joewarkfanclub

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.

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.

Ah! Parlez vous francais aussi mon ami! 😍😍😍

Sevilla then? 😉

Have to say Premier Sports is a highly attractive option today. Travelling up from Ayrshire doesnt feel very appealing.

He also has a very good first touch when big diagonals are fired at him from left back or centre half. He could work on his delivery, but personally I think he is a serviceable right midfielder at our level in certain games/circumstances. Wouldnt be a stick on starter for me and not captain material, but far from "dugmeat".

Dugmeat suggests a player with zero redeemable features whatsoever. I dont think thats Sparrow.

I think dugmeat is harsh. Clearly at fault for the 2nd and 3rd goals. But coaching him when to sit and when to jump, off the back of that video, shouldnt be difficult. Koutroumbis is still the better option, when fit. We just cant rely on that.

This was posted over on P&B. I know its Maurice Ross, but he actually picks apart what we are trying to do, and whats going wrong, pretty well. Encouragingly, alot of our current issues are individual errors and can be fixed pretty easily. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/maurice-alexander-ross-6b56a01b9_motherwell-analysis-doubling-down-on-activity-7519422584980004864-3H-o?utm_source=li_share&utm_content=feedcontent&utm_medium=g_mb_web&utm_campaign=copy

Not sure his intention was to injure Lowry, dont know if he is that sort ofnplayer. But he certainly made no attempt to lower his studs. Whether that was an attempt to protect himself or not, it was certainly endangering an opponent. So I agree, red card was appropriate.

I agree with most of that. But I dont think we were well beaten by Killie. The first 5 minutes of suicidal defending apart, we largely controlled the first half, played some nice stuff and should have scored at least 3 goals. So something was going right. Second half was absolute shite after we got the second goal, but that was mostly down to us rather than what Killie did. They basically fired long balls over the heads of our defence and looked to take advantage of mistakes. Deserved to lose? Probably. Well beaten? I dont agree. I do totally agree that we have regressed though. Can you imagine playing Freiburg now? 🫣🫣🫣

You talking about the Killie game? At the game I thought it was a red. He was late and his studs were up. Looked like he caught him on the knee. Was hard to tell how much force was used and Im not sure the tv pictures help with that. Given that the ref was right there and immediately gave the red card, Im not sure how they could justify the overturn. PS I think it is an issue. At 1-1 and Killie down to 10 men, you would have to fancy our chances. Particularly as we scored right after that.

I dont hate it. But think we are a bit lopsided unless we are playing without width and relying on the full backs to get forward. Lowry has to play central to dictate play and pick passes. Your general points have merit though.

I think Ive got to the stage Id like to see Matty Connelly given a chance. I know for confidence reasons, a manager will always support his goalkeeper, but when part of the way we play requires good distribution, its hard to stick by someone when its harming the team. The mistakes I could actually live with for a while, but outside of those, his distribution still isnt great. Connolly has always seemed very comfortable with the ball at his feet. He is a little on the short side for me, but I think the other side of his game would have benefits. He is also "Our Player" and Id like to see us try to develop him if we are having issues with a loanee. Your thoughts would be appreciated YT.

We didnt really tighten up until after the League Cup Semi Final v St Mirren and that was in November.

Not sure Im in this camp. I am concerned, so not officially backing him. However, in the spirit of the question, I think it all depends on performances. If he can turn that around and scrape a few draws here and there or even the odd win then Id be of a mind to stick rather than twist. Butnif the performances continue to be increasingly poor and we continue to lose games, then I think it becomes increasingly difficult. Ask me again at the next international break.

Fancy it? I will put the cones out if you pick the team! 😍😍😍

Hard to give it to anyone based on a 45 minute performance but went for Lowry.

Its gonna be a long week!

Ultimately, there is no way the Executive Board are emptying Alfred this early. They have backed him heavily and have to give him time to try and get it right. If we get into December and are cut adrift at the bottom then there is a conversation to be had before tge January window. These are his players and he/they will be given every opportunity to turn it around. Apart from anything else, if we get back to having a reputation of showing managers absolutely no patience, it thens becomes difficult to recruit anyone decent in the future. There are clearly huge doubts hanging over him right now, but I dont think its a total lost cause, as there were flickers of hope in that first half today. Individual errors are absolutely killing us right now. The players have to take some responsibility for that. But Alfred also has to provide tge best platform for them to be able to play their football. Its gonna be a long week......

I actually thought that we played pretty well for the majority of the first half. The sucidal start apart, we got in their faces, won the ball high, played some nice football and created a good few chances. Felt like we were in control of the game at that point and could have been a couple of goals in the clear. The second half capitulation though, wow! Kilmarnock didnt even have to do anything special either. A few long balls over the top, 2 more gifts and we were done. How the same group of players can put in such markedly different levels of performance in the same game, is absolutely wild. We are now in deep shit and Im not sure the manager looks like he knows how to get us out of it. Starting to fear the worst......

The Motherwell fanbase hasnt lost its shit though? There are some dissenting voices, sure. But it was always thus. What there has been is vigorous and open debate about our current shortcomings and what can be improved upon to get better results. Any organisation that has a desire to improve needs that. Just nodding and pretending everything is fine never helped anyone.

I see Johnny K is available for selection on Saturday. I wonder if we will see him make an appearance or whether SOD goes to RB with Sparrow in front of him. We certainly need to strengthen the RHS of the pitch somehow. We cant be go into Saturday as wide open as we were last week.