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He’s turned this team into a slow, ponderous, predictable pile of pish.

Normally expect this to be a soulless, turgid shitfest on a tattyfield pitch in cold, horrible weather. But given St Johnstone have improved their pitch and Simo likes his team to play a bit, it might be a free flowing game on a lovely pitch, but ultimately still freezing and soulless. If we perform to the levels of Sunday and cut out the silly mistakes we could win this one. But a point would at least be a start to some sort of recovery.

I thought Sparrow had a very good game defensively and kept McPake very quiet. Levitt was decent in the middle. Manny and Kanga lit up the second half with their partnership. Went for Said though. He just takes the pressure off of our defence and gets us up the pitch with those runs. He also managed to lay the ball offor draw fouls at the right times instead of losing it. He could do without the rolling around the ground nonsense though. Everyone knows he is steong as an Ox. It just looks silly.

Some amount of hyperbole and confirmation bias being applied here. Too many people behaving reactively and judging results rather than performances (I get that results matter and will get managers the sack). But, yesterday was a million miles away from the Aberdeen and Celtic games, where I was genuinely worried that things were unravelling at a rate of knots that might be difficult to stop. Im not saying things are perfect. Im not saying that things cant improve more (they will need to). But I did see enough yesterday to think that there were signs of improvement. I still think we need to be braver on the ball, but yesterday really wasnt the day to be doing that given our previous frailties. If there is unrest in the dressing room, I didnt see many signs of it yesterday. The players all worked hard for each other and put a shift in, even Maswanhise, who has been absolutely toothless going forward worked back to cover Sparrow. Yesterday was absolutely down to individual mistakes. Neither Longelo nor McGhee make any attempt to stop Braga getting a free header for the first, and SOD gives the ball straight to Miller for the second. Neither of those things happen and Hearts dont score. Alfred cant do anything about those incidents. Similarly with Thors chances second half. Considering we were without Fadinger & Lowry yesterday and Koutroumbis and Priestman have disappeared again, I thought yesterdays performance (outwith the errors) was decent enough so I will give the manager some credit there. He now needs to show that level of performance can be applied consistently and the errors eliminated so that the results will follow. If he does that, he will survive this. If he cant, then he will be gone before Xmas.

Agree with you, hearts scored from 2 situations that we wouldn't have , thats what money gets you. With Lowry and Priestman coming back soon, hopefully, things ain't terminal, theres enough good players to give us a chance, most of them seem to be in middle of the park , though I like big seb, with service he will get goals . I'd love big Thor to do well but that was bloody frustrating to do that twice.

Patience with who?

I was pretty encouraged by our performance yesterday. We seemed much better organised at the back, kept the ball better, pressed better, created better chances and the work rate certainly didnt look like the performance of a team that had downed tools on the manager. Was it perfect? No, far from it. But Ive been looking for small improvements, and yesterday, I thought there were many. On the balance of play, I thought we deserved something from the game. We created better & more chances than Hearts and had we taken some of them, I dont think they could have complained too much if we had won the game. Problem is we didnt. Eythor misses 2 guilt edged chances. I get he is rusty, but to not even make clean contact with the ball on 2 occasions is pretty poor. Not sure what the reasoning was for changing Seb out. He didnt look out of running to me and looks far more likely in front of goal. He was unlucky in the first half with his volley. Similarly, the much maligned Sparrow had a very good game against McPake, who was supposed to pull his pants down, but didnt. He looked like he was still full of running and I wouldnt have subbed him out either. SOD then makes the mistake for the 3rd game in a row, making that substitution also look silly. You could argue those 2 changes were on the manager and cost us any chance of getting back in the game, but looking at the bench its hard to see what else he could have done at that point to freshen things up. He did bring on Kanga, and that partnership with Manny looked very promising. Id like to see more of that. Overall, really dispiriting to goes 6 losses on the bounce. We are definitely in trouble re our league position, but it looks far from terminal at this point. We do desperately need to get a result from somewhere though, before we end up bottom and detached from the rest. Teams rarely recover from those situations.

Just out of curiosity, could you quantify that? I’d wager club accounts won’t show anywhere near that figure.

I thought there was signs of improvement today. We looked far better when Kanga came on. My concern is that Alfred seems to be unable to change formation or tactic so managers can work us out easily. Not really sure what the answer is to be honest, feel that I don’t want us to go down the manger merry go round again. He needs to get the balance of the squad right. Something he seems unable to do. Also I feel we need to drop Tawanda and play Lowery in his position.

