The Alfred Johansson Thread

[grizzlyg]

2 minutes ago, mio said:

Good interview today with Alfred, interesting stuff about young player development 

Yup just listened to it (shhhhhh don't tell my boss).

Alfred's interviews are great and it was very interesting what he said about Booth,  feels he will benefit more staying with us and learning.  Whyte a different scenario are where I have no doubt he will be disappointed,  I feel a season in the competitive championship will really benefit him, plus he's only 19

[weeyin]

Seems like an ever smarter move recruiting Alfred when you hear about his knowledge and experience with developing youngsters.

Even if the the SFA don't listen to him, I'm sure out Board will.

[Happy Dosser]

3 hours ago, weeyin said:

Seems like an ever smarter move recruiting Alfred when you hear about his knowledge and experience with developing youngsters.

Even if the the SFA don't listen to him, I'm sure out Board will.

I certainly hope so. I still marvel at his command of English as a second language: puts some of the churnalists to shame.

[grizzlyg]

14 minutes ago, Happy Dosser said:

I certainly hope so. I still marvel at his command of English as a second language: puts some of the churnalists to shame.

Could teach tam Cowan a few things 🤣🤣

[Happy Dosser]

39 minutes ago, grizzlyg said:

Could teach tam Cowan a few things 🤣🤣

Even I could teach him a few things, me old haricot!

[MJC]

On 6/19/2026 at 1:17 PM, Ronenborg said:

As a Rosenborg supporter, I find it very difficult to understand why Motherwell have chosen to appoint Alfred Johansson.

From our perspective, his time at Rosenborg was one of the most disappointing coaching periods we have seen in decades. Many supporters would argue that he was our worst coach in around 50 years, not only because of the results, but because of the direction the team appeared to be heading under him. Several negative records were set during his spell, and the football often lacked identity, confidence and progression.

He can speak very well for himself, and he seems comfortable with presentations, analysis and spreadsheets. But football management is not only about theory. It is also about people, leadership, motivation and understanding the human side of a squad. That was where many of us felt he struggled badly.

From the outside, he may come across as modern, intelligent and structured.

It’s early days yet, but I think there are some signs of this already from AJ. Particularly about the football lacking confidence and identity and him not showing leadership.

Alarm bells are ringing for me.

[weeyin]

2 minutes ago, MJC said:

It’s early days yet, but 

but you're going to make bold statements about how poor you think him and the rest of the team are and predict a terrible season?

[MJC]

7 minutes ago, weeyin said:

but you're going to make bold statements about how poor you think him and the rest of the team are and predict a terrible season?

I’m voicing my concerns, yes.

[wellfan]

He deserves a fair crack of the whip, so it’s far too early to be making any resounding judgements on him. That said, it’s his team now, and I still think it’s fair to say a few alarm bells have started ringing for me and others. It’s now down to him to silence those concerns by getting a more coherent and improved performance out of the team on Saturday.

[grizzlyg]

Anyone reading my posts will know my views here.  I am very much in favour of AJ and after 6 league games ( unbeaten in first 4), it is way too early to be judging him. I will break down my points.

1) whoever replaced Jens was going to be judged more harshly as expectation levels increased 10 fold

2) huge personal choice for him as he had an 8 month pregnant wife also to look after as well as moving to a new country.

3) he lost 5 regular and key players last season and has brought in 11 new players plus we had an injury list of 10 players

4) we faced helsinki and freiburg in europe and the performances I felt were great, especially helsinki at home.

5) for those criticising his stenhousemuir line-up,  he made a call and it didnt work.   Lets not forget that Jens got hammered in league cup semi and for dons away in cup also put out a weakened side when we weren't even dealing with european ties.

6) hopefully he is learning from mistakes and we start getting a settled side. I think squad is actually strong and competition for places is healthy.   Of our new signings I have been impressed mainly and also remember a few coming from overseas and adapting to a new league.

We shouldn't be happy about last night but jeez lets not forget the style of fitba Robinson.....Alexander and Kettlewell inflicted on us.

Give the lad a chance

[joewarkfanclub]

3 hours ago, wellfan said:

He deserves a fair crack of the whip, so it’s far too early to be making any resounding judgements on him. That said, it’s his team now, and I still think it’s fair to say a few alarm bells have started ringing for me and others. It’s now down to him to silence those concerns by getting a more coherent and improved performance out of the team on Saturday.

This is fair comment.

Jens IS a hard act to follow. But Alfred has been backed heavily in the transfer market.

The early signs were all very good, so Im not going to jump on any negative bandwagons.

However, despite still "playing nice stuff at times" we havent looked anywhere near as compact or in control of games as we did under Jens.

