David

Results are the ultimate barometer, as I said in my first post. But if it looks like he's lost his way entirely, there's a good chance he's gone quicker than he would be if there's a suggestion that he has a plan and it's simply taking time to implement. I'd personally be very shocked if the club removed him before Christmas unless we're a total disaster, which isn't the case at the moment.

I think it depends on what the view is within the club. As I mentioned, if the board and management team are seeing a coach whose ideas just haven't quite clicked properly yet, or who has simply had the misfortune of being dealt the result of a mediocre transfer window, but who is still confident, has a coherent plan, and who the players are still fully behind, then I don't think even a few more losses will change that. Sure, fans will react on gut and based on what they see in the 90 minutes, but the board is there to be more analytical and not react emotionally. They have all the information to go on, while we don't. However, if there are signs of things cracking behind the scenes, you'd hope the people in charge would adjust their plans accordingly. I have every faith that they would.

For me, I'd use the November international break as a checkpoint, not the point where I'd make a final judgement. Unless things completely collapse and the arse falls out of our season altogether I'd be looking towards Christmas. By then we'll have played around half a league season and he will have had a proper block of normal training weeks rather than the European schedule, travel and recovery that dominated the early part of the season. More importantly, we'll have played a good number of teams twice. That's when I think you can properly judge if the coaching is taking hold. If a team exposed a weakness first time around, have we adapted when we play them again? Are the pressing triggers, spacing, rotations and defensive structure becoming more automatic? Are the same mistakes disappearing? Is he changing things that clearly aren't working? Thirteen games can tell you there are problems. I'm not convinced it's enough to tell you whether a new playing model is going to work. Nineteen or twenty games is a much more realistic sample I'd think. The other thing is that the board and management team will have a far better idea of what's actually going on than we ever will. We see the 90 minutes. They see the training every week, the physical and performance data, how quickly players are understanding what they're being asked to do, how the manager communicates, whether players are responding to him, whether the dressing room is still with him and whether the staff themselves believe the process is moving in the right direction. They'll also be speaking directly to AJ, the coaching staff and senior players. If things look poor on a Saturday but the internal evidence says the team is progressing and the players remain fully bought in, that's an important factor. At the same time, if the results are poor and training is poor, confidence has gone and the dressing room is starting to turn, they'll know that long before we do. That's why I don't think we should try to set some arbitrary "lose X games and sack him" threshold based purely on what we see from the stands. By Christmas, though, the external evidence should also be much clearer. If we're still seeing the same structural problems, poor performances, little tactical development and poor results after half a season, then the transition argument becomes much harder to sustain. Obviously there has to be an emergency brake taken into account as well. If we lose another five or six on the bounce and become detached at the bottom, you don't wait for Christmas for the sake of it. But if we're competitive and picking up enough points to stay out of serious trouble, Christmas is about the point where I'd expect both the internal evidence the board sees and the performances we see to be pointing fairly clearly in one direction or the other. Just my take on it.

Which is why they're likely enjoying watching the Motherwell fanbase lose their shit over our current plight less than ten games into the season. It provides an opportunity for them to point and say "Ah, you were lucky last year! JBA is obviously a great manager, and you lot just lucked out in getting him. We were correct though, and the answer is to end this silly 'experiment' with the foreigner who has never played the game and get back to reality!"

Nope, I’m not twisting it. You said I seemed “overly interested in policing” your opinions because I wrote a detailed response challenging your original post. That is exactly what I’m disputing. A long response to a strongly worded argument is not “policing” it. It’s just disagreeing with it in detail. You’re free to say Alfred is out of his depth. I’m free to take the reasoning you used to get there and pull it apart. Calling that “policing” is just a distraction from the actual argument.

Oh, it wasn't a direct response to anything you said! Your initial comments sparked a few thoughts, and I just rolled with it from there 😂

I'm not policing how you express anything. You made a statement, I challenged the reasoning behind it, and now you're reframing that challenge as an issue with how you're "allowed" to express yourself. It isn't. You're entitled to say he's out of his depth. I'm equally entitled to say the evidence you've used doesn't support that conclusion yet. That's debate, not policing.

