of the month (assuming there is some money in the pot) is a creative player to link midfield and attack through the middle of the pitch. I think it was Busta suggested dropping Watt back in there, which I think is certainly worth a shot but would need a tweak in formation as I couldn’t see him in a midfield 3.

A bit of a rambling post there, apologies, but I’m trying to cling onto any hint of positivity I can at the minute!

Edit: I quite like paneer.

[capt_oats]

10 minutes ago, dezz said:

On recruitment, I don’t think there’s any doubt that with Lawless and Kelly we’ve got stronger this window, even Big Weird Harry looked a level up from White during his limited minutes at the weekend. Our midfield is shambles though with no creativity whatsoever if Polworth doesn’t fancy it, which he rarely has this season.

For me, the key position we need to recruit before the end of the month (assuming there is some money in the pot) is a creative player to link midfield and attack through the middle of the pitch. I think it was Busta suggested dropping Watt back in there, which I think is certainly worth a shot but would
need a tweak in formation as I couldn’t see him in a midfield 3.

I'd be quite interested to know what the difference is in terms of Polworth's numbers are between this season and last. There must be a significant drop off? Surely?

Like, I get he's not for everyone but I'd have thought that most would agree that the Campbell, Donnelly, Polworth 3 from last season was absolutely fine. In fact it was one of the more balanced areas of the team.

Probably unanswerable question but I wonder if Turnbull still being at the club (albeit on crutches) was a motivation for Polworth whereas this season he's literally our only creative midfielder.

IMO we could definitely use another centre half and a creative midfielder but equally I think we really need a few bodies out if only to trim the squad as from the outside looking in it feels like there's a "culture" issue at the club just now.

Edit: Paneer is definitely not for me.

Edited January 24, 2021 by capt_oats

[Bigaldo]

Without trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist, that's 3 weeks in a row the referee has screwed us. St Mirren never a penalty, The Rangers were offside and yesterday we should have clearly had a penalty. Or is it just the usual utter shite standard of scottish refs.