Thats a tough thing to figure out and fix without coaching time on the pitch and whilst assembling a squad. But the window is now closed and we now go into period after the Dundee game where that excuse will no longer be valid.

I would expect to see some significant improvements in the next month or so.

We will have a better idea by the end of October as to the actual quality of our squad and the coaching ability of our manager.

[MJC]

He will get a chance and indeed I don’t see anyone saying that he shouldn’t. He is a very young coach and came into a tough job with big shoes to fill and had to contend with the heart of last seasons team being ripped away from under his feet.

But there are worrying signs at this early stage, that’s all anyone is saying and from my own post on this thread earlier on today I was simply highlighting that there are some signs of what the Rosenborg supporter posted about him a few months back. It might well come good for him and us though and we all hope it does.

[star sail]

These are dangerous times to be a football manager.

David Gray has just been sacked and MJC and wellfan have bumped the manager thread back to the top of the discussion board. 

So far this season these are the managers whose fans have been sticking the boot in, many calling for sacking:

O'Neil at Celtic (he maybe has a little more goodwill in the bank)

McIness at Rangers

Robinson at Aberdeen 

McCann at Kilmarnock 

Goodwin at Utd

Gray at Hibs ( now gone)

6 games in. It has been a long hard season!!! 

 

 

[grizzlyg]

3 minutes ago, star sail said:

These are dangerous times to be a football manager.

David Gray has just been sacked and MJC and wellfan have bumped the manager thread back to the top of the discussion board. 

So far this season these are the managers whose fans have been sticking the boot in, many calling for sacking:

O'Neil at Celtic (he maybe has a little more goodwill in the bank)

McIness at Rangers

Robinson at Aberdeen 

McCann at Kilmarnock 

Goodwin at Utd

Gray at Hibs ( now gone)

6 games in. It has been a long hard season!!! 

 

 

Robinson was getting absolute pelters before killie cup game, now dons think he's the messiah. 

Fitba fans of all clubs really have no patience whatsoever

[David]

I think it's a mistake to assume that failing to meet expectations at Rosenborg tells us much about how Johansson will do with us.

Rosenborg operate in a completely different footballing environment. They play in a 20,000 seat stadium, regularly spend millions of euros on players, have won a record 26 Norwegian league titles, have huge domestic support and have played more European matches than any other Norwegian club. Their expectation isn't simply to be competitive. It's to challenge for titles, qualify for Europe and play a recognisable brand of football while doing it.

Our reality is almost the opposite. We work with a fraction of that budget, constantly rebuild squads, develop players, sell them on and try to outperform clubs with greater resources. Success at Motherwell isn't measured by whether you win the league. It's about organising a team properly, improving players, recruiting intelligently, competing consistently and maximising limited resources.

That's why I don't think you can simply take Johansson's Rosenborg record and transpose it onto Motherwell.

In fact, some of the things Rosenborg themselves credited him with - improving training standards, introducing stronger structure and methodology, developing young players and creating value from them, are potentially much more relevant to the job here than whether he was capable of satisfying the expectations of Norway's biggest club.

Of course, there are questions about how his spell ended, particularly around adaptability and leadership when results got away from him. Those are worth discussing. But Rosenborg and Motherwell are two very different jobs, with very different expectations, resources and definitions of success.

Another thing worth considering is Jens.

Flip his career around for a second. Imagine we'd never had him at Motherwell and he was coming to us now from Toulouse. We'd look at his record there and see a manager sitting near the bottom of Ligue 1 without a win in his first four league games. If we applied the same logic being applied to Johansson, plenty of people would immediately conclude that Askou wasn't good enough.

But we know that's bollocks because we've already seen Askou manage Motherwell. We know he was capable of coming into our particular environment, working with our budget and players, and being successful.

That's the point. Managers don't operate in a vacuum. The club, expectations, budget, squad, league and the actual job they're being asked to do matter enormously.

In the end, Alfred didn't meet Rosenborg's expectations, and they were entitled to sack him. But we're not asking him to do the Rosenborg job. We're asking him to organise and improve players, develop young talent, operate within a restricted budget, create value in the squad and make us competitive against clubs with greater resources.

Askou is probably the perfect demonstration of why judging a manager purely on what happened at a completely different type of football club can be completely misleading.

[grizzlyg]

14 minutes ago, David said:

I think it's a mistake to assume that failing to meet expectations at Rosenborg tells us much about how Johansson will do with us.

Rosenborg operate in a completely different footballing environment. They play in a 20,000 seat stadium, regularly spend millions of euros on players, have won a record 26 Norwegian league titles, have huge domestic support and have played more European matches than any other Norwegian club. Their expectation isn't simply to be competitive. It's to challenge for titles, qualify for Europe and play a recognisable brand of football while doing it.

