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Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons


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Post the article that's come out this morning explaining its simply because the poppy fell off.
They weren't buying that, even when presented with photos of him previously wearing poppies because they are indeed, mile oots.
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9 hours ago, AndyRoss said:

We've come through two visits to Glasgow unscathed and won the two home matches, fairly optimistic going into the festive run of fixtures. 

It’d certainly be nice to get through them this year without an injury crisis and a run of form leading to calls for the manager to be sacked. 

Although to be fair, they’re shouldn’t really be an injury crisis this time. If anything, I’d say the squad could perhaps do with a bit of trimming come January?

Obviously decisions will have to be made on Mugabi and Cole. O’Hara’s loan hasn’t exactly worked for either party. Then there’s guys like Ilic and Sloth who are seemingly ‘fit’ but struggling to even make the bench.  With returns for Dunne and hopefully Turnbull on the horizon, surely some folk are going to have to be shifted. 

Overall though, we look in pretty decent shape and you’ve got to be delighted with how the seasons gone so far- Hearts cup game aside. Sitting 4 points clear in 4th and 9 points ahead of 7th with a third of the season gone has certainly surpassed my expectations. 

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Yep - as things stand, we are miles ahead of my expectations at this point in the season. The fact that we've got Ibrox and Parkhead out the way within the space of a couple of weeks and are still comfortably in 4th place (and in touch with 3rd) should be a big confidence boost. I think the fact that Robinson has shown a lot of flexibility in his tactics this season makes me confident that we won't soon be "worked out" in the normal way that happens in our league when a team does well early on.

 The biggest challenges for us until the winter break are likely to be stuff outwith our control. Firstly, it's likely that other teams (especially Hearts and Hibs) will be better than they were in the first cycle of games and my expectation is that they will start to eat into the big gap between us. Secondly, there is a possibility at least that Robinson could be offski and that is the biggest risk of all.

In terms of the squad -I'm already wondering if a Mugabi/Gallacher partnership might be a good first choice going forward, regardless of how good Hartley has been since he came back in - and so I'd hope he could be kept on in January. Cole looks like he's developing and I like what I see but I still wonder if a more proven striker could be the catalyst to a properly good season in a team that creates hunners of chances.

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4 hours ago, Casagolda said:

It’d certainly be nice to get through them this year without an injury crisis and a run of form leading to calls for the manager to be sacked. 

Although to be fair, they’re shouldn’t really be an injury crisis this time. If anything, I’d say the squad could perhaps do with a bit of trimming come January?

Obviously decisions will have to be made on Mugabi and Cole. O’Hara’s loan hasn’t exactly worked for either party. Then there’s guys like Ilic and Sloth who are seemingly ‘fit’ but struggling to even make the bench.  With returns for Dunne and hopefully Turnbull on the horizon, surely some folk are going to have to be shifted. 

Overall though, we look in pretty decent shape and you’ve got to be delighted with how the seasons gone so far- Hearts cup game aside. Sitting 4 points clear in 4th and 9 points ahead of 7th with a third of the season gone has certainly surpassed my expectations. 

We're on the same points just now as we were after 13 games of Robinson's 1st season proper (see spoiler) before the LC Final, the Celtic Trilogy and resulting injury crisis which led to the slump in December. We're a league place better off but on the same points with exactly the same record...7 wins, 1 draw and 5 defeats. We've also scored exactly the same number of goals (20) but conceded 4 more.

Spoiler

531596999_ScreenShot2019-11-11at10_03_46.png.7bc8e47bdbc4b222bf3ed4491e955049.png

From memory through December we had Carson, Hartley, Cadden, McHugh, Moult and Frear all either injured or carrying injuries. I'm pretty sure Campbell was rested for a couple of games around then too. Post winter break we only lost 5 games of the remaining 17 (6 from 22 if you include the cup games) but ended up drawing far more (6).

I suppose that's a reminder that a season can turn quite easily, although looking at the players sat in the stands just now it doesn't quite look the same as us chucking on Petravicius and as @Swello says above we look a bit more flexible tactically now.

So far we've only used 18 players in the starting XI (of 22 available first team players) for league games which definitely feels less than previous seasons. Whether it actually is IDK.

Obviously it'd have been nice to win the games at Ibrox and Parkhead and there's definitely an annoyance at the cheapness of some of the goals shipped but considering our fixture before last November's international break saw us ship 7 at Ibrox and our trips to Parkhead were 3-0 and 4-1 respectively then 2-1 and 2-0 losses are pretty much *shrug* when you take them as part of the season as a whole so far. It's easier to say that sitting 4th in the table and 2 points off 3rd I suppose (and in my case didn't shell out £30 to go to Parkhead).

