Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[ZX1886]

I think talking to a hearts fan will quickly clear up any doubts on whether Frear was good enough at this level. Our club is crying out for a player who can take the ball down the line and actually put a half decent cross in every now and then but from my memory, I don’t remember Frear doing that a lot. Usually just stood and watched the game.

You’d think Hastie and Seedorf would fit into that role but unfortunately not, playing Long on the wing doesn’t seem very effective either.

[well fan for life]

9 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

The other thing about this summer specifically is the undeniable effect of the 'Rona.

From piecing together what we know we had pre-contracts in place with Lamie and White but also had offers on the table for Tait and Hartley - then the Covid happened, budgets were cut and presumably our plans went out the window. We've honoured our pre-contract offers and presumably altered the plans we had that weren't already agreed.

I think it's probably fair to say that Robinson's got a blind spot when it comes to goalscoring centre forwards. To devils advocate that - it's probably easier to recruit a striker who has other attributes to bring to a team than it is to sign a 15-20 goal a season guy on our budget.

I mean, that's fine when the goals are coming from elsewhere: Main chipped in during his half season while Tanner was contributing before his knee fell apart in 17/18, Turnbull pretty much matched Moult's league goals in 18/19 and we had Donnelly and Long both in double figures for the season in 19/20. The problems come when the goals aren't coming from elsewhere.

This season (taking out our 6 free goals) we're sitting on 15 goals from 14 games, last season after the same number of games we'd scored 21, 15 in 18/19 and 21 in 17/18.

However when you look at the list of Fisher, Newell, Main, Ciftci, Johnson, Sammon, Long, Manzinga, Watt, Cole, Ndjoli, White or Lang none really offer the sort of goal return as a Moult, Sutton, Higdon or Porter.

Ironically Danny Johnson's sitting on 10 for the season already with Orient in EFL L2 but I don't think anyone's pining for the ginger prince.

Carson 17/18 vs Gillespie 19/20 would be an interesting comparison.

We probably were spoiled for a few years with goalscorers. Ultimately when we dive into the English seaside leagues to look for a player it's a bit of a lottery. Somehow we came up with Louis Moult who went from looking like he'd never shift Wes Fletcher out the team to a Motherwell hero. Then Moult left and our youth academy spawned a freak of nature in David Turnbull who was firing in goals from all over the place. 

Hopefully we can come to an agreement to bin 6 or 7 folk in January to bring in 1 or 2 people who might be in danger of contributing something to the team. 

 

[RandomGuy.]

43 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

Carson 17/18 vs Gillespie 19/20 would be an interesting comparison.

Its not even close.

I'm only at 17/18 now, but thats 59 keepers.

Carson 17/18 is 30th, Gillespie 19/20 is 8th.

Placings are...

Gillespie 19/20 - 8th

Gillespie 18/19 - 14th

Carson 17/18 - 30th

Carson 20/21 - 48th*

Carson 18/19 - 59th

2018/19 version the lowest, but he played half a season, got pumped 7-1, then got his bad injury. He's never once saved more than expected over a course of a season, and always comes out low in terms of shots per goal conceded.

Joe Lewis is another who comes out looking very average despite having a good reputation.

Edited December 7, 2020 by RandomGuy.

[capt_oats]

15 minutes ago, well fan for life said:

Hopefully we can come to an agreement to bin 6 or 7 folk in January to bring in 1 or 2 people who might be in danger of contributing something to the team. 

I'd be surprised if we binned as many as 6 or 7 but I could see a few whose deals are up at the end of the season getting fixed up elsewhere.

Robinson's post-match interested me when he was talking about how he feels we need a bit more "nastiness" at times and lack "devilment" and saying we lack experience in the team along with him talking about naive defending (echoes of chucking the lead against County at FP last season).

That piqued my interest as a lot of what he's talking about is intangibles stuff it's not going to show up in stats. We can maybe organise the team better but we can't make them "nastier" or suddenly become more experienced.

[Ron Aldo]

I'm not suggesting that Elliott Frear was ever the answer but I do think he gets a bit of a hard time and certainly isn't the worst signing we've had in recent times - in fact. he's not even been our worst winger. I'm sure he got a decent number of assists towards the end of the 16/17 season which played a big part in us staying up. He was also very much a confidence player and i'm sure it did him no favours when he scored a hat trick against Edinburgh City in the league cup a couple of years ago only to then be dropped for the next game against Stranraer.

 

[well fan for life]

20 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

I'd be surprised if we binned as many as 6 or 7 but I could see a few whose deals are up at the end of the season getting fixed up elsewhere.

