2018’19 Game 19:St Mirren (H) Saturday 22nd December 2018

[Yodo]

2 minutes ago, Clackscat said:

Just back and as a fully paid up member of the happy clappy club, I thought that was a disgraceful performance, dreadful selection against a team low on confidence, poor tactics, crazy substitutions just awful all round.

I said after 15 mins this had a 1 nil defeat all over it against a truly awful team.

Turnbull was cutting a frustrated figure at those around him. This kind of display won't help us keep the one genuinely class player we have.

Worrying to say the least

Sent from my SM-A320FL using Tapatalk
 

Worrying ,but I don't read anything about getting rid off now that is worrying 

[Andy_P]

But they are non league standard and play in the style of a non league team.
The fact that we signed them from League Two or League One reserves doesn't really come into it. 
Out of 198 first team starts (before today) only 69 of them were by Scottish players and that's if you include Tom Aldred. 
Overwhelmingly our team is composed of English lower league standard players that just aren't good enough.

You're right. It doesn't come into it a great deal where they come from. If they're good for us when they come to Motherwell that's great. If they're shite, that's bad.

Which is why I don't quite get the regular negative remarks, not necessarily only by yourself, about the English Conference or whatever its called, especially when we've had the likes of Moult, Johnson and Heneghan who've done us a turn and gone on to earn us decent coin.

That the team play like and are of an English non league standard is up for debate by those who know that league better than me.

And that some of our team aren't good enough is an opinion I wouldn't contest at all. But I know that we've had enough half decent players from that league to know that I won't be getting my knickers in a twist if the first player unveiled in January happens to be from that league.

[milo]

I thought the year Robinson took over from McGhee was the worst Motherwell side in recent memory but that side at least had Moult and McDonald with Ainsworth able to fire one in when he turned up in the odd game but Turnball aside, this team has absolutely zero about it.

The Barraclough team and Malpas side also had the odd nugget of talent and would piss all over this shower. That’s how bad we are.

Not only are the players signed by Robinson, on the whole, atrocious, but the kick , rush and foul approach is brutal to watch and easy to defend against. For a team that apparently likes to get crossed in the box a lot, our number 9 is got to be the single worst header of a ball I’ve ever seen! The only headed goal he’s scored was the 97th minute equaliser at Tynecastle (in which he had an open goal to aim at and scaffled it straight at the keeper!)

Of course there are no easy games in this league but losing at home to your peers on a regular basis will find you in the worst possible situations and that’s now 0 goals and 0 points from 2 home games v Accies and St Mirren not to mention the blanks in the goals and points collums from the games v St Johnstone and Hearts also.

We has the opportunity to go 12 points clear of danger today and completely shat in the nest. Resting players on Wednesday and effectively throwing the game has backfired spectacularly and Robinson has no hiding place now.

The football on display would make your eyes bleed and it’s also not effective. I would happily punt the majority of the first team in January, but replacing the dross with yet more dross, like we did in the summer, isn’t going to change anything. The money we have wasted and are wasting on players signed only to sit in the stand or the treatment table is incredible and yet we’re apparently trying to reduce our debt? 

I’ve seen enough this season to believe we need a complete overhaul in our approach, organisation, tactics and recruitment ASAP. I wouldn’t trust Robinson with any funds in January that’s for sure.

[mfc88]

Absolute shambles today. Absolutely zero width and the only player even trying to create is Turnbull, and maybe tait.

I will NEVER back throwing the game midweek v Celtic. It defeats the point of having a competition, and cheats the fans who went along. But I'll just about accept it as a management tactic if we take 7 points from these 3 games. Then that is what is served up in the first of 3? Shocking.

When bigi came on I knew that was either going to make or break us.... with a strong suspicion it would be the latter.

Awful. A lot to answer for, Robinson.

[The African]

Undoubtedly a shite result and one only matched by the performance that delivered it.

I hope it is clear from previous posts that I am of the opinion that Robinson should be allowed to get on with the job. Part of this is based on the " real world" difficulties of implementing the changes which many are calling for. You cannot just punt managers and players and bring in new ones whenever you like. There are substantial costs involved for starters. Costs which a club like ours cannot meet. There is also absolutely no guarantee that the changes will be a success. But there is no doubt that there are serious problems on the field. To do nothing now and just hope that there are two sides in the league who will remain worse than us is not an option. Robinson himself has strongly hinted that he is planning on making changes in the near future. The question which needs to be answered is, if we are going to try and change tack now, is Robinson the man to implement and oversee the manoeuvre? I am beginning to have serious doubts that he is the man for that  job.

