Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[ropy]

16 minutes ago, Casagolda said:

The thought crossed my mind too. KVV certainly seemed to have the best scoring season of his career under Alexander as well. 

Maybe Alexander actually knows what he’s doing? 

As I said yesterday, it’s a hard watch at times but you really can’t argue with the results. I do feel we really need to use the ball better but I think if you drop SODS, KVV and one of Donnelly/Goss into yesterday’s team then our use of the ball would probably improve drastically.

As a side note, noticed there was no Crawford or Lawless in the squad yesterday… 

Alexander said something along the lines of 90% of the squad being good.  Looks like he is weeding out the ten.

[steelmen]

Maybe Alexander actually knows what he’s doing? 

As a side note, noticed there was no Crawford or Lawless in the squad yesterday… 

No need for the other stuff. The second line proves the first one!!!

[thisGRAEME]

1 hour ago, RandomGuy. said:

Tbf my whole data shtick has Ojala as slow and relatively immobile too.

If you end up in a situation where your left side is Lamie, Ojala, and Goss, you're not having a good time if your opponents have anyone with pace.

Ojala certainly isn't rapid, but there was a couple of times yesterday he certainly didn't look slow. 

That said, hopefully or Norwegian dreamboat is actually rapid, a bit more security at the back would he a big help.

I'm sticking firm on 'unconvinced' on Goss, and as you mentioned, he was very square with players running at him even in his cameo yesterday. He did also have an incredible touch bringing it out of the sky and a dangerous looking dead ball, so... so far, so expected, I guess.

[Busta Nut]

13 hours ago, well fan for life said:

Having rewatched Sportscene I would like to change my comments on Carroll to be that he's utterly fucking brainless and that's another completely fucking stupid red card from him. 

No chance is that getting overturned. It's a shocker. 

Aye I said yesterday I wasn't sure it was even a foul while @crazylegsjoe_mfc saw it for what it was, a horrible tackle. Deserved a red, Carroll is a screwball/idiot, he has that in him.

3 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

Tbf my whole data shtick has Ojala as slow and relatively immobile too.

If you end up in a situation where your left side is Lamie, Ojala, and Goss, you're not having a good time if your opponents have anyone with pace.

I was liking your wee cameo in here every so often but yer gettin' annoying again.

[ropy]

Down to fifth.

[Lobby Dossar]

17 minutes ago, ropy said:

Down to fifth.

Aye but only 3pts of TOP 

[welldaft]

4 hours ago, Casagolda said:

As a side note, noticed there was no Crawford or Lawless in the squad yesterday… 

I saw Lawless in his club tracksuit outside the ground. I assume it may be Covid or injury related. He would normally make the bench.

Interesting takes on the game and performance yesterday. Hard to disagree with many. I enjoyed the goal and the final 30 seconds. Other than that it is a hard watch allowing teams to dominate possession and pass about us at will. We do that against Aberdeen and the better teams and it is likely to be a different outcome result wise.

That said we won and after 4 games sit above Celtic in the table. Last season at this time we were bossing games and losing by the odd goal. I would take narrow unglamorous wins over attractive performances and narrow losses any day of the week. 

I still think it will be another few weeks before we can see our best team on the pitch. When we do I also think we will have some decent options from the bench. 

What I did like about yesterday was us being streetwise. Taking our time to take deadball situations. Generally being more difficult to beat. Down to 10 men and it was more comfortable that I was expecting. So credit to the players and GA for that. 

Being defensively solid and difficult to beat is the best starting point. Time will tell if it is like that all season or whether we can play more expansive football as well. There were glimpses of it yesterday, but mere glimpses…

Edited August 29, 2021 by welldaft

[welldaft]

To follow up on the above…

GA has managed us in 16 League Games. We have won 8. 50% win ratio. 

Granted that has a lot to do with us playing bottom 6 and not having played Old firm yet this year, but we would have taken that when he was appointed. 
 

Edited August 29, 2021 by welldaft

[capt_oats]

7 minutes ago, welldaft said:

To follow up on the above…

GA has managed us in 16 League Games. We have won 8. 50% win ratio. 

Granted that has a lot to do with us playing bottom 6 and not having played Old firm yet this year, but we would have taken that when he was appointed. 

I was looking at the same thing just there and by my count it's 22 games.

P 22 W 10 D 5 L 7 F 28 A 29 Pts 35/66 (53%)

Win % - 45%
Loss % - 31%

[ropy]

31 minutes ago, Lobby Dossar said:

Aye but only 3pts of TOP 

A 2-0 Winn for Ross County and we are back up a place 

[well fan for life]

If we keep being arseholes and seeing out 1-0 wins regularly I will definitely make my peace with Grezza's Murderball. 

[beesher]

I thought we were dreadful yesterday. We may have won the game but we had several players failing to do the basics, 0 entertainment, and 2 or 3 players who seem to be in the team purely because the alternative is even worse.

Positives were Tony Watt, who is streets ahead of anyone else in this squad in terms of ability. Van Veen for Woolery was a welcome change as he is utter dross. The guy in the Hunter stand that shouts ‘out out out out’ in that nails on a blackboard way seemed to have a sore throat as well which was good.

['WellDel]

On evidence so far, Woolery's agent has played an absolute blinder in managing to get him tied to a 3yr deal. Speed seems to be all he has, zero footballing nous whatsoever. 

Hoping it's just a period of adjustment for him and he picks up, but I'm far from convinced.

[capt_oats]

On Woolery I'd re-up @thisGRAEME's point yesterday about the adjustment/intensity thing.