 

I refer you to the words of the honourable gentleman, @thisGRAEME.

On 01/12/2020 at 17:07, thisGRAEME said:

If we can get rid of Alex Fisher and make money off Ryan Bowman, we can do anything!

 

[Busta Nut]

1 hour ago, Ron Aldo said:

I'm not suggesting that Elliott Frear was ever the answer but I do think he gets a bit of a hard time and certainly isn't the worst signing we've had in recent times - in fact. he's not even been our worst winger. I'm sure he got a decent number of assists towards the end of the 16/17 season which played a big part in us staying up. He was also very much a confidence player and i'm sure it did him no favours when he scored a hat trick against Edinburgh City in the league cup a couple of years ago only to then be dropped for the next game against Stranraer.

 

 

You are 100% right here. He was very important in his first 6 months and after that we eventually started to use him as a wing back which he was not suited for in anyway whatsoever. Folk in the east stand wanting him to try beat a man 20 yards inside his own half with no cover behind him if he lost the ball. He'd rightly take a simple pass. I am not sure he was ever played as proper winger again. That completely finished him and he never beat a man goin forward.

 

He is pretty rubbish though.

[capt_oats]

2 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

Its not even close.

I'm only at 17/18 now, but thats 59 keepers.

Carson 17/18 is 30th, Gillespie 19/20 is 8th.

Placings are...

Gillespie 19/20 - 8th

Gillespie 18/19 - 14th

Carson 17/18 - 30th

Carson 20/21 - 48th*

Carson 18/19 - 59th

2018/19 version the lowest, but he played half a season, got pumped 7-1, then got his bad injury. He's never once saved more than expected over a course of a season, and always comes out low in terms of shots per goal conceded.

Joe Lewis is another who comes out looking very average despite having a good reputation.

That's (genuinely) interesting. 17/18 was the season we broke Randolph's clean sheet record and Carson was in goals for all but one or two. I think Gillespie always seemed the consistent 7/10 type keeper but bloody loved a penalty save.

Carson was making some absolutely ridiculous stops that season as well (a lot of those in the video below are straight at him...but still). A couple of the saves in the 1-1 vs Celtic are a complete nonsense..

Same with the last minute save when he was playing with a knackered shoulder in the 1-1 vs Dundee.

 

Edited December 7, 2020 by capt_oats

[RandomGuy.]

6 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

That's (genuinely) interesting. 17/18 was the season we broke Randolph's clean sheet record and Carson was in goals for all but one or two. I think Gillespie always seemed the consistent 7/10 type keeper but bloody loved a penalty save.

 

Hes "low" that season as he was conceding around every 3rd shot, while these shots were also low xG chances. 

Worth mentioning this system is inherently flawed with a lack of context. Its more just a system to spot trends to find players who maybe "slip under the radar".

Edited December 7, 2020 by RandomGuy.

[Busta Nut]

These stat nonce things are a lot of pish

[well fan for life]

48 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Hes "low" that season as he was conceding around every 3rd shot, while these shots were also low xG chances. 

Worth mentioning this system is inherently flawed with a lack of context. Its more just a system to spot trends to find players who maybe "slip under the radar".

I think this is where the Motherwell x Analytics FC thing is supposed to come in. You have the stats to point you in the general direction of a player so you don't need to waste time watching videos/scouting a player who turns out to be dreck. Analytics isn't quite smart enough to give you the full picture in something as variable as football, but it can definitely reduce the margin of error. 

[RandomGuy.]

18 minutes ago, well fan for life said:

I think this is where the Motherwell x Analytics FC thing is supposed to come in. You have the stats to point you in the general direction of a player so you don't need to waste time watching videos/scouting a player who turns out to be dreck. Analytics isn't quite smart enough to give you the full picture in something as variable as football, but it can definitely reduce the margin of error. 

Sort of. Can help get rid of some of the white noise.

It would've agreed with your decision to sign Alex Fisher on a base level.

Issue with a lot of it is people just look at the base figure. Fisher with a high goals per90 and high xG per90 show hes a great striker for his level. But doesn't tell you that they're all headers from 5 yards, so he bombs when he joins a side who cant create this chances. 

Company your with should be lightyears ahead of me with that, and have seperate figures for shots with head, strong foot, weak foot etc., so Robinson should be able to ask for an exact type of player and they can find the best matches.

[well fan for life]

4 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Sort of. Can help get rid of some of the white noise.