I'm not confusing anything. Your latest reply is a lot more sensible than the original post I quoted. Saying you're concerned by the performances is absolutely fair. If you'd said that to begin with, I wouldn't have replied. But saying there's "absolutely no" progress, that he's "incapable" or "too stubborn", "out of his depth", and that failure is becoming "inevitable" is entirely different, as you know. My point is simply that the evidence doesn't justify that level of certainty yet, especially when we've recently seen with JBA how misleading an eight-game snapshot can be.

You're completely missing the point. Of course football analysis is subjective. The issue is whether opinion is being presented as certainty. JBA having no league wins in his first five games is a fact. Eight points after eight games is a fact. AJ also having eight points after eight is a fact. Playing 11 competitive games in 37 days is a fact. Saying AJ is "incapable", "too stubborn", "out of his depth" and that the outcome is becoming "inevitable" isn't fact. That's your interpretation. Same with saying JBA had a clear identity "from day one". That's much easier to say now because we know how his season developed. Go back and look. The usual suspects certainly were not saying that at the time. My point was never that my interpretation is objective fact. It's that you're drawing conclusions from a very small sample and presenting them as though they're obvious. They're not. At all.

I think there's a ton of hindsight being presented as objective analysis in this post. The first problem is this idea that under JBA there was a "clear identity from day one", whereas under Johansson we're apparently seeing "absolutely none". Unless my memory isn't what it used to be, Askou's first competitive game was a 2-2 draw with Clyde. We then needed a stoppage-time winner to beat Peterhead at Fir Park. His first FIVE league games were all draws, and we didn't win a league match until the sixth attempt against Aberdeen. After eight league games, Askou had eight points. Johansson currently has eight points after eight league games. Nobody remembers Askou's start that way now because we know what happened afterwards. And during those results and performances, the usual characters were moaning like fuck early doors. I remember talk about us being "basically all fur coat and no knickers, and we’ve so far been unable to show that we can win games" and even the now incredible patter of "It’s still early(ish) days but so far JBA hasn’t shown any evidence of good game management so far." That's why the points comparison matters. It isn't being used to say Johansson will therefore be as successful as Askou. It's illustrating how ridiculously early it is to declare that one manager was clearly building something while another is obviously heading nowhere. And saying there have been "absolutely no signs" of anything under Johansson is just simply isn't true. We've already won away at Hibs, gone through HB 5-0 on aggregate in Europe, eliminated HJK 3-1, produced an excellent 2-0 home performance against them, beaten Dundee United 3-0 and competed very well with a good Freiburg side until a red card and penalty changed that game. We were also unbeaten through our first four league matches. There's absolutely an argument that things have regressed since then. That's completely fair. What you can't reasonably argue is that there has never been any evidence of a functioning team or any indication of what Johansson is trying to build. We've literally already seen it. The other claim I don't understand is that we've become "increasingly clueless the longer Alfred's had the players on the training pitch". At one stage we had played 11 competitive games in 37 days, including European travel. That's recovery sessions, preparation sessions, matches, flights, injuries, rotation and trying to integrate new players. It isn't six uninterrupted weeks at Dalziel Park drilling tactical patterns. Calendar time and coaching time aren't even close to being the same thing. Throw in the ridiculous international break that we just had and you compound the problem even further. We had key players on international duty, and other players were away visiting family and on holiday. That matters when you're asking a manager to change how a team plays. People talk about "identity" as though a manager installs a formation on a tactics board and suddenly eleven players simply just understand it. A possession structure, pressing system or set of attacking rotations involves spacing, body orientation, triggers, passing angles, rest defence, movement off the ball and players reacting automatically to what ten teammates and eleven opponents are doing. Those behaviours take repetition. And sometimes a team actually looks WORSE for periods while learning them because players are consciously thinking about movements that eventually need to become automatic. That obviously can't be used as an excuse indefinitely. If we're still seeing the same structural failures months down the line, then absolutely question the coaching. But eight league games or so is a stupidly small sample from which to conclude that a manager is "incapable" or "too stubborn". If something isn't working, it doesn't follow that the manager either cannot see it or stubbornly refuses to change it. He might believe changing it creates a bigger weakness elsewhere. He might think the execution is wrong rather than the structure. He might be trying to establish rehearsed patterns rather than changing the system every time it produces a poor performance. He might have limitations in the squad. Or, he might simply be wrong. All of those possibilities are there and exist. That's the complexity of management that most of the time gets completely ignored when analysis becomes "I can see this isn't working, therefore the manager can't". as I said in the Celtic thread, identifying a symptom isn't the same as diagnosing its cause. If Hodge is being overrun, is Hodge the problem? Or is the press in front of him being bypassed? Is the defensive line too deep? Is the full-back pinned? Has the opposition created an overload? Are the distances between units wrong? Change Hodge, and you might solve absolutely nothing. Or it might solve everything. That's not saying fans can't criticise. We absolutely can. But there is a huge difference between observing that something isn't working and knowing why it isn't working. There's a reason why we're not in the job, and he is. As I've mentioned elsewhere too, the Rosenborg criticism of Johansson is relevant here to a point. One of the genuine questions I had about him when I saw we'd hired him was about his adaptability. I'm not a fan of Norwegian football by any stretch, but from what I could see, his first Rosenborg team improved enormously, finished fourth after they'd been ninth the previous year and ended 2024 with 10 wins in their last 13 league games. The concern is that when that team later stopped functioning, he struggled to construct the next version of it. That's a legit criticism and something I'd watch closely at Motherwell. But that's very different from deciding after eight league games that he's "out of his depth". And then we get to the strangest part of the post: "A defeat to Killie... will only accelerate what is increasingly starting to feel inevitable." Inevitable? After eight league games? That's not analysis. That's you deciding where the story ends and then interpreting everything that happens through that conclusion. If we'd applied that standard to Askou after eight games, we'd have been looking at a manager with exactly eight league points, one league victory and consecutive defeats to Celtic and Falkirk and asking where this supposed progress was leading us. Fortunately we didn't know the ending at the time. In fact, after skimming the matchday threads from that early period I'm sure that absolutely not one of us would have guessed how it would end in reality. We do now, which makes his early period look much more obviously progressive when looking back than it probably felt while we were actually living through it. AJ might fail. He might prove unable to adapt. The current four-game losing run is concerning, and performances need to improve. No one is debating that. But there is a massive difference between saying that and constructing a narrative where Askou arrived with a fully functioning identity from day one, Alfred has shown absolutely nothing, more training has somehow made us progressively worse, he appears incapable of recognising obvious problems, and his departure is already becoming "inevitable". That's interpretation presented as fact. And less than ten league games into a fairly sizeable change in playing philosophy where AJ is following one of the best managers we've had in decades, I'd rather judge whether the problems are still there after he's actually had a meaningful amount of time to coach them than pretend we already know how the story ends.

