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2021/2022 Rebuild


Neilwell86
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I have a bad feeling about Alexander and I suspect he won’t be our manager before the 2021-22 season comes to a close. There is an Ian Baraclough/Jim Gannon vibe about him that doesn’t inspire me with any confidence in his decision making. I hope he proves me wrong, but there is something that tells me he’s not the right fit for us. 

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18 minutes ago, underboyleheating said:

I have a bad feeling about Alexander and I suspect he won’t be our manager before the 2021-22 season comes to a close. There is an Ian Baraclough/Jim Gannon vibe about him that doesn’t inspire me with any confidence in his decision making. I hope he proves me wrong, but there is something that tells me he’s not the right fit for us. 

I can see him walking sooner rather than later to be honest and have thought so since the first game back this season. I’m not saying that he should go or even that I want him to but the way he comes across he seems less than enthusiastic about the task of taking us forward.

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still not got a clear view on GA's capability - his heart and attitude appear good.

What I don't like and it was the same with Robbo is the rhetoric of 'we need to work harder'  v's 

We need to start playing football, pass to one another, create space and move forward. 

I don't think it's too much to expect that we can keep the ball and move forward like a collective.  I appreciate teams need to gel, just want to see some evidence of working as a team.

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1 hour ago, MJC_mkII said:

Granted but at the same time we need to be signing the right players who are actually going to make an impact.

Far, far too often we falling short on this and it just seems like our recruitment policy is just sign X amount of players, usually from the English lower leagues and hope we can find a decent one in among them.

I think the vision I had for this season was better quality on longer contracts in order to try and build something and that looked to be starting to happen. I think it’s too early to really judge if many of the new signings are gems or not.

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I think Alexander showed last season that he knows what he is doing. We should have scored today and scored more last week plus we actually scored an equaliser so it's better than under Robinson. 

The issue at the moment is too many players not up to the required standard. We can't keep on pretending that Maguire is a midfielder or that Watt is a reliable forward. We can't let Donnelly try and play his way back to form. Lawless is done and Lamie isn't good enough to start. 

If we don't sign better players then Alexander won't last the season but questions will also need to be asked about Burrows. Posters on here like to pretend that we are paying players a grand a week but the club wage bill is £4.8m a year so there is scope to bring in players good enough for our level but the budget seems to be mismanaged. 

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3 minutes ago, Yorkyred said:

I think the vision I had for this season was better quality on longer contracts in order to try and build something and that looked to be starting to happen. I think it’s too early to really judge if many of the new signings are gems or not.

It's definitely far to early to judge the new signings,i said on the dundee thread that I actually think we have signed quite well but the formation and how were looking to go about things is the big issue.

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6 minutes ago, mfc said:

It's definitely far to early to judge the new signings,i said on the dundee thread that I actually think we have signed quite well but the formation and how were looking to go about things is the big issue.

Wish I'd been watching the game on your TV  

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6 minutes ago, Ya Bezzer! said:

We've conceded against Airdrie, Queen of the South, Hibs, St Johnstone and Dundee.  Our only clean sheets were against Queens Park and Annan.

Pretty clear where the major problem is.

I think it’s midfield and defence. Kelly is a very decent goalkeeper and I think we’re only short of a centre half. Midfield however is extremely weak and that’s putting a lot of pressure on the back line. I’m baffled why Crawford was given an extension and McGuire still has a way to go, we’re two decent midfielders short.

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10 minutes ago, Ya Bezzer! said:

We've conceded against Airdrie, Queen of the South, Hibs, St Johnstone and Dundee.  Our only clean sheets were against Queens Park and Annan.

Pretty clear where the major problem is.

That's not a bad shout. It'd be different if we were hard to beat. We aren't.

I don't think the midfield offers much protection or attacking support either though.

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1 minute ago, Yorkyred said:

I think it’s midfield and defence. Kelly is a very decent goalkeeper and I think we’re only short of a centre half. Midfield however is extremely weak and that’s putting a lot of pressure on the back line. I’m baffled why Crawford was given an extension and McGuire still has a way to go, we’re two decent midfielders short.

Kelly is the only player of quality we have right now.

We concede far too many goals though.  I agree you should defend with more than defenders and you have to look at the whole team when we aren't in possession.

I've not done an analysis of every goal we've lost this season but certainly the manager should be doing it and we need to look into it, identify the problems and solve them. 

We will go absolutely nowhere if we can't keep clean sheets against fairly modest opposition. 

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2 hours ago, Yorkyred said:

I think it’s midfield and defence. Kelly is a very decent goalkeeper and I think we’re only short of a centre half. Midfield however is extremely weak and that’s putting a lot of pressure on the back line. I’m baffled why Crawford was given an extension and McGuire still has a way to go, we’re two decent midfielders short.

