Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[AdamMFC]

I'm really worried when it comes to thinking ahead to next season. For me the split is really papering over the cracks, if it wasn't for the split we would be 8th and only 1 point ahead of Aberdeen and St Mirren. I know we won't sack him so we/I just have to hope some random lower league English team takes a punt on him. Because if we do go into next season with him still in charge we'd start as one of the favourites to go down and no one could really argue against that right now. Considering the PCAs a couple of the players have agreed elsewhere and the others who are likely to leave at the end of their contracts he's got a bit of a rebuild on his hands over the summer and for every Slattery, Tierney and Van Veen he's signed there's an Efford, Nirennold and Amaluzor. I'm fully aware that's just the risk a club of our size with the budget we will have takes every summer as it is the level of player we can get and it would be the same situation with someone else in charge I just really worry for us next season as things stand.

[one m in Motherwell]

Thinking about PCAs, I wonder if there’s been any movement on this in terms of players coming in?

Not that I would hold out much hope but y’know, here we are.

[ropy]

I watched the game and I listened to the manager and he is right.  On another day we win that game.  We hit the frame of the goal and drew good saves from their keeper. They scored with a wicked deflection and another deflection had our keeper scrambling.

In the context of the past 4 months it doesn’t make me feel any better and my thoughts go to the final game of the season where some 12 year old will come off the Celtic bench and score his debut goal in a 7-0 defeat.  A few waves goodbye and all this will be over.

[capt_oats]

8 hours ago, AdamMFC said:

I'm really worried when it comes to thinking ahead to next season. For me the split is really papering over the cracks, if it wasn't for the split we would be 8th and only 1 point ahead of Aberdeen and St Mirren.

Not disagreeing with the sentiment of the post but on this specific point, it's really just a quirk of the league format we have and often it just creates a false narrative.

If we didn't have the split we'd have a completely different set of fixtures. If we hadn't finished Top 6 people would be (rightly) losing their minds given our position on Boxing Day but, again, we'd have a completely different set of fixtures.

Rather than papering over anything the fact we've landed in the Top 6 (deservedly so IMO given our form in the first half of the season) is actually amplifying our issues. We've been given a set of fixtures that we were less likely to win (especially given our away form).

Fact is that even in our slump in the R3 fixtures we took points off the majority of the teams currently making up the bottom half (I've added in R1 & R2 form as well):

1st: Celtic - Loss (0-4) | (LL (0 pts)) = 0 total
2nd: Rangers - Draw (2-2) | (XL (1 pt)) = 2 total
3rd: Hearts - Loss (2-0) | (LW (3 pts)) = 3 total
4th: Dundee United - Loss (2-0) | (LW (3 pts)) = 3 total
5th: Ross County - Loss (0-1) | (WL (3 pts)) = 3 total
6th: Motherwell
--------------------
7th: Livi - Draw (2-2) | (WW (6 pts)) = 7 total
8th: Hibs - Draw (0-0) (1-2 loss  in the Cup) | (LX (1 pt)) = 2 total
9th: Aberdeen - Draw (1-1) (2-1 win in the Cup) | (WW (6 pts)) = 7 total
10th: St Mirren - Win (4-2) | (XX (2 pts)) = 5 total
11th: St Johnstone - Loss (2-1) | (XW (4 pts)) = 4 total
12th: Dundee - Draw (1-1) | (WL (3 pts)) = 4 total

So in the last round of fixtures we took 7 points from the bottom 6 teams compared with only 1 point from the teams in the Top 6.

Top 6 sides accounted for 11 of our 40 pts at the split, bottom 6 sides 29 pts.

For all our faults there nothing to suggest that we wouldn't have picked up points if we were playing say, Livi or St Mirren in our post-split fixtures rather than Rangers and United given Alexander's actually unbeaten against the two former.

Edited May 1, 2022 by capt_oats

['WellDel]

8 hours ago, AdamMFC said:

Considering the PCAs a couple of the players have agreed elsewhere and the others who are likely to leave at the end of their contracts he's got a bit of a rebuild on his hands over the summer and for every Slattery, Tierney and Van Veen he's signed there's an Efford, Nirennold and Amaluzor. I'm fully aware that's just the risk a club of our size with the budget we will have takes every summer as it is the level of player we can get and it would be the same situation with someone else in charge I just really worry for us next season as things stand.

I think this is another area some of us perhaps feel should have shown more positive results. A 50% hit rate is probably on par with his predecessors, but with the change of approach and a wee bit of money afforded to him, you'd perhaps have hoped for the new strategy to pay more dividends.

He's brought in his own people and completely overhauled the scouting network to encompass markets that we previously hadn't really explored in recent times. O.K. , expecting every signing to turn out a success who will make us money when sold on is unrealistic, but you'd maybe have looked for them all to be at least a bit  better than those who've gone before.

Amaluzor is every bit as bad as Sherwin Seedorf, Joe Efford is fucking humpty, and Victor Nirrenold just appears to be an old mate he's chucked a wage for a few months to help him out,  as his spells in Vietnam and Malaysia didn't exactly seem to have many others clamouring for his signature. Time will tell if the new system bears any more fruit this summer, but not feeling too optimistic about it personally.