I agree 100% that fans can criticise a manager without claiming they know better than him. Sunday was poor, and there were obvious things that didn't work. Where I'd maybe look at things differently, though, is assuming that because the problem looked obvious, the solution was obvious too. Take intensity, which I've heard a lot of people talking about. That isn't just about players running harder. The truth is, a press only works if the first player goes at the right moment, the next player blocks the correct passing lane, the midfield squeezes up, and the defensive line follows. One player being half a second late can make the whole thing look passive, which happens a lot at our level of the game. Same goes with movement and rotations. They may have worked on specific patterns all week, but if Celtic changed their press, blocked the first pass or forced players to receive facing their own goal, those rotations can disappear in a hurry. That doesn't mean the initial plan was good, by the way, but "I didn't see it" doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't drilled during training sessions and worked on. The midfield is similar. For example, if Hodge looks exposed, the problem might be Hodge. But it might also be the forwards not stopping Celtic playing through the first line, the defence dropping too deep, a full-back being pinned, or Celtic creating an overload elsewhere or something like that. What looks like an individual problem can actually be structural. That's why I'm not really keen on saying stuff like "the midfield was being overrun, so change the midfield" as though that automatically fixes the issue. The same applies to substitutions. Taking Vogt off at half-time might have helped, but AJ also has to consider whether the problem is actually Vogt or the structure around him, what the player replacing him changes tactically, what substitutions he may need later, and even the effect of publicly hooking a player after 45 minutes when he's trying to rebuild his confidence. Making a move like that also tells the wider squad a lot about you and the trust you have in them. None of that means AJ got it right on the day. Managers make bad selections and bad tactical decisions all the time. There's a reason the ones who make less mistakes and bad decisions get paid an absolute fortune. But there's a big difference between identifying a symptom and correctly diagnosing the cause, I think. I'm far from an expert, but for me that's really what professional coaching is. Working out why something isn't functioning, deciding which part of an interconnected system to change, and anticipating what the opposition will do in response. I'm also not particularly bothered by him saying afterwards that he thought the starting lineup was correct. Managers aren't giving us a full internal debrief in press conferences. He's still managing the dressing room and isn't likely to come out and effectively say certain players shouldn't have been selected. You start doing that and things can turn really quickly. If anything, he should have given the interviews he did, then went back to the dressing room and made it clear internally that some players need to live up to the faith and responsibility he's showing in them. But that needs to be done behind closed doors, not through the BBC or on YouTube. Where I will start to be more critical is if the same problems keep happening. If we're sitting here in December and the midfield is repeatedly overrun in the same way, the press repeatedly lacks coordination, the rotations continually fail, or players are consistently used in roles that don't suit them, then it becomes a coaching issue rather than one bad afternoon. And that's the bit I'm personally interested in watching closely with Johansson, because adaptability was one of the legitimate criticisms of how things eventually unravelled at Rosenborg. So, fans can absolutely question Sunday's decisions. I just don't think "we could all see what was wrong" automatically means the corrective decision was as straightforward as it looked from the stand. Seeing the symptom is often easy. Correctly identifying the cause is the hard part.