100% on the nail Yorky. First step is to make us hard to beat and we're  a long way from being in that position. First up we need another central defender to partner Ojala. As for the midfield I thought before today that we were only lacking an attacking creative sort, and we still are. But I have fears over Donnelly. He's just returning from a year out and is clearly struggling. He may make it and he may not. O'Hara is certainly not the answer as the defensive midfielder. We are badly lacking a holding player too. I want Maguire to succeed as a home grown talent but am not sure he will. At present he's no better than a back up player. At the moment we are fielding a one man midfield in Slattery.  No matter how good he is he can't do it all by himself. Like you I can't fathom out Crawford's extension. Quite apart from today's result, if a team wins 17 corners against you then the alarm bells should be ringing loudly, very loudly.

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Midfield is our biggest problem by a mile, and has been for a long time, and we have signed Slattery and a guy who the manager said is shite in the announcement. 

Donnelly was good when he had Campbell/Gorrin/polworth/turnbull around him, and he got us a bunch of important goals from set pieces when we had someone who could take them. However, we can't have him and another passenger in there protecting a defence that needs a lot of protection. 

Maguire is improving, but he isn't a top level starter unless we have someone very good in there to talk him through games, and we don't. He should not be anywhere near set pieces either.  O'Hara and Crawford are handy backup players, with the former being a decent bench option in certain occasions. 

The talk a couple of weeks ago was that we still had 3 or 4 to come in, although that seemed to soften last week.  If we are going to stick with the tactics we are deploying, we need a defender who isn't hopeless on the ball, a midfielder who is willing and capable of taking the ball off said defender, and at least one player who can put in a half decent free kick or corner. I think we are probably stuck with the attackers we have.

As always, we are one signing or result away from optimism, but things can go the other way pretty quickly too. 

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I'm that pissed right now, I can't even mind what thread I'm posting on

Anyway, just reading the threads of late.

It's mental how, in my time supporting since late 80's,  the odd (really) bad season aside, we've generally floated between the top 3 to 6, or between the bottom 7 to 10, without being massively at perilous risk of the drop, league reconstruction aside.

That said, the last few seasons, as a fan who hasn't been to the games as much as previous and would like, Covid aside, I can't help but think there's a massive over estimation of what is expected from a Motherwell team in this period.

We won a cup in 1991. Prior to that was 52...(54?)...sorry can't mind right now.

We've had a few finals since, all to the top team(s) in the country at the time.

Folks are comparing us to St. Johnstone last season.

Every small / provincial team in every league in every country could do that.

They had a team, manager and set of circumstances come together that was a once in a lifetime situation.

I'm 47, I could live to be 147 and that will never happen again.

That aside, us, we want the best of what we can achieve as a team. After a small glimmer from the Hibs game to kick the season off, it's reverted back to type.

Where's it gonna end...I'll admit, I bought into the GA hype at the start...I'm still there, I'm still onside, but the weekly wankword bingo soundbites after every game are getting tedious. 

Think I'm just annoyed that my Scottish Cup Winners bet is looking farcical already and it's only the second week of the season!!

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In terms of rebuild - first mistake was resigning players who aren't good enough to be auto first choices.
 

From who we have signed.
Kelly , Ojala, Slattery , VV all look very decent.
O'Conner also looks decent - don't know why he's been dropped.

The others don't look good enough - albeit Woolery may need time to settle down.

we need to sign another quality 4 to go right through the team 

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53 minutes ago, wellsince75 said:

In terms of rebuild - first mistake was resigning players who aren't good enough to be auto first choices.
 

From who we have signed.
Kelly , Ojala, Slattery , VV all look very decent.
O'Conner also looks decent - don't know why he's been dropped.

The others don't look good enough - albeit Woolery may need time to settle down.

we need to sign another quality 4 to go right through the team 

It’s very early days for many, Conner Shields has only just started getting minutes. Personally I think we will have a better idea after a dozen or so games given there are so many new players.

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27 minutes ago, Yorkyred said:

It’s very early days for many, Conner Shields has only just started getting minutes. Personally I think we will have a better idea after a dozen or so games given there are so many new players.

Yorky - forgot about Shields tbh  - completely agree - needs time and see what he can do.  
He's on paper the right kind of signing and I hope it works well. 

I've no beef with any of the new players. As long as we aim for quality and obvious first team picks. 

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17 hours ago, MJC_mkII said:

I can see him walking sooner rather than later to be honest and have thought so since the first game back this season. I’m not saying that he should go or even that I want him to but the way he comes across he seems less than enthusiastic about the task of taking us forward.

Ypu could be right but I think there's something about the Midlands accent that always makes them seem downbeat?

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