[Suprawell]

2 hours ago, Ya Bezzer! said:

Well, that's the end of a week where the standard of professionalism at Motherwell Football Club fell to perhaps an all time low.

When managers are picking and choosing what matches to compete in something is very, very badly wrong at the club.  I said at the time it was a deplorable decision.   Firstly we effectively given up a match where there was three points to be won.  Never mind that getting them was unlikely, they should been competed for but weren't. 

But then, secondly, for the team to be rested to put in that performance told you everything.   The style of play is an affront to top level football.   It's atrocious.  It's never been worse, never, in 40 years of watching this club. 

The standard of player is a disgrace.  Don't even have the most rudimentary footballing skills.  But forget using a football, they don't even have an ability to organise themselves, to run off the ball, to help team mates or even show any pride in themselves.  We punt it and we give away fouls.  That's what we do.  That's what 2 years of Robinson's coaching has done to us.  Punt and foul.

The manager proved himself an idiot this week.  And the players proved that not only are they not footballers, that they shouldn't be picking up wages on false pretenses, they proved that they don't even care that much.

Not one iota was given this afternoon until it was far too late.  Not one!  Same old faces, failing time and time again.  They need kicked out of the club.

And you know what the worst thing about today was?  It was oh so predictable.  We are truly woeful.  You know how bad?  Barraclough's team would murder that lot.  

Someone, somewhere, has to come into this club and introduce some professional standards.  The club right now is a disgrace.

Absolutely fantastic post.  Taking off the heart of your defense when Grimmy was toiling and then also Tate, a good passer of a long ball.  Ending up with 5 forwards was schoolkid stuff, Robbo should be ashamed of himself.  Big decisions have to be made and I feel there is a clear lack of leadership at the core of the club.  

[The African]

Not sure about all the talk of throwing the game at Parkhead. We could have played our first choice team, whatever that is, and would still have got well beaten. Surely the performance today proves that point beyond all reason?

 

[mfc88]

8 minutes ago, The African said:

Not sure about all the talk of throwing the game at Parkhead. We could have played our first choice team, whatever that is, and would still have got well beaten. Surely the performance today proves that point beyond all reason?

 

Yeah i agree we probably would have still got beaten. My main issue is if every team in the league took that approach then it defeats the point of the whole competition. It's easy enough for Celtic as it is.

[Ya Bezzer!]

20 minutes ago, Andy_P said:

You're right. It doesn't come into it a great deal where they come from. If they're good for us when they come to Motherwell that's great. If they're shite, that's bad.

Which is why I don't quite get the regular negative remarks, not necessarily only by yourself, about the English Conference or whatever its called, especially when we've had the likes of Moult, Johnson and Heneghan who've done us a turn and gone on to earn us decent coin.

That the team play like and are of an English non league standard is up for debate by those who know that league better than me.

And that some of our team aren't good enough is an opinion I wouldn't contest at all. But I know that we've had enough half decent players from that league to know that I won't be getting my knickers in a twist if the first player unveiled in January happens to be from that league.

Danny Johnson is one of the few in this squad I'd keep and Moult is one of my favourite ever players.

There might well be talent in lower and non league football in England but our strategy of hoovering up 3 quarters of a squad from that level of football and then crossing our fingers and hoping one or two of them might be good enough to sell on while the team toils and the standards on display collapses ever downwards....that's not a strategy I can get behind. 

We have decent goalkeepers, one outfield player who can control a ball and two who might score and the rest are a waste of time.  Otherwise the squad is dire.  There has never been less talent. 

Even the team that went into the play offs a couple of seasons ago had Scott McDonald, Marvin Johnson, Lionel Ainsworth, Iain Vigurs, Lee Erwin, Henrik Ojamaa, Conor Grant, Stephen Pearson.  Now some of those players might have been highly inconsistent, huffy, lazy, inexperienced or have other faults but at least they had some footballing ability.  Every single one of those players is better than 95% of our present squad.  There is virtually no technical or footballing ability in that squad of 20+ players.

The club has been run down over 5 years or so and we are now reaching a critical mass in terms of lack of talent.