Alexander's mentioned the "fragmented" pre-season with various players coming in at different stages of fitness and IIRC Woolery did an interview not long after he was in the door where he said himself that he was behind. It seems relevant that since he's been here he's started all but one of our games and it feels like the more he's played the less effective he's been.

Hopefully the international break gives a chance for various players to re-set.

I'll not lie, I'm now pretty curious to see who the 2nd of the 2 players we've been talking to is. Or more specifically I'm interested to see what position they play.

Broadly we seem a work in progress. The front 3 have been chopped and changed as have the midfield 3...I mean did anyone envisage us going into a game with O'Hara and Grimshaw as two of the midfield 3 and Bevis at RB a couple of weeks ago? I didn't.

In that respect, it's not a surprise that at the moment we're anything but fluid.

Even taking KVV out the front 3 means we've lost an out ball and a means to get the ball to stick up top. That touch yesterday where he pulled the ball and killed it stone dead was a great example of what we miss when he's not there. Especially if we're set up to have midfielders landing on 2nd balls.

However if we're doing enough to win games then cool. It's better than the position we were in this time last season where we were having 60 odd % possession and losing 1-0.

Edited August 29, 2021 by capt_oats

[Guest superward]

6 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

Tbf my whole data shtick has Ojala as slow and relatively immobile too.

If you end up in a situation where your left side is Lamie, Ojala, and Goss, you're not having a good time if your opponents have anyone with pace.

No disrespect to the data but Ojala doesn't looks particularly slow to me. Fast? No, but I would say slow. He was also fairly mobile to stretch to a couple of big clearances.

[RandomGuy.]

1 minute ago, superward said:

No disrespect to the data but Ojala doesn't looks particularly slow to me. Fast? No, but I would say slow. He was also fairly mobile to stretch to a couple of big clearances.

Just doesn't win many 1v1 ground duels which sometimes hints they're slow/unagile, especially with CBs.

[Guest superward]

8 hours ago, Antiochas III said:

Dundee dominated possession because it was simply the tactic to allow them to have the ball and move on the counter.  The fact they had 60%+ of the possession and the closest they came to scoring  was smashing the bar when they caught us on the counter tells you the game plan worked and in honest at no point except the above mentioned was I worried about Dubdee winning.   

100% agree. 

I don't think we quite meant to give them so much possession between start of second half and 68 mins when we changed to 5-3-2 mind you. GA was a bit slow to change that too. Watt had been shouting over and asking if he should drop into the gap between attack and midfield a couple of times. 

It's clear as day to me that Alexander has in part used the cup and all of August as a pre season essentially. 

Edited August 29, 2021 by superward

[Antiochas III]

10 minutes ago, superward said:

 

It's clear as day to me that Alexander has in part used the cup and all of August as a pre season essentially. 

Agreed - bit of a Season doesn't start until Transfer Window closes.  

[Swello]

25 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Just doesn't win many 1v1 ground duels which sometimes hints they're slow/unagile, especially with CBs.

This is actually what I thought he was great at yesterday - lots of wee nippy tackles taking it off Dundee players' toes in the penalty box.

He has a slightly ungainly running style but I'd agree with others that he isn't that slow (and as some of our best ever defenders have been slow, I couldn't give a f**k TBH)

On Alexanderball generally - I'm impressed with the effectiveness of it, even if the 6 centre Halfs at Livi gave me an embolism.

Yesterday specifically, the first half an hour was a hard watch and I don't buy that making that many unforced errors was part of a rope-a-dope master plan - but after we took the lead, we put in the kind of stuffy performance that usually has us grudgingly admiring other teams when they do it to us - we were in no real danger of losing the game from Watt's header onwards. 

[supermarv]

1 hour ago, capt_oats said:

On Woolery I'd re-up @thisGRAEME's point yesterday about the adjustment/intensity thing.

Alexander's mentioned the "fragmented" pre-season with various players coming in at different stages of fitness and IIRC Woolery did an interview not long after he was in the door where he said himself that he was behind. It seems relevant that since he's been here he's started all but one of our games and it feels like the more he's played the less effective he's been.

Hopefully the international break gives a chance for various players to re-set.

I'll not lie, I'm now pretty curious to see who the 2nd of the 2 players we've been talking to is. Or more specifically I'm interested to see what position they play.

Broadly we seem a work in progress. The front 3 have been chopped and changed as have the midfield 3...I mean did anyone envisage us going into a game with O'Hara and Grimshaw as two of the midfield 3 and Bevis at RB a couple of weeks ago? I didn't.

In that respect, it's not a surprise that at the moment we're anything but fluid.

Even taking KVV out the front 3 means we've lost an out ball and a means to get the ball to stick up top. That touch yesterday where he pulled the ball and killed it stone dead was a great example of what we miss when he's not there. Especially if we're set up to have midfielders landing on 2nd balls.

However if we're doing enough to win games then cool. It's better than the position we were in this time last season where we were having 60 odd % possession and losing 1-0.

Apparently SOD is out with “glandular fever” so he could potentially be out for a while and there was also talk of him going to Sunderland, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we seen a right back arrive. 
For me the perfect signing would be Robbie Gotts he can play right back and in the middle and the wing so brings some versatility and being brought through the Leeds style of Bielsa’s play he’ll have no trouble with the intensity up here. 
Big handsome Norwegian dude, Robbie Gotts and Jordan Roberts back or similar type would be enough for me I think. 
On or close to deadline day in these last few days players are being offered left right and centre so I’d expect us to maybe make even 3 or 4 signings with a couple outgoings to hopefully.

Edited August 29, 2021 by supermarv