2018'19 Game 7: Kilmarnock (A) Saturday 29th September 2018

[FirParkCornerExile]

2 minutes ago, numpty said:

Could be worse, at least we're not Dundee Utd.

Yet

[Muzz]

Just back. Could easily have been 6 or 7. Clear to me that the players aren't playing for the manager. 

[underboyleheating]

9 minutes ago, numpty said:

Could be worse, at least we're not Dundee Utd.

They are sitting 4th with eleven points on the board. I would bite your hand off for that start in the Premiership.

[DEWELL]

It's been a terrible week in what has been an awfull season so far. Didn't expect a win today but to have a potential 2-0 lead chance thrown away and then capitulating is just not good enough. We'll never get near the top 6 this season under Robinson.

[Shaka]

1 hour ago, Welldaft Mk1 said:

As for the games v losses ratio. Where is the 35 games coming from. How about quoting from when his tenure started and stop cherry picking for effect. 

I am not for a minute sticking up for Robinson. We are on a rotten run. 

 

You answered your own question pal! The 35 games is our rotten run, the fact we started well last season is the only reason we werent relegated! We have been horrendous month after month, only our cup runs stopped him being sacked a couple of times last season. 

 

This season we have combined his utterly shitey points record with a bloated squad full of pish. Unfortunately sacking him now will wipe out every penny our cup runs made last season, but it must be done. A couple of lucky wins and couple of great wins in last seasons cups shouldnt detract from the fact the warning signs were there from his time at Oldham, and the cheap option appointment is going to cost us very dear one way or another. Unfortunately we will go for another cheap option in appointing Las once Robinson is punted. Hopefully that one doesnt kill us off

[steelboy]

1 hour ago, Ya Bezzer! said:

At Motherwell we've let our standards fall drastically. That's a problem that is pre-Robinson but it's only been compounded during Robinson term in charge with atrocious outdated tactics, embarrassing style of football and the complete neglect of our youth system.

 

I'd say Robinson has lifted the standard in as much as the manager actually turns up to training and the players are fit. However the style of play, youth development and recruitment strategy are all disasters.

It's pretty clear Robinson isn't interested in rectifying those issues so it's just a matter of time now.

[Welldaft Mk1]

12 minutes ago, Shaka said:

You answered your own question pal! The 35 games is our rotten run, the fact we started well last season is the only reason we werent relegated! We have been horrendous month after month, only our cup runs stopped him being sacked a couple of times last season. 

You have answered your own question pal. If I was judged on my job or in my job I would want that to include times when I was doing OK. 

Starting off when things turned shite is not a fair assessment. That is fact. 

We are not playing well and he deserves the criticism coming his way. I have no problem with that. 

It is clear the players brought in have addedvery little. But we are playing the form team of 2018. A team that beat Celtic last week and on a shite plastic pitch. 

I will join others calling for his head if we lose the next 3 to 4 games. 

[CoF]

Today was reminiscent of the league cup group stage performances and Hibs on the opening day, which I had hoped we had moved on from.  

Individually and tactically that was a shambles and I don't think we can lay the blame at recruitment when our core group have under-performed to such a level. I have no problem at all with so called "hoofball" when it's effective, but there has got to be a point where plan B kicks in when it's obvious it's not working. I've don't think I've ever seen a game where the entire midfield has been so anonymous. That was even more obvious when plan B was to bring on a fourth striker, despite the clear problem being that we weren't creating chances for the strikers we already had on the pitch. I rarely leave early, but was ready to go at 82 minutes until big Sammon came on. Stayed just for the comedy value of seeing our masterclass front 4. 

 

[mfc88]

Have generally tried to stay positive but that.... was f**king shite.

[siebsbarmyarmy]

I’ve said this multiple times but reading all the comments and descriptions of our woes it’s very reminiscent of what Oldham fans said about their team prior to Robinson leaving them and joining us. 

Quite scarily so. That’s disconcerting as shows he really isn’t learning.  

Who do we think he is talking about when he says about being too loyal to players?

I think Bigi, Cadds, Tait and a couple of others could be finding themselves dropped. 

[steelboy]

If he drops Tait and keeps Liam Grimshaw and Liam Donnelly in the team my 20 quid will be staying in my pocket next Saturday.

 

[Ya Bezzer!]

5 minutes ago, steelboy said:

If he drops Tait and keeps Liam Grimshaw and Liam Donnelly in the team my 20 quid will be staying in my pocket next Saturday.

 

Liam Grimshaw is by far the worst player in the squad.  Quite an achievement.

[Andy_P]

Just as an aside, with all this chat of late about how lucky we were apparently last season I  wonder if a year from now if Killie hit upon harder times will their fans look back on their win today and ponder that since our keeper palmed the ball to their player leaving him with an open goal and a tap in, our midfield and defence decided not to bother tackling and gifted them a penalty really they were nothing special at all, and well, were lucky. 

Or is it just our fans? 

[Andy_P]

Masters of our own downfall once again sadly. 

Solid start, people generally playing in their right roles and we looked more balanced for it. Even managed to get a goal (and what a goal) to the good. But then... 

Main's penalty was awful and immediately gave Kilmarnock and their support a lift. Even then though, Taits's terrific header off the line apart, I thought we looked comfortable. But conceding just completely spooked us. 

One of the better traits of Robinson's reign has been an ability to cope with adversity during games and turn it around. That seems increasingly less so this season with the double substitutions that weren't uncommon similarly failing to have the same effect. We do indeed as has been said already look like we've a soft underbelly. Once poked we don't seem to have it in us to respond and look done when we go behind. 

The second half was dreadful. We barely kicked a ball. Even with four forwards on the park at the end we barely had an effort of any note on target and were fortunate not to concede more. 