 

[GrahamH]

38 minutes ago, The African said:

Not sure about all the talk of throwing the game at Parkhead. We could have played our first choice team, whatever that is, and would still have got well beaten. Surely the performance today proves that point beyond all reason?

 

I’m not sure what your point is? Obviously we could play our strongest team against any team in the league and lose. The point is that we played a weakened team in a game where we would need our strongest team to be at their best to take anything from the game. We effectively wrote it off before a ball was kicked.

[smiddy]

as someone on p&b has just pointed out,we are now resembling terry butchers hibs side thst got relegated, not my opinion but it jogged my memory of what can happen if were not careful

[GazzyB]

^ as well we should have, all the comments about Celtic being "there for the taking" and "worst Celtic team in years" were absolutely laughable and 99 times out of 100 our strongest team would've lost. Robinson did the right thing in rotating.

 

The issue for me isn't the squad rotation, it's the fact that we didn't kick on and take advantage today.

 

I fell asleep 10 minutes into the game today with Graham ranting about the ref. I woke up with 2 minutes to go to hear him calling St Mirren a disgrace for taking a corner short and not putting it into the box. The guy needs chased ASAP.

[GrahamH]

13 minutes ago, GazzyB said:

^ as well we should have, all the comments about Celtic being "there for the taking" and "worst Celtic team in years" were absolutely laughable and 99 times out of 100 our strongest team would've lost. Robinson did the right thing in rotating.

 

The issue for me isn't the squad rotation, it's the fact that we didn't kick on and take advantage today.

 

I fell asleep 10 minutes into the game today with Graham ranting about the ref. I woke up with 2 minutes to go to hear him calling St Mirren a disgrace for taking a corner short and not putting it into the box. The guy needs chased ASAP.

You’re welcome to your opinion but I think we should have played our strongest team against Celtic and attempted to make a game of it. Put up a good performance against them and we go into today’s game with confidence instead of rolling over against them and going into today’s game flat.

[Yorkyred]

2 minutes ago, GrahamH said:

You’re welcome to your opinion but I think we should have played our strongest team against Celtic and attempted to make a game of it. Put up a good performance against them and we go into today’s game with confidence instead of rolling over against them and going into today’s game flat.

I’m not sure it made a difference either way in truth, no real excuse for what was an absolute horror show. It’s rare I can’t pick out a couple of positives but I can’t think of a single one from today’s performance. In my view we faced possible the worst premiership team i’ve seen in my admittedly short time supporting the club and yet we were little better other than the higher percentage of possession. Not a single player came out with pass marks today, I’m not even totally convinced any combination of subs would have made a difference. No composure and a total lack of quality shown on the day.

[Shotts Well Fan]

3 minutes ago, Yorkyred said:

I’m not sure it made a difference either way in truth, no real excuse for what was an absolute horror show. It’s rare I can’t pick out a couple of positives but I can’t think of a single one from today’s performance. In my view we faced possible the worst premiership team i’ve seen in my admittedly short time supporting the club and yet we were little better other than the higher percentage of possession. Not a single player came out with pass marks today, I’m not even totally convinced any combination of subs would have made a difference. No composure and a total lack of quality shown on the day.

Not according to the BBC who had St Mirren having 53% possession.

[Yorkyred]

9 minutes ago, Shotts Well Fan said:

Not according to the BBC who had St Mirren having 53% possession.

Interesting, they certainly had more at certain points in the second half but I would have thought our first half possession alone would have swung it in our favour.

[GrahamH]

11 minutes ago, Yorkyred said:

I’m not sure it made a difference either way in truth, no real excuse for what was an absolute horror show. It’s rare I can’t pick out a couple of positives but I can’t think of a single one from today’s performance. In my view we faced possible the worst premiership team i’ve seen in my admittedly short time supporting the club and yet we were little better other than the higher percentage of possession. Not a single player came out with pass marks today, I’m not even totally convinced any combination of subs would have made a difference. No composure and a total lack of quality shown on the day.

It couldn’t have been an worse. If you make a controversial decision to  rest players and effectively write a game off in order to win the next game  and then lose that game, surely it’s been the wrong decision?

Play the strongest team and the best case scenario is that we take 6 points out of 6. With writing the Celtic game off the best we could achieve is 3 points out of 6 and we’ve ended up with 0.

[MFCL84]

Oh dear, oh dear. Wasn't that an absolutely shocking performance? Unfortunately it is just one of many so far this season and there is no doubt that there will be more of that standard to come. Entertainment value for the paying customers is NIL and I've said it before, continuing to produce this level of performance will lose fans and Well Society members.