[YassinMoutaouakil]

I have a long weekend next week and my granny lives half an hour from Dingwall.  I still can't be fucked going to County away. Aside from me being a poor Grandson, that's a bad reflection on where we're at right now.

[capt_oats]

45 minutes ago, 'WellDel said:

I think this is another area some of us perhaps feel should have shown more positive results. A 50% hit rate is probably on par with his predecessors, but with the change of approach and a wee bit of money afforded to him, you'd perhaps have hoped for the new strategy to pay more dividends.

He's brought in his own people and completely overhauled the scouting network to encompass markets that we previously hadn't really explored in recent times. O.K. , expecting every signing to turn out a success who will make us money when sold on is unrealistic, but you'd maybe have looked for them all to be at least a bit  better than those who've gone before.

Amaluzor is every bit as bad as Sherwin Seedorf, Joe Efford is fucking humpty, and Victor Nirrenold just appears to be an old mate he's chucked a wage for a few months to help him out,  as his spells in Vietnam and Malaysia didn't exactly seem to have many others clamouring for his signature. Time will tell if the new system bears any more fruit this summer, but not feeling too optimistic about it personally.

I think I'm more inclined to give a bit of leeway on the recruitment than others, largely because I've always felt that signings like Amaluzor, Nirrenold etc were only ever intended to be short term placeholders because it's wildly unrealistic to expect us to turn over an entire squad or get an entire squad recruited in one window and that's fine they're on short term deals.

No harm, no foul - I had zero expectations of Amaluzor, Nirennold or Mich'el Parker.

For me, we've prioritised certain players and got them in with others filling in the gaps to a greater or lesser extent around the squad. I'd hope/expect us to be looking at addressing those gaps this summer. It feels to me like we've taken a phased approach to recruitment which I get.

IMO the ones that we should probably be judging in terms of the new strategy are the long term ones; Kelly, Johansen, Slattery, Woolery, Shields and Tierney who were all signed on 3 year deals.

• Kelly - fine
• Johansen - started off well but as has been pointed out his season started last May so he's now been playing almost a full calendar year (albeit he's missed the last couple of games) so perhaps him hitting a wall after January shouldn't have come as a surprise.
• Slattery - fine, the pages upon pages that have been written about his absence at least suggest he's worth having around.
• Woolery - fine, again having been bombed out the starting XI probably hasn't helped him.
• Shields - hmmmmmmmmmmm...being kind it's probably worth factoring in it's his first season playing at this level
• Tierney - fine, love the wee man

The concern I have going forward is that our 2021 form was largely off the back of Alexander having worked some sort of witchcraft to turn non-prolific strikers into goalscorers and also being largely solid at the back and being able to shut games down. The fact he turned Devante Cole into a 1 in 2 striker then repeated that with Tony Watt deserves credit but the output from strikers seems to have gone off a cliff since Watt fucked off.

We don't seem to be anywhere near as efficient in front of goal as we were.

Edited May 1, 2022 by capt_oats

['WellDel]

Completely agree with your sentiments @capt_oats and those you have listed on the longer deals have all shown to be successful additions on varying levels.

The quality of the filler and fringe players is as low as ever though. I'd have liked to have seen the new approach at least adding a bit of strength to the bench. It'd be nice to see at least someone for each area of the park available with at least a base level of competence, whereby you don't see the board going up and automatically think 'aw f**k' and the team being immediately and obviously weakened, occasionally by laughable levels.

Perhaps I'm just turning into a grumpy auld man, determined to beat Alexander with any stick possible, but the club have invested wholly in him and allowed him to restructure much of how we do things. Not necessarily a bad thing to change approach in search of improvement, I just honestly believe the responsibility has been afforded to the wrong man.

[ropy]

20 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

 

We don't seem to be anywhere near as efficient in front of goal as we were.

Ricki Lamie is second top scorer at the club

[ropy]

I go back to the Goss interview, if that is the energy level in the dressing room how can we expect performances on the pitch.  Is there a case for signing some personality for the squad?

[Kapowzer]

5 minutes ago, ropy said:

I go back to the Goss interview, if that is the energy level in the dressing room how can we expect performances on the pitch.  Is there a case for signing some personality for the squad?

Jimmy Bullard available?

[ropy]

It’s sobering to think that when Alexander finally does get the push our next manager is probably on the verge of being sacked for being guff in their current job.

[thisGRAEME]

58 minutes ago, ropy said:

Ricki Lamie is second top scorer at the club

Hahahahahaha

[21maxwell]

Full list from the bbc makes some scary reading. 

 

 

 

[capt_oats]

1 hour ago, ropy said:

I go back to the Goss interview, if that is the energy level in the dressing room how can we expect performances on the pitch.  Is there a case for signing some personality for the squad?

Less about the Goss interview (I haven't seen it and I don't know what players are like personality wise in the dressing room) but something that crossed my mind when I saw the team for the Rangers games was that there just seemed to be a lack of 'experience' and there just seem to be a collection of fairly vanilla characters about the squad.

