Dundee v Motherwell 13/09/2025

[wellsince75]

I’m very pro our style of football and again thought we were excellent in the first half .

our midfield is so much stronger than I can remember in the majority of the 45+ years of following us .

the final third for me is an issue and I’m not just saying AP who looks devoid of confidence . 
 

we have a lots of players who’s final ball is pretty dreadful and that’s an issue. Several flatter to decisive a little, they have pace and strength but lack the same quality of the midfield . 
 

perhaps it will all come together but the majority of our forwards I don’t think offer that much .  
 

just to be clear I’m not slagging off any players here nor have any doom and gloom - a little frustrated yes and would like to see a touch better quality in the final 3rd

[FirParkCornerExile]

Just back from the game and I'm seriously pissed off and I'm annoyed at myself for being pissed off because we are a good watch and but for another dreadful defensive laps wed have won. That's 5 games played and we've been the better team in every game. During the GA and SK era Id have bitten your hand off for what I'm watching now ....but ....there's always a but...the final third is woeful AP just doesn't cut it for me, Said does a ton of work but fuck me dithers about in possession and quite often loses it in great positions. If Manwanhise is the player we think he is he should be burying that one on one, no composure piss poor effort straight at the keeper. Defensively we still gift goals that would embarrass a pub team.

That was a hard take , at half time we were an absolute joy but by full time we gifted an utterly woeful Dundee a point and could have lost it.

So so frustrating.

 

[Kmcalpin]

Looking back with my Captain Hindsight hat on, we recruited well in midfield and that seems like a well thought out and planned process. However our recruitment of strikers seems late and somewhat haphazard. Defence was largely ignored. Maybe we are now paying the price for that approach. 

[Spit_It_Out]

Yeah i think thats the general feeling we are all frustrated but that shall be moving to the getting pissed off pretty sharply if we dont come up with the answer why.We would be sitting near the top of the table right now if it wasnt for this lack of holding it together only so much its a new manager and alot of new players before its case of why cant they sort out the same mistakes?

Putting faith in AP sadly wont give us what we need  to the point i be looking at free agents in the hope we can find a gem cause AP isnt the answer i wanted it to work i really did but dont think it will.

 

[joewarkfanclub]

Bit of a rinse and repeat today.

Very good first half. Dundee barely laid a glove on us and we thoroughly deserved to be in front at the break.

But much like previous weeks we are not transmitting our dominance of the ball into clear cut chances and goals.

We get into very good positions and fail to play the killer pass or get a shot away. No one player is to blame, its a a collective failing.

I thought we lost a bit of impetus after they scored, what was a really soft goal from a cross ball, and although we recovered it a bit with the substitutions, it was the same mistakes with different personnel.

We need to find a way to fix this, as it is fast becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.

Thankfully Aberdeen seem to be struggling and there has to be a winner next week, but you wouldnt be surprised if it went to penalties......

[wellgirl]

Is Sparrow still injured. Club said he would miss the next two games at end of August? I think he's an important player for us when he's on his game. Hopefully he'll be back next week 

[mio]

Jesus we have some amount of bed sh1tters in our fan base.

We are 5 games into a season with a new manager, playing the best football Ive seen Motherwell play in 50yrs. We are sitting 6th but I think everyone knows with a little bit of fortune we would be sitting 3rd. I think folk should take a chill pill and calm down. Our manager also talks sense and it’s never word soup and I have every faith we’ll be in a Hampden semi final by this time next week.

[texanwellfan]

3 minutes ago, mio said:

Jesus we have some amount of bed sh1tters in our fan base.

We are 5 games into a season with a new manager, playing the best football Ive seen Motherwell play in 50yrs. We are sitting 6th but I think everyone knows with a little bit of fortune we would be sitting 3rd. I think folk should take a chill pill and calm down. Our manager also talks sense and it’s never word soup and I have every faith we’ll be in a Hampden semi final by this time next week.

So you’ve been drinking after the game!  
😂 just kidding. 
 

I hope your right!!

[mio]

Just now, texanwellfan said:

So you’ve been drinking after the game!  
😂 just kidding. 
 

I hope your right!!

Just been drinking in some of these mental comments 🤣

things are fine, I don’t get the whole worked up-ness about playing entertaining football. Well come good.

