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Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons


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I’m not saying Robinson out but questions have to be asked. We are going to lose Campbell, SOD and Gallagher in the summer and his signings have been terrible this summer. 
 

Cole, Lang, McGinley and O’Hara have been ok at best. O’Hara looks much better as a centre back.

Long, White, Hastie and Lamie have been shite at best. The goalkeeper situation is unlucky for us but I’d be benching Pieman for sure.

 

I mean we’ve went from Hartley and Tait to Lamie and Bevis and I’m not happy about it. I’m worried about us next season.

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Our squad is full of sub standard, lower League players and that's at the managers door. Three summers in a row he has been given scope to bring in players and his signings have largely been utter dross and the standard seems to get worse every year. 

We really, really need a new approach, starting with binning Robinson and then NOT handing the job to Lasley, but sadly we all know that's what will happen when Robinson does eventually go.

A new broom is badly needed.

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I fear we're probably up shit creek without a paddle for the squad. We haven't got any money coming in, the Scott/Turnbull money is going towards keeping the club afloat and that's about it. 

Lamie is absolutely, without a doubt, one of the worst players I have ever seen in a Motherwell shirt. At this point I'm having him worse than Zak Jules for sure. The guy is so far out his depth. Ideally we'd get to January and bin Lamie, Hastie, White & Long as they are a waste of a wage. Aside from Long's one positive performance at Pittodrie he's looked like he's not interested. Not renewing Hastie's contract might have inadvertently been one of the best bits of business the club has done in recent years. And Jordan White is absolutely Jordan White. 

 

Edited by well fan for life
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27 minutes ago, Marinello said:

In White's defence it can't be easy to impress when getting 10/15 minutes here and there. 

That said he certainly ain't Maradona!!

How many crosses did we put into the box, I am guessing zero, so why Jordan White?

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2 hours ago, ropy said:

How many crosses did we put into the box, I am guessing zero, so why Jordan White?

Agree with this - I've actually got a bit of sympathy for him as he is a player that through no fault of his, has no use in the way we set up. The idea of "if all else fails have a big target man to lump it up to" hardly ever worked in the past and in modern fitba only works when the target man in question is exceptional. If you think of the service that players like Sutton or Higdon got from wide and you look at the way we play now - the emphasis has totally changed.

In terms of where we are - I actually think we have a decent enough (ie - mid table) starting 11 when everyone is fit. I think a front 3 of Watt, Lang and Cole is potentially very decent in our league - I'd be quite happy to persist with it. We also have a good centre midfield when Campbell, O'Hara and Polworth are available and playing well. Defence is weird - but you would think that between O'Donnell, Gallacher, McGinley (who was mystifyingly dropped for Lamie after looking like he was settling in a bit) and AN Other, we would have something passable. Keeper is a difficult situation but we will potentially have one of the best in the league back in the new year. 

If that's the positive spin - once we get past the first 11, we are clearly not in good shape at all - too many  "senior" players on the bench have not been much more than empty shirts this season - we're in November and they should actually be a bit embarrassed about how little they've offered. We are genuinely at the stage that if we recalled our young boys from loan and persisted with Maguire, Conrnelius and Devine on the bench that we wouldn't be any worse off at all.

Long before we blew it today, I was watching the one paced square pass fitba that looked like training ground stuff and it struck me how easy it is for players to play with no urgency or dig when there is a nice empty ground and no negative feedback. Considering how Robinson's better teams have played - we are currently one of the meekest teams in the league and must be pretty easy to play against.

 

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1 hour ago, Swello said:

Considering how Robinson's better teams have played - we are currently one of the meekest teams in the league and must be pretty easy to play against.

Robinson pretty much said that explicitly in his post-match. "Soft" was his choice of phrase.

Sounded like a few Motherwell careers were ended. 

Edited by capt_oats
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Some small credit to Robinson, in they post match interview he was really fecked off with his players, and there's not much doubt in my mind he's binning Lamie after that awful performance.  Its just a pisser he's taken this long to reach the same conclusion as we did long ago.

I guess he recruited him, he knows how hard it well be to offload him, he's got his recruitment reputation invested in him, and that means he's had to persevere with him.

And... I didn't want to mention this before, but I'm pretty sure I saw a tweet from Lamie early after he signed for us where he seemed to be crying for help.  I can't remember if it was during lockdown but he didn't seem to be handling it.  We're a club intimately tied to supporting mental health.  It will be hard to offload someone who's had their own struggles quite recently, whose rejection might jeopardise their health further.  However there comes a point when personal sympathies will be outweighed by the impact on the club's performance.

Edited by RostokMcSpoons
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Robinson picked up on my bug bear. Play the ball forward. The ball gets brought out to the halfway line and there must be up to 8 players ahead of the ball but it goes back to central defence or the goalkeeper..  The camera doesn’t show the length of the park, is no-one showing for the ball, is there no confidence in the forwards winning the ball, is there no confidence in playing the pass and finding a man?  Back it goes.  