As far as the squad goes both Cole and Mugabi's deals are up in January, Ilic and Manzinga have til the end of the season, as does O'Hara's loan - I don't remember reading anything about a January break either so it may be a similar situation as we had with Sammon. Also it may be simply because he's on a permanent rather than a loan like Cole but Long's deal is only an "initial" one year as well, so it'll be up in the summer unless something changes.

Of course, that's before you get to the established players at the club whose deals expire eg: Hartley, Tait, Grimshaw, Gillespie, Carson, Dunne and Maguire.

Sloth's on a 2 year deal which isn't to say there's not room for a mutual consent but his appearance on the bench yesterday was clearly of note. It'll be interesting to see what sort of line up the Reserves go with today.

In that respect there's probably an amount of trimming you could look at before getting into the "sellable assets" bracket and like @Swello, beyond factors that aren't in our control, it feels like a proven forward could be the difference between a pretty good season and a genuine peak.

Edited by capt_oats
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I thought we were decent yesterday.
I was dubious of how the back3/5 started but they were actually not bad rolling across whenever Celtic came down either side. I know we all know this but Dec Gallagher is an absolute baller. Mugabi was good too.
We never created anything going forward really but I though we were well disciplined and used the ball well at times.
Both their goals had a fair bit of luck to them.

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The bold Casper starts for the Reserves (as does Seedorf).

Interesting to see Robertson on the bench, he was involved at the start of the season. He looked good vs Spartans and started against Clyde but went completely off the grid after Ross County in the opening game of the Reserves league season.

 

Edited by capt_oats
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5 hours ago, Archie McSquackle said:

What sort of player is Robertson? I haven't heard of him before and he looks about 14 on the club website.

He's a centre mid at least that's where he was playing in the game I saw him. He looked more technical compared to someone like Cornelius who's more in the Campbell mould.

Reserves finishes 4-0. Seedorf, Manzinga, MacIver (2)

@VivaMotherwell had Twitter updates from the game: https://twitter.com/VivaMotherwell

 

Edited by capt_oats
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On 11/11/2019 at 14:24, capt_oats said:

He's a centre mid at least that's where he was playing in the game I saw him. He looked more technical compared to someone like Cornelius who's more in the Campbell mould.

Reserves finishes 4-0. Seedorf, Manzinga, MacIver (2)

@VivaMotherwell had Twitter updates from the game: https://twitter.com/VivaMotherwell

 

Am I right in saying that we don't get "normal" highlights of the reserves games at all now? I know they will be filed under "no-one engages with them" along with twitter match updates - but I don't find the story of the match/manager interview mashup that we seem to be going for very useful or interesting without the normal highlights like we get with the 1st team (regardless of the fact that these are really well put together as we've come to expect). 

Whether it's on TV or club produced stuff, showing random angles of goals without showing the vanilla view of it winds me up more than it should. And square aspect ratio is a pish way to show football highlights (even if it is the format used on instagram, etc).

Must be an international break if I'm caring about this stuff :)

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I see James McFadden is the latest to be inducted into the Motherwell FC Hall of Fame. I'm not surprised one but at this but at the same time I'm always wary of affording him the 'legend' status. He was and still is the best young player I have ever seen us produce and he was the brightest spark for us in an otherwise awful time for the club and his transfer fee helped massively in saving the club. On the park in that time he was a joy to watch and I was genuinely gutted when he left for Everton on transfer deadline day in 2003 and delighted when he returned in 2013.

However I have never seen him as a Motherwell legend and at no point in any of his spells with us was he much of a team player, with the possible exception of those few months he played alongside Higdon, Humphrey and Ojamaa, he was more of a 'maverick'. His third and fourth spells with us were chronic to watch as his fitness wasn't up to speed and I think he'd lost alot his enthusiasm by then too, but he was still afforded God-like status by the club, both in the stands and in the boardroom and despite the fact that he wasn't producing the goods anymore, he was given a very easy ride of if. His latter spell as player/assistant manager was awful and I honestly don't think his presence had a positive influence on the dressing room, quite the opposite infact. Also, It always irked me how many Motherwell fans seemed to value him more than the club itself as no player or manager should be bigger than the club, but I think that in McFadden's case he probably was to an extent as time wore on.

I will always see James McFadden as a player who came through our ranks as a teenager and was brilliant to watch and moved on for a big fee, but tainted his 'legacy' with his later spells with the club.

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