Which is probably why football clubs don't just advertise the manager position in the local press. If it was as easy as us fans think, clubs would just pay a punter 40k a year to do the job.

Imagine what the level of support for the team would be like if some had their way and the entire end of the east stand was booted out? There would only be moans, groans and booing left. That section is virtually the only one that backs the players consistently. There's a reason the players and staff tend to end up there when the season ends and we're celebrating anything. I don't see the players congregating at the O'Donnell, that's for sure!

More importantly, if we bin him any time soon, how easy will it be to find a replacement of JBA's quality? One thing you notice about clubs that have a quick trigger finger when it comes to managers is that it becomes progressively more difficult to convince high-quality candidates to fill the role. Let's say we lose to Killie and the board send him packing, as I've seen a few on here saying could happen (it obviously won't, but let's play along for now). What does the board say to potential new managers when they rightfully ask, "You brought the last guy in and gave him ten games to get up to speed before binning him. He came to Scotland from Europe, uprooted his life and that of his family, tried to implement a way of playing, and he got zero time to really do that. Why would I risk my reputation on that kind of approach and job?" There's a reason why we are now attracting players like Jardell Kanga, Lukas Fadinger, and Elijah Just instead of Conor Wilkinson, Josh Morris & Rolando Aarons. And it's not because they're coming here with the expectations of playing under a manager who played the game for lower-league English teams, or who set up to be "formidable" and hard to beat. It's because of our entire approach, which includes being known as a club that gives managers the time required to show they can either do the job, or they can't. I can't recall the last manager we sacked who could reasonably have said they didn't get time. Our track record there is good. Alfred Johansson might not be the guy for the job. Or he might be. But ten games in is absolutely too early to make that decision. He'll get until after Christmas for sure, then we'll take a look. For me, I'm looking for us to be playing some decent football and in the discussion for top six around that time. If not, then we'll need to look and see what's going on.

Virtually every season, you mention relegation as a certainty. And yet here we are, in our 42nd season in the top flight.

This is the same discussion fans had before we brought in Wimmer. Under Kettlewell, Alexander, and Robinson, we were usually pretty "effective and formidable." For the most part, though, the football was the typical turgid crap we see in Scotland at our level. A team full of honest laddies and guys who have no socks at the end of a game due to them having been "run off." And our average crowd reflected that. A normal season for us is challenging for top six, and possibly pushing further if everything lands correctly. A cup run is a bonus that depends on luck and other factors. Would we rather finish, on average, 5th-9th while playing football that's exciting, with players who are easy on the eye and who are attracting attention from bigger clubs, or be "effective and formidable" as we have been many times in the pre-Wimmer era? I'll take what we have right now all day long. And the reason isn't just because we had a good season last year. It's because it affects everything at the club. Will we see these exciting players wanting to join the club if we're managed by a Clarke, Robinson or Kettlewell type? I doubt it. We'll be back to throwing lower English league freebies and loans against the wall and hoping something sticks. We're seemingly on course to have an absolutely average season this year. Even the posts on the forum indicate that. We're seeing the usual suspects looking for the manager to get bumped less than 10 games in, proclaiming impending doom and relegation, which will inevitably end up with us settling in around 8th or 9th after Christmas and either pushing for top six or losing steam and finishing 8th or 9th. That's all par for the course when we have an average season.