[wellgirl]

8 minutes ago, mio said:

Jesus we have some amount of bed sh1tters in our fan base.

We are 5 games into a season with a new manager, playing the best football Ive seen Motherwell play in 50yrs. We are sitting 6th but I think everyone knows with a little bit of fortune we would be sitting 3rd. I think folk should take a chill pill and calm down. Our manager also talks sense and it’s never word soup and I have every faith we’ll be in a Hampden semi final by this time next week.

We could have been top of the league tbh. All 5 games were winnable 

[robsterwood]

If we draw every game of the season. Is it enough to stay up.

[wellgirl]

4 minutes ago, robsterwood said:

If we draw every game of the season. Is it enough to stay up.

We won't draw every game of the season. There's a January transfer window for a start and players that will be returning from injury 

[robsterwood]

9 minutes ago, wellgirl said:

We won't draw every game of the season. There's a January transfer window for a start and players that will be returning from injury 

Agree. We are unbeaten though. I like your positivity. I actually think we could beat Celtic as they pretty toothless up front. Or draw. 

[MFCL84]

4 hours ago, Spiderpig said:

We've also lost 7 goals in 5 games, which is not good, all the great play we’ve had and yet we are dropping valuable points every week.

Quite true, but the context of my comment was in response to a post stating that we have no end product. That just isn't correct. The end product may not be as good as it should be, but it isn't terrible. It is the loss of 7 (a number of which have been very avoidable) that you point out that is causing the issue.

[wellgirl]

3 minutes ago, robsterwood said:

Agree. We are unbeaten though. I like your positivity. I actually think we could beat Celtic as they pretty toothless up front. Or draw. 

I think we could draw too 

[wellgirl]

10 minutes ago, MFCL84 said:

Quite true, but the context of my comment was in response to a post stating that we have no end product. That just isn't correct. The end product may not be as good as it should be, but it isn't terrible. It is the loss of 7 (a number of which have been very avoidable) that you point out that is causing the issue.

You're right. If we had no end product we wouldn't be scoring at all 

[wellsince75]

The goals for or against statistically are reasonable . We normally have a negative goals against . 

The issue and what feels like a kick in the gut is we've been the better team in all games and if things were 'fair' we'd be top of the league right now.  

Th difference our final ball into the box/the pass/the composure up front. Being a little more direct in the final third and finding the pass, cross etc would make such a difference.  

Overall though we're easy on the eye and although frustrating pretty pleased with progress. 

[wellfan]

The reality is we’re generally playing very well, but struggling in the final third because we don’t have a proper number 9 to make the system truly effective and add more threat and goals. JBA isn’t going to change his system, so I expect more of the same until January when we (hopefully) sign someone.

For those saying “we’ll come good” – we already are good in general play. And for those saying the goals will come for Stama if he just gets more time – he’s already had plenty of time and chances.

The only real improvement we can make with the current squad is cutting out the defensive lapses in concentration.

That’s the bigger picture for me: more of the same until we bring in a number 9 who can actually deliver.

[Kmcalpin]

1 hour ago, wellfan said:

The reality is we’re generally playing very well, but struggling in the final third because we don’t have a proper number 9 to make the system truly effective and add more threat and goals. JBA isn’t going to change his system, so I expect more of the same until January when we (hopefully) sign someone.

For those saying “we’ll come good” – we already are good in general play. And for those saying the goals will come for Stama if he just gets more time – he’s already had plenty of time and chances.

The only real improvement we can make with the current squad is cutting out the defensive lapses in concentration.

That’s the bigger picture for me: more of the same until we bring in a number 9 who can actually deliver.

As usual, I agree with most of what you say. However we also have Hendry and Osong. I know almost nothing about Hendry but his record suggests he's not a prolific scorer.  Osong  - too early to assess him, although someone did suggest he's more of a facilitator or "foil" in archaic language. I agree 100% about Stama. Michael Wimmer opined before he left that we need to boost our firepower up front and he & Nick Daws, presumably, were working on that element of recruitment. However that seems to have been derailed after his departure and the business we did during the window seemed somewhat disjointed and haphazard. 