I wonder if we will all have the same amount of patience when we are playing Hamilton away after our first ever relegation from the SPL.

We disagree then

Stats may be meaningless to you but football is based on it. Why do you think players they wear trackers to plot their effectiveness in areas of the park. That provides stats as to where they are effective. Why are players signed on the based on their stats. Just ask Tony Bloom. Its all about analytics, data and stats. You stick to blind faith.

Telt

Game over. He should be removed now.

This is one of the poorest-coached teams I’ve seen in years. I honestly don’t even know where to start with the analysis and criticism anymore. A home win was absolutely necessary today, and this is what we got.

All season long he's been doing it.

Great post, people ,especially some on here and fb castratophise . That being said if we were to take nothing from next 2 , I would be concerned. I did think we played some good stuff today.

*Yawn* Asked my mate Claude what caused Alife to apply for unemployment before at Rosenborg...interesting reading.... Coaching style and methods Possession-based and proactive. Pressing from a tight 4-3-3 that requires wide midfielders to cover a lot of ground both inside and outside. It’s very demanding physically and cognitively. Fixated on detail and philosophy. VG described him as a coach with a clear philosophy who is extremely focused on detail. That’s the strength and also the source of most of his problems. Willing to use gamesmanship. He drew criticism in Norway for having ball boys remove opponents’ towels for long throws, and he defended it with a quip about not wanting guests bringing their own furniture. Decisive, not consensus-driven. When asked about dressing-room complaints at Rosenborg, his answer was essentially that he listens to feedback, uses what makes the team better, discards the rest, and someone has to make the decisions. Taken one way, that’s leadership. Taken another way, it’s a coach who doesn’t think morale problems are his to fix. Rosenborg: how it went wrong 2024 (first season): genuinely good. The appointment was widely ridiculed at the time. Club legend Jahn Ivar “Mini” Jakobsen called it very strange. Johansson still finished fourth, won manager of the month in August, and Rosenborg were described as the best team in the Eliteserien in autumn 2024. In Europe they beat Banga and Hammarby and reached the final Conference League qualifying round. On the back of that he was given a contract extension to 2028 in August 2025. 2025: the unravelling. The season started well and then fell apart. Several factors combined: Loss of key players. Nypan and Broholm left, and TV 2 pundit Jesper Mathisen said the recognisable Johansson style had largely disappeared without them. He called it a grey version of the side from twelve months earlier. Goals dried up. Rosenborg were heading for their lowest goals-per-game average since 1986. Results. 16 points from 14 games, then a run of seven league games without a win, finishing seventh. They lost 4-0 at HamKam and were humiliated 3-1 at home by KFUM Oslo. The dressing-room issues, which are the important part for you: In September 2025, VG reported grumbling in the dressing room that had lasted weeks, aimed at his leadership style and his selections. TV 2 then reported a “culture of fear” among players and staff. This is the most serious allegation in his file. The worst incident came after a late equaliser against Sandefjord. Johansson confronted 19-year-old Jesper Reitan-Sunde so harshly in the dressing room that other players reacted, and the story leaked. Johansson’s explanation was that he was frustrated and angry about the result and critical of how they defended. Captain Ole Selnæs’s response cut both ways. Publicly he said he didn’t recognise the VG picture and that every dressing room has a few unhappy players. But he also gave a half-time TV interview so pointed that pundits read it as a sign something deeper was going on. After the leak, his anger was directed at the leakers (“embarrassing and shocking, we can’t have people like that”), which tells you there were people inside willing to brief against the manager. An Adresseavisen commentator described players turning up to training as though out of obligation.

Great post

The best period was the 10 minutes where Longello and Kanga worked well together. The most entertainment was Eythor’s fresh air swipes.

Is he following the blue print though? I’ve said this about hearts previously, they’ve lost the heartbeat of their team & have continued to follow the path have we? not 1 poster thinks we should be the level of last year….but what is this managers philosophy? if we’re successful we’ll lose our team if we’re shit we’ll lose our team its just the level of club we are, it should be better than it currently is either way

Behind the goals for this one, the manager won’t hear the abuse, no resignations.

My mate and I were saying in January we should have punted him. Even during his hot streak there were questions for us about his game but anytime anything was said about selling him in January was met with howls of derision. Next to no Motherwell fan wanted him punted in January so its kinda hard to now say the board dropped the ball.

We need a performance with zero mistakes and ruthless finishing to come from nowhere. Difficult to see that happening but desperate for something to turn for us.