Galling to fall to such a soft, weak defeat when the opportunity was there to give ourselves a stong foothold in the match. Frustration is obviously growing with each passing defeat but there has been no great outpouring of venom at games as yet. I'm not sure that will still be the case if were looking at a fifth successive loss this time next weekend. 

 

[wellowell]

Next 4 league games are massive 3 at home Livi, St Johnstone , Dundee and St Mirren away if we don’t take at least 7 points we are really in trouble as we don’t play Celtic due to semi weekend .

[stv]

55 minutes ago, steelboy said:

If he drops Tait and keeps Liam Grimshaw and Liam Donnelly in the team my 20 quid will be staying in my pocket next Saturday.

 

Devoted Well fan supports the team when they need him........NOT.

[Ya Bezzer!]

5 minutes ago, stv said:

Devoted Well fan supports the team when they need him........NOT.

There was 550 odd through at Kilmarnock today.

Are those the only ones getting in on Saturday?

[Ya Bezzer!]

26 minutes ago, Andy_P said:

Masters of our own downfall once again sadly. 

Solid start, people generally playing in their right roles and we looked more balanced for it. Even managed to get a goal (and what a goal) to the good. But then... 

Main's penalty was awful and immediately gave Kilmarnock and their support a lift. Even then though, Taits's terrific header off the line apart, I thought we looked comfortable. But conceding just completely spooked us. 

One of the better traits of Robinson's reign has been an ability to cope with adversity during games and turn it around. That seems increasingly less so this season with the double substitutions that weren't uncommon similarly failing to have the same effect. We do indeed as has been said already look like we've a soft underbelly. Once poked we don't seem to have it in us to respond and look done when we go behind.

I'd agree that we were competing in the game and the early exchanges were fairly even but I always felt Kilmarnock were the much better footballing team and when we scored it was slightly against the run of play.

When Kilmarnock scored the equalizer had been coming for 10 or 15 minutes so I don't agree we looked comfortable at that stage.

As for this supposed ability to cope turn round games, we've won 1 match in our last 35 league games from being 1-0 down, that against Dundee.  Kilmarnock have done it two weeks in a row.

We'll agree completely about the second half.

It was noticeably that there was a lot of finger pointing at the goals and with a good 15 minutes of the game left the team had more or less given up going by body language.

These are not good signs.

[ropy]

1 hour ago, Andy_P said:

Just as an aside, with all this chat of late about how lucky we were apparently last season I  wonder if a year from now if Killie hit upon harder times will their fans look back on their win today and ponder that since our keeper palmed the ball to their player leaving him with an open goal and a tap in, our midfield and defence decided not to bother tackling and gifted them a penalty really they were nothing special at all, and well, were lucky. 

Or is it just our fans? 

Yes, I made that point earlier

[mfc88]

2 hours ago, siebsbarmyarmy said:

Who do we think he is talking about when he says about being too loyal to players?

IMO: Mchugh, Donnelly,  possibly cadds and bigi?

I'll be surprised if Maguire isn't starting next Saturday.

[stv]

1 hour ago, Ya Bezzer! said:

There was 550 odd through at Kilmarnock today.

Are those the only ones getting in on Saturday?

????? ?? ????

[Ya Bezzer!]

22 minutes ago, mfc88 said:

IMO: Mchugh, Donnelly,  possibly cadds and bigi?

I'll be surprised if Maguire isn't starting next Saturday.

Since he was talking about midfield runners not being matched and since Bigi was getting strips torn off him after the second goal I think you can safely say he'll be one of them.

Not sure who's not matched the run for the third goal for Kilmarnock as you don't get the best view looking down the length of the pitch but Cadden had another poor match and really needs benched.

[Andy_P]

1 hour ago, Ya Bezzer! said:

As for this supposed ability to cope turn round games, we've won 1 match in our last 35 league games from being 1-0 down, that against Dundee.  Kilmarnock have done it two weeks in a row.

I'll bow to your knowledge of wins in the period you've quoted, and perhaps turn games around wasn't the best wording I could have used, but I was referencing Robinson's reign as a whole and specifically mentioned adversity rather than pointing to come from behind victories.

But yeah, skim through the games I still believe there is plenty of evidence to suggest there was a spirit to fight back that arguably isn't evident to the same extent currently, even if it might not actually have resulted in a victory.

You can cite for example his first win in charge at Killie where we were a goal down and we won 2-1 or responding to being pulled back to by 2-2 by Inverness and going on to win 4-2 or the severe wobbles we experienced at 1-1 before going on to beat Killie 3-1 to stay up.

Last season you had the comeback to beat Edinburgh City, coming back to beat Hearts, Hamilton and Dundee.  Digging it out with 10 men in Dingwall in the League Cup. Coming back to draw with both capital sides in Edinburgh. And even though both ended in losses there were recoveries from 3-0 down to 3-2 against Partick and Ross County.

There was a fair bit of character of required from those on the park and some bold decisions to be made off it to recover, or go some way to recover,  from losing or mentally challenging positions. 

There's also the small matter of having players of the necessary ability to enable you to do so but that's perhaps an argument for another thread...

 

[gdalli10]

It was quite worrying how many times our players were arguing amongst themselves today.

Hoofball pish I’m afraid. ETA our bench’s reaction when warming up to some of our play probably tells you all you need to know about our performance today.

[Ya Bezzer!]

35 minutes ago, stv said:

????? ?? ????

I guess I'm saying a lot of Motherwell supporters chose not to support us today - only 500 out of our regular 4,000, never mind the 12,000 that turned out for the final.

If you are fed up with us being beaten or turning in very poor performances, then I think that's a legitimate reason for staying away and the rest of us shouldn't get too judgemental about it.

Me, I go to almost every match but we've been too bad, too long to really criticise people for not wanting to drop £30 - £40 quid going to a game.