Our reality is almost the opposite. We work with a fraction of that budget, constantly rebuild squads, develop players, sell them on and try to outperform clubs with greater resources. Success at Motherwell isn't measured by whether you win the league. It's about organising a team properly, improving players, recruiting intelligently, competing consistently and maximising limited resources.

That's why I don't think you can simply take Johansson's Rosenborg record and transpose it onto Motherwell.

In fact, some of the things Rosenborg themselves credited him with - improving training standards, introducing stronger structure and methodology, developing young players and creating value from them, are potentially much more relevant to the job here than whether he was capable of satisfying the expectations of Norway's biggest club.

Of course, there are questions about how his spell ended, particularly around adaptability and leadership when results got away from him. Those are worth discussing. But Rosenborg and Motherwell are two very different jobs, with very different expectations, resources and definitions of success.

Another thing worth considering is Jens.

Flip his career around for a second. Imagine we'd never had him at Motherwell and he was coming to us now from Toulouse. We'd look at his record there and see a manager sitting near the bottom of Ligue 1 without a win in his first four league games. If we applied the same logic being applied to Johansson, plenty of people would immediately conclude that Askou wasn't good enough.

But we know that's bollocks because we've already seen Askou manage Motherwell. We know he was capable of coming into our particular environment, working with our budget and players, and being successful.

That's the point. Managers don't operate in a vacuum. The club, expectations, budget, squad, league and the actual job they're being asked to do matter enormously.

In the end, Alfred didn't meet Rosenborg's expectations, and they were entitled to sack him. But we're not asking him to do the Rosenborg job. We're asking him to organise and improve players, develop young talent, operate within a restricted budget, create value in the squad and make us competitive against clubs with greater resources.

Askou is probably the perfect demonstration of why judging a manager purely on what happened at a completely different type of football club can be completely misleading.

Well said pal.     Alfred needs time and before last night everything had been moving along nicely.  Players have off days and that happened last night.  Looking at our squad i have every faith we will have a good season but fans need to realise that Jens was really unique so its unfair to put that pressure on AJ, especially in middle of September.   He needs a full season minimum 

[well_said]

2 hours ago, grizzlyg said:

Anyone reading my posts will know my views here.  I am very much in favour of AJ and after 6 league games ( unbeaten in first 4), it is way too early to be judging him. I will break down my points.

1) whoever replaced Jens was going to be judged more harshly as expectation levels increased 10 fold

2) huge personal choice for him as he had an 8 month pregnant wife also to look after as well as moving to a new country.

3) he lost 5 regular and key players last season and has brought in 11 new players plus we had an injury list of 10 players

4) we faced helsinki and freiburg in europe and the performances I felt were great, especially helsinki at home.

5) for those criticising his stenhousemuir line-up,  he made a call and it didnt work.   Lets not forget that Jens got hammered in league cup semi and for dons away in cup also put out a weakened side when we weren't even dealing with european ties.

6) hopefully he is learning from mistakes and we start getting a settled side. I think squad is actually strong and competition for places is healthy.   Of our new signings I have been impressed mainly and also remember a few coming from overseas and adapting to a new league.

We shouldn't be happy about last night but jeez lets not forget the style of fitba Robinson.....Alexander and Kettlewell inflicted on us.

Give the lad a chance

This is a very good and well worded post. Keep doing this and forget the comedy.

[Mad Dog]

See who Hibs fans are calling for? Clarke, Lennon, Kevin Thompson, Alex Neil, Bartley, etc. All aboard the failure merry-go-round again. I'll happily give Johansson a full season and beyond. If he doesn't succeed, then we'll pick up another young and ambitious coach from the continent.

[grizzlyg]

34 minutes ago, well_said said:

This is a very good and well worded post. Keep doing this and forget the comedy.

Thank you kind sir........cant guarantee 2nd part though 🤣🤣

[joewarkfanclub]

I think its also fair to point out that Alfred is only 35 and Rosenberg was his first job as a head coach.

He is still learning and not the finished article. 

[David]

1 hour ago, Mad Dog said:

See who Hibs fans are calling for? Clarke, Lennon, Kevin Thompson, Alex Neil, Bartley, etc. All aboard the failure merry-go-round again. I'll happily give Johansson a full season and beyond. If he doesn't succeed, then we'll pick up another young and ambitious coach from the continent.

Also worth considering what we'd term "succeeding". 

For me, it's at least being in the race for top six and playing the kind of football that makes Motherwell worth watching. 

[johnny71]

15 hours ago, grizzlyg said:

Robinson was getting absolute pelters before killie cup game, now dons think he's the messiah. 

Fitba fans of all clubs really have no patience whatsoever

We are a fickle lot,1 minute were building statues then next were building gallows 🤣