I agree with the sentiments of your post but would take issue with the above part of it. There is hardly a manager operating at any club that doesn't divide opinion among the fanbase, and to pretend McGhee is exceptional does him a disservice.
Go on any fans' website of any club and you will see a fairly sizable minority abusing their manager and the fan base "divided". Now wouldn't it be nice if Motherwell (or Brighton!) were different and the fans there gave their managers time to get through troughs in form, or at least expressed their criticism of the manager in terms that are not either viciously or childishly personal, as is the case of some contributors to this thread.
But why should Motherwell stand apart from rather malign developments in fan culture in recent times? It would be a unique and unusual thing if it did so.
There of course has always been moaners as long as football has been played, but generally their influence has always been limited by the limited media at their disposal, a stupid chant or comment in a stand lasts a few seconds in people's memories before disappearing into the ether.
The internet has changed all that, now abusive comments can live on as permanent monuments to managers and messageboards can be cluttered up with this dross. Add in the phenomenon of the internet attention-seeker who makes comments purely to get a reaction, and the entire culture of fan-manager relationships has changed forever.
The outcome will be permanent division among fans, shorter and shorter management terms, managers hounded after just a few bad results and, for me, a degraded experience of being part of a collective movement that HAS to be united or it is nothing.
As far as McGhee is concerned, he acheived wonders last season. And this season by November we were third or fourth in the table.
Now since then, we've lost games to a handful of bottom 6 clubs that we haven't been used to losing to for about 18 months. That represents a setback but hardly a disaster. If you take the Falkirk result as the beginning of the trough, it still only represents just over a month in the life of this football club. Compared to the near 18 months that McGhee has been working away to make Motherwell a competitive force in this league.
So is this the extent of fan patience for some Motherwell fans - over a year of progress versus about 6 weeks of setbacks. Whether you call this disloyal or not, that's a loaded word, but certainly we would be going through 2 or 3 managers a season if these short-sighted fans ever had their way.
I'd love to say they won't have their way - but all evidence suggests that the influence and noise levels of the impatient and shortsighted fan is growing everywhere in football.