Like many who have posted today I was baffled by the formation and tactics. The team seemed to line up as 3:2:3:2 with no width. Why would you do that and then proceed to "punt and foul" your way through the game? Surely if setting up to play narrow the ball needs to be on the deck and a pass and move approach taken in order to make headway in the constrained space.

There were a multitude of things that I felt were wrong with the way we set-up and played today, but a couple that were particularly annoying were the lack of support for Grimshaw and a lack of movement when Turnbull was looking to make something happen. 

Grimshaw ran into the corner probably a dozen times during the game today, but wouldn't have had to if there was someone willing to overlap, or show inside to take a pass. He was left to run a loan furrow against a couple of Saints defenders every time.

The lack of attacking options when we have the ball in a good position in the middle of the pitch has been evident all season, but was highlighted today on a number of occasions when Turnbull was looking to make a pass; nobody came towards him to draw a defender out, nobody burst through from midfield to give a forward option, nobody ran across the back line there was just nothing happening around him. Invariably he had to go sideways, back or get caught on the ball.

Movement, teamwork and organisation can be coached, first touch and passing can be practiced. None of this appears to be worked in training at Motherwell. I can't see what the time is spent working on. The management and coaching staff need to sort that out.

[Yorkyred]

19 minutes ago, GrahamH said:

It couldn’t have been an worse. If you make a controversial decision to  rest players and effectively write a game off in order to win the next game  and then lose that game, surely it’s been the wrong decision?

Play the strongest team and the best case scenario is that we take 6 points out of 6. With writing the Celtic game off the best we could achieve is 3 points out of 6 and we’ve ended up with 0.

My point was only about today’s performance and the suggestion we could have gone into today’s game with confidence and had a better chance of a result. I don’t believe anything would have made today’s performance any better. Of course playing the first choice 11 against Celtic should in theory have increased our chances of picking up extra points. Anyone at today’s game however would probably laugh off any suggestion that group of 11 players were capable of anything against a rampant Celtic at home. One or two suggested we were facing a pretty poor Celtic side in midweek, I would suggest given their results, dominance, and goals over the last few games at Parkhead that was total nonsense.

[Stevie73]

Just listened to the players comments after what was a terrible game, fed up hearing the boys are very disappointed and we are hurting, this game could have moved us clear of shite street, how can this current crop of players not raise their standards for these games especially at home, think there must only be two games at home with pass marks this season, simple things like passing to our own players seem to be the hardest to execute...

[Mintymac]

I hope bigi never pulls a Claret and amber top on again . One of the worst Well players ive seen in 50 years  . Bye bye Bigi . Nice guy but not a Well player  ever. And that takes  some doing . . Re the game . 4 strikers and Dunne and  Grimmy were unable to provide one decent cross in 90 mins . This team is terrible on the eye . Main and Johnstone !!!!!!!!!. . First half Main  header was pathetic  FROM 6 YARDS  . Pathetic strikers 

[GrahamH]

1 hour ago, Yorkyred said:

My point was only about today’s performance and the suggestion we could have gone into today’s game with confidence and had a better chance of a result. I don’t believe anything would have made today’s performance any better. Of course playing the first choice 11 against Celtic should in theory have increased our chances of picking up extra points. Anyone at today’s game however would probably laugh off any suggestion that group of 11 players were capable of anything against a rampant Celtic at home. One or two suggested we were facing a pretty poor Celtic side in midweek, I would suggest given their results, dominance, and goals over the last few games at Parkhead that was total nonsense.

So you’re saying Robinson’s decision to rest players against Celtic was correct? 0 points from 6 suggests otherwise.

[Stevie73]

I think Keith Lasley nailed it we were slow and second to every challenge, think we need about 5 players recruited for January, definitely two forward men and someone that can put a decent ball in, think goalkeeper is the only safe position in our squad...

[Ya Bezzer!]

You could do a lot worse than fine players £50 every time they play an aimless high ball.

Of course it would increase local bankruptcies by roughly about 20 but these are desperate times.

[GrahamH]

16 minutes ago, Ya Bezzer! said:

You could do a lot worse than fine players £50 every time they play an aimless high ball.

Of course it would increase local bankruptcies by roughly about 20 but these are desperate times.

It would be a bit harsh to fine players for following instructions.