It would've agreed with your decision to sign Alex Fisher on a base level.

Issue with a lot of it is people just look at the base figure. Fisher with a high goals per90 and high xG per90 show hes a great striker for his level. But doesn't tell you that they're all headers from 5 yards, so he bombs when he joins a side who cant create this chances. 

Company your with should be lightyears ahead of me with that, and have seperate figures for shots with head, strong foot, weak foot etc., so Robinson should be able to ask for an exact type of player and they can find the best matches.

Aye like I'm 100% on board with using data & analytics for this kind of thing. I think the days of sending a scout out to sit up the back of a stand and write his findings on the back of a fag packet are long gone. I wouldn't like to see it used as the 100% basis for making a signing, but having it as a way of narrowing down the options and trying to make sure signings are worth it is a big thumbs up from me. 

[capt_oats]

2 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

Sort of. Can help get rid of some of the white noise.

It would've agreed with your decision to sign Alex Fisher on a base level.

Issue with a lot of it is people just look at the base figure. Fisher with a high goals per90 and high xG per90 show hes a great striker for his level. But doesn't tell you that they're all headers from 5 yards, so he bombs when he joins a side who cant create this chances. 

Company your with should be lightyears ahead of me with that, and have seperate figures for shots with head, strong foot, weak foot etc., so Robinson should be able to ask for an exact type of player and they can find the best matches.

 

1 hour ago, well fan for life said:

Aye like I'm 100% on board with using data & analytics for this kind of thing. I think the days of sending a scout out to sit up the back of a stand and write his findings on the back of a fag packet are long gone. I wouldn't like to see it used as the 100% basis for making a signing, but having it as a way of narrowing down the options and trying to make sure signings are worth it is a big thumbs up from me. 

Robinson did that MFC Long Listen a while back and he covered a lot of our recruitment process and strategy. It's approx 29 mins in (Link) he talks about stuff like WyScout but the core of it is actually watching players - Foyle apparently watched the players from his neck of the woods and Robinson will go and watch them in person as well.

I think Robinson has a strong idea of what he wants. Our key requirements, going by what he says in that pod are pace and mentality. So I'd hope that the stats team up should hopefully make sure we're not wasting our time in terms of what we're looking to bring in in a broader footballing sense. Ideally we'll be using this to back up a decision rather than it being the reason we're looking at a player and plucking targets from the stats.

Clearly I've no idea if this is what happened but it feels like this summer we pivoted to a strategy that was based on players who knew the club, the league and had a connection with players already in the group. On a basic, old-school level that makes absolute sense. I'd imagine Robinson feels absolutely scunnered now though.

[capt_oats]

 

Edited December 7, 2020 by capt_oats

[Al B]

Alex Fisher experienced the most real life "Sliding Doors" moment I've ever seen. There's an alternate universe somewhere, where his missed early chance goes in and his Motherwell career takes off.

[well fan for life]

1 hour ago, Al B said:

Alex Fisher experienced the most real life "Sliding Doors" moment I've ever seen. There's an alternate universe somewhere, where his missed early chance goes in and his Motherwell career takes off.

100%. I reckon if he'd poked that chance home against Rangers when he was 1 v 1 he'd have been in double figures by Christmas.

Still mind him scoring a delightful chip over the keeper against us before he signed.

[Ron Aldo]

I'm sure someone posted in here the other day that Peterborough had released Jason Naismith to allow him to join a "Scottish club". With SOD likely to leave there was a suggestion it might be us.

I can't find the post but, anyway, that Scottish club is Ross County.

We've already tried Lamie at left back and centre half. Might as well go baws oot and see how much of a c**t of it he can make at right back if/when SOD leaves.

[RandomGuy.]

15 minutes ago, Ron Aldo said:

I'm sure someone posted in here the other day that Peterborough had released Jason Naismith to allow him to join a "Scottish club". With SOD likely to leave there was a suggestion it might be us.

I can't find the post but, anyway, that Scottish club is Ross County.

We've already tried Lamie at left back and centre half. Might as well go baws oot and see how much of a c**t of it he can make at right back if/when SOD leaves.

You'll be playing Grimshaw there IMO.

Gives Robinson the "run about lots/headbutt brick wall to prevent a goal" attitude on the park he wants.

[well fan for life]

8 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

You'll be playing Grimshaw there IMO.

Gives Robinson the "run about lots/headbutt brick wall to prevent a goal" attitude on the park he wants.

I mean if you need a player to run only in straight lines then Grimshaw is the best player in the country imo.