As for the defence, perhaps due to circumstances it was neglected somewhat during the window. We had bad luck with McGhee's injuries and Longelo, whilst a good signing, looks to have defensive frailties. I did like Gordon when he first joined us but now I'm not so sure.  Can we work on the defence to give it more solidity?  Time will tell, but again I'm not 100% convinced.  Either way, I can see us having a very busy January woindow.    

[SteelmaninOZ]

 

 

[wellsince75]

2 hours ago, wellfan said:

The reality is we’re generally playing very well, but struggling in the final third because we don’t have a proper number 9 to make the system truly effective and add more threat and goals. JBA isn’t going to change his system, so I expect more of the same until January when we (hopefully) sign someone.

For those saying “we’ll come good” – we already are good in general play. And for those saying the goals will come for Stama if he just gets more time – he’s already had plenty of time and chances.

The only real improvement we can make with the current squad is cutting out the defensive lapses in concentration.

That’s the bigger picture for me: more of the same until we bring in a number 9 who can actually deliver.

For me Stamo is devoid of confidence albeit I equally believe he'd scored if we played balls into the 6 yard box.  For sure if we had a Cobra Coyne we'd have banged in a few more goals. 

Where I'm not in complete agreement is it's a number 9 issue.  Our balls into the box have been pretty poor and some of the final passes into the box have been poor.  Longelo is one of our most dangerous players where as I'd like to see better quality from likes of Said/Osong/and once up to speed Charles Cook.  All forwards need to be more concise and I'd rather have AP at the end of it missing loads of obvious chances. 

[joewarkfanclub]

I know some folk have already called time on Stama, and thats fine. These things are a matter of opinion. But we have a striker who has scored 7 goals in 10 games. I dont think its the scoring goals thing we really have a problem with. 

Delivery into the box is just as much of a problem. Longelo and RCC are still getting to know each other, so not gonna be too critical of them, but there were several times they got in the way of one another yesterday by making the same runs or not playing the right pass. That will come.

Similarly Said looks amazing until he gets to box and wont shoot or delays his pass. Hopepfully that will also come.

If we get all those things going on and Stama gets more opportunities to add to the GF column and Maswanhise maintains his form we will be in a good place.

My main concern right now is injuries.

Welsh, Koutroumbis & Stama all went off in pain yesterday, with some of the others already out, we could be seriously short next week despsite having a pretty big squad.

[wellfan]

2 hours ago, wellsince75 said:

Our balls into the box have been pretty poor and some of the final passes into the box have been poor.  

I’m not disagreeing with that assessment, but if our number 9 got himself into better positions in the box, the others would have more options to pick out. Good centre forwards create options, whereas Stama always seems to be on his heels. Someone else called him the nearly man, and that feels pretty accurate. If we’re going to persist with him up front, and that’s if he hasn’t injured himself trying to take out the goalpost yesterday, we’ll probably need to adjust how we play in the final third and use him more as a creator for others rather than the finisher.

[wellfan]

1 hour ago, joewarkfanclub said:

I know some folk have already called time on Stama, and thats fine. These things are a matter of opinion. But we have a striker who has scored 7 goals in 10 games. I dont think its the scoring goals thing we really have a problem with. 

Delivery into the box is just as much of a problem. Longelo and RCC are still getting to know each other, so not gonna be too critical of them, but there were several times they got in the way of one another yesterday by making the same runs or not playing the right pass. That will come.

Similarly Said looks amazing until he gets to box and wont shoot or delays his pass. Hopepfully that will also come.

If we get all those things going on and Stama gets more opportunities to add to the GF column and Maswanhise maintains his form we will be in a good place.

My main concern right now is injuries.

Welsh, Koutroumbis & Stama all went off in pain yesterday, with some of the others already out, we could be seriously short next week despsite having a pretty big squad.

I hear what you’re saying and I share the concerns about injuries, but honestly, how many more chances does he need before he stops fluffing his lines or getting caught on his heels? With a clinical centre forward and sharper decision making across the team, several of those draws would already be wins. I’m still positive about JBA and the team in general, but I guess I just have to accept we’re stuck with a busted flush for another season at least.

[texanwellfan]

We had two great chances to score a second. JT should have buried his chance and when Stama crashed into the post, all he had to do was get a touch on the ball but he completely missed the ball about 2 yards from goal. 
having said that, I still can’t believe Murray missed his chance at the other end late on to beat us.