There was no one in that team line that gave me the impression that they'd be willing/capable of taking the game by the scruff of the neck in the event that, say, Rangers went down to 10 men after 28 minutes.

It was never an argument for keeping them but it definitely feels like we've never really replaced the intangible aspects we got from folk like Hartley and Tait.

['WellDel]

28 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

Less about the Goss interview (I haven't seen it and I don't know what players are like personality wise in the dressing room) but something that crossed my mind when I saw the team for the Rangers games was that there just seemed to be a lack of 'experience' and there just seem to be a collection of fairly vanilla characters about the squad.

There was no one in that team line that gave me the impression that they'd be willing/capable of taking the game by the scruff of the neck in the event that, say, Rangers went down to 10 men after 28 minutes.

It was never an argument for keeping them but it definitely feels like we've never really replaced the intangible aspects we got from folk like Hartley and Tait.

Every team needs characters and players who can instill belief and fight. We really do not have that in the squad.

I made this point, probably without putting it across very well, a few weeks back as I felt leadership was badly lacking. I said at the time we needed a captain with more visible and vocal influence than that of O'Donnell, but obviously captaincy involves a whole host of other duties and responsibilities too that he may do quite well.

The characters in the team don't necessarily need to be the captain, or even the best players. Your example of Tait is exactly right in being someone with a bit of passion who will show desire and will to win, and who wasn't afraid to get right in the face of the opposition when things got heated. At the minute we are just so meek and easy to play against. We 100% need a couple of guys in who will lead by example.

[capt_oats]

12 minutes ago, 'WellDel said:

Every team needs characters and players who can instill belief and fight. We really do not have that in the squad.

I made this point, probably without putting it across very well, a few weeks back as I felt leadership was badly lacking. I said at the time we needed a captain with more visible and vocal influence than that of O'Donnell, but obviously captaincy involves a whole host of other duties and responsibilities too that he may do quite well.

The characters in the team don't necessarily need to be the captain, or even the best players. Your example of Tait is exactly right in being someone with a bit of passion who will show desire and will to win, and who wasn't afraid to get right in the face of the opposition when things got heated. At the minute we are just so meek and easy to play against. We 100% need a couple of guys in who will lead by example.

Never miss an opportunity to post this image...

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

Alexander might have met his KPIs by getting to the top six, but in doing so he’s zapped all enjoyment and enthusiasm I get out of watching Motherwell.

I’ve missed several home games this season with other things on, so it is making me think twice about renewing my season ticket next season and just paying at the gate. Part of me thinks I’ll get a season ticket to support the funds at the club, but there’s really nothing else in life, with low value for money with an unenjoyable end product that you’d consider.

Another thing that’s worries me next season is how little our team looks set to change. If we are running with a smaller squad next season, say if it’s 22 with backup everywhere, to me that means we’re in the market for a centre-back, two centre mids and two forwards. 

You wouldn’t be surprised to see two of those five vacancies being filled by Cornelius and Lamie either, so you’re potentially looking at 3 signings. Obviously that could be upped if some under contract players move on (you could see Carroll moving for example) but still.

Normally, at this stage of the season, if on the park is grim watching, you at least know a rebuild is around the corner, but this year it’s not.

['WellDel]

3 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

Never miss an opportunity to post this image...

That, is exactly what we're lacking.

[capt_oats]

41 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

Another thing that’s worries me next season is how little our team looks set to change. If we are running with a smaller squad next season, say if it’s 22 with backup everywhere, to me that means we’re in the market for a centre-back, two centre mids and two forwards. 

You wouldn’t be surprised to see two of those five vacancies being filled by Cornelius and Lamie either, so you’re potentially looking at 3 signings. Obviously that could be upped if some under contract players move on (you could see Carroll moving for example) but still.

Normally, at this stage of the season, if on the park is grim watching, you at least know a rebuild is around the corner, but this year it’s not.

Going back to the quotes from Daws in the article @Casagolda posted the other week it raises the question about potential changes and how many.

IIRC the reports from the folk who were at the AGM in February were that we were looking at 5 max.

Quote

As Daws prepares for his third Transfer Window at the club, he does so safe in the knowledge that things will not be as hectic as the summer of 2021, when 12 players were recruited. Another five arrived in January 2022.

“It has been an extremely complex process,” says Dawes. “This is still a new team… and you will have some bumps in the road putting it together. For us there was a plan in place last summer, but the plan did not necessarily come together.”

Link

An admission there that some things worked, some didn't. It'd be interesting to know whether that's referring to us missing out on players or players we signed that haven't quite worked out.

Covering old ground but the OOC players are:

Morrison, Lamie, O'Connor, Grimshaw, Nirennold, O'Hara, Shaw (loan ends), Donnelly, Amaluzor, Roberts.

Players with a year left:

Fox, SOD, Carroll, Ojala, Cornelius, Goss, KVV, Efford, Mahon

There's enough scope there (IMO) to allow for some meaningful movement without it necessarily being a full blown overhaul and rebuild.

After that it's a question of who or what type of players we're targeting.

Edited May 1, 2022 by capt_oats