Probably want to give the guy more than 10 games. But that's just me. Going by your thinking we should expect to see McGlynn sent packing any day now.

I'd probably believe the whole outdated "he's never played the game, so he doesn't have a clue" angle if our team was made up of "good honest laddies" who "run their socks off", but it isn't. It's made up of players who have been, for the most part, brought in because they understand the modern, progressive style of football we're looking to implement. They should be familiar with the type of coaching they're getting, and the modern analytical approach. And that includes a modern coach whose resume isn't built on playing for Luton Town, Bristol City, or any of the middling to lower-level clubs we have up here. What we're going through is absolutely a process. We've lost a fair amount of our best players in the summer. We've had to replace them with new players, and unlike last year, when everything clicked and our purchases paid off big time mostly, we're not seeing as easy a transition this time around. It was always bound to happen, in my opinion. What we did last season is basically unsustainable for a club our size, but some fans are insisting on comparing the current team and manager to one of the best teams and managers we've probably ever seen at the club in modern times. Remember back when Kettlewell was manager? And fans were saying that they simply expected a team on the park who can at least try to play some attacking football, give us something to be excited about, and look to challenge for top six? That's what we have. We were taken apart today by a team that has the resources and ability to bring players like Jota off the bench. Celtic were on their game, and could easily have taken four or five off us. If they play like that against the teams around us, they'll likely hand out a fair few hammerings. But at least we somewhat gave it a shot. I remember watching us under previous managers just sit back and hope to grab something. Today we at least had some flashes of football to watch, and a team that tried to do something. It didn't work out, but that's how it goes. In short, the football isn't anywhere near as eye-bleedingly bad as it has been, and we're still one of the better sides to watch in the league. I'm interested in seeing how the new players eventually settle in, see who makes the cut, see who really grasps the opportunity to replicate what others have done before them and win a big move, and see who will become a quiz question in 10 years time. At least watching Motherwell is enjoyable again. I'm liking how we're playing. Add in some decent results and we're all good.

I'd give Bain a shot.

You mean appointment? He's not an experiment 😂

This is what I've said:

So when I say "anyone actively breaking the law should be dealt with by the authorities, and the club should, whenever possible, ban and revoke season tickets" you agree? I don't understand the conversation we seem to be having? So if someone, for whatever reason, decides to run onto the pitch, or otherwise violates the stadium code of conduct, and they happen to have a ticket for the section you sit in, the same rule should apply?

Obviously I mean that any infringement of the law is dealt with by the law in the country where the offence took place. Motherwell is a Scottish club. So I mentioned Scottish law. If a Motherwell fan assaulted someone while following our club in Europe, I obviously wouldn't expect the Scottish authorities to deal with it. The same applies here. Scotland explicitly criminalises football-match possession of pyro. From what I can see, Germany regulates pyro mainly through general explosives law and stadium/football regulations. We could potentially identify the culprits and deal with them at club level, as I mentioned previously.

No one is saying that, though, especially not me. I said if anyone is seen to be breaking the law (and under the Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles Scotland Act 2022, it is an offence to possess pyrotechnic articles at designated sporting events) then they should be dealt with accordingly by the authorities, as well as "alongside their season ticket being revoked and them personally being banned."

There's no middle ground then? It's either come in and read the riot act and issue threats, or do nothing? Here's a question. You say that areas of the stadium should be closed if people don't toe the line. Cool. What about season ticket holders in that area who aren't guilty of anything? Are you forcing them to move seats? Where are you putting them? Or are you telling someone who happens to sit in that section of the ground that they're out on their ear because someone lit a flare? Season ticket paid for, but no longer valid? That's a nice little court case waiting to happen. Unless you have some answer to the above that would legally cover the arse of the club, then it's unworkable. The situation can easily be remedied. You don't aim any messaging or threats at any "groups", you simply say that anyone who is identified as breaking the law will have their details handed to the police. Simple as that. From there, it will be the decision of the country's legal framework to decide what happens, alongside their season ticket being revoked and them personally being banned.