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11 hours ago, Swello said:

In terms of where we are - I actually think we have a decent enough (ie - mid table) starting 11 when everyone is fit. I think a front 3 of Watt, Lang and Cole is potentially very decent in our league - I'd be quite happy to persist with it. We also have a good centre midfield when Campbell, O'Hara and Polworth are available and playing well. Defence is weird - but you would think that between O'Donnell, Gallacher, McGinley (who was mystifyingly dropped for Lamie after looking like he was settling in a bit) and AN Other, we would have something passable. Keeper is a difficult situation but we will potentially have one of the best in the league back in the new year. 

Therein lies the problem. O’Hara in midfield and playing well is lost on me, almost mythical.

What does he offer? Certainly hasn’t protected the back four at any point nor drive the team forward yet, an ever present.

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6 hours ago, ropy said:

Robinson picked up on my bug bear. Play the ball forward. The ball gets brought out to the halfway line and there must be up to 8 players ahead of the ball but it goes back to central defence or the goalkeeper..  The camera doesn’t show the length of the park, is no-one showing for the ball, is there no confidence in the forwards winning the ball, is there no confidence in playing the pass and finding a man?  Back it goes.  

Could it be the players are aware of the stats being tracked?  I've often thought that even players in internationals seem to ping a rapid succession of short pases between each other,  that have nothing to do with the pressure frum the opposition, and more a will to simply bolster their pass completion percentage.

I don't know.  To play devil's advocate with my own question, I guess the pace of wingers today, high presses, pushed up full backs etc mean that even a misplaced pass on the halfway line (or beyond) can have a catastrophic effect with a breakaway goal occurring

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Granted it's a small sample size (against two poor sides) but I'd still argue we get more value out of O'Hara at CB than midfield at the moment.

It's a moot point given the experiment was curtailed by the Covid 2 but the O'Donnell - O'Hara - Gallagher - McGinley back 4 was notably less clownshows in two of the 3 games they started compared to what we've seen in the double header we've had against St Johnstone.

I'd guess there's a fair chance we'd have stuck with it - going by the fact that Maguire and Campbell were set to start as of 10:59 am last Saturday - and we've shoved O'Hara back into midfield to account for Campbell being out.

The circumstances around both Maguire and Campbell being unavailable are clearly out of Robinson's control but going by the performances when we've drafted the 'squad players' in to cover and Robinson's general demeanour in his post-match It definitely looks like there are a few players whose tea's oot.

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1 minute ago, capt_oats said:

Robinson's general demeanour in his post-match It definitely looks like there are a few players whose tea's oot.

Robinson looked like I felt (ie - a seething mess) - but if we are at the point of considering a January clear out in November (and I agree that's what it sounded like) - then that would be a pretty big admission of failure about our summer recruitment. 

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I meant to post this last week and probably horrible timing on the day of an inevitable shoeing from The Rangers but what a great ‘keeper you have in young PJ Morrison. Early signs are showing him to be incredibly mature for his age and rarely puts a foot wrong. He’s an all round ‘keeper who commands his area and can distribute well. On Tuesday night he had nothing to do whatsoever until the 80th minute pulling off a first class save. He’s also pulled off a penalty save against Partick Thistle.

Is he involved with the Scotland set up and has he been talked up before this loan move? I’m hoping the rinsing we receive today won’t dent his confidence.

Edited by wee_bairn
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11 minutes ago, wee_bairn said:

I meant to post this last week and probably horrible timing on the day of an inevitable shoeing from The Rangers but what a ‘keeper young PJ Morrison is. Early signs are showing him to be incredibly mature for his age and rarely puts a foot wrong. He’s an all round ‘keeper who commands his area and can distribute well. On Tuesday night he had nothing to do whatsoever until the 80th minute pulling off a first class save. Is he involved with the Scotland set up and has he been talked up before this loan move? I’m hoping the rinsing we receive today won’t dent his confidence.

He was drafted into the Scotland u21s during the international break before he signed for you guys (I'm pretty sure that's why you ended up with Matty Connelly for a couple of weeks in his place).

He seems well thought of at the club going by the segment from the YouTube series the club have been doing. He's mentioned by Hinchliffe and it seems he was originally supposed to be going on loan to Ayr but Fox picking up his injury ruled that out.

 

Edited by capt_oats
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22 minutes ago, Swello said:

Robinson looked like I felt (ie - a seething mess) - but if we are at the point of considering a January clear out in November (and I agree that's what it sounded like) - then that would be a pretty big admission of failure about our summer recruitment. 

Is writing off Summer signings in January not an annual thing for Motherwell?

Genuinely interested to see how your transfers look now you've linked up with a stats agency.

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