The Alfred Johansson Thread

[David]

7 hours ago, wellfan said:

People keep banging on about the similar points tally so far, but that misses the point entirely. Under JBA, there was a clear identity from day one. Alfred keeps talking about a transition phase, and that's fair enough. Nobody expects him to replicate what JBA achieved. But a transition has to show signs of taking you somewhere, and we're seeing absolutely none. If anything, we're moving further and further away from what was good about us under JBA, and we've looked increasingly clueless the longer Alfred's had the players on the training pitch.

I said he'd rightly be given time, but time is worthless if there's no sign of progress. We're getting worse, the same glaring weaknesses persist, and he seems either incapable of addressing them or too stubborn to change anything. I don't expect another JBA season. I expect a team that looks like it has a clue what it's doing. I expect decent performances even in defeat. 

I'm struggling to see what anyone thinks we're waiting for. Alfred looks increasingly out of his depth. And this isn't a plea for him to be sacked, nor is it a desire to return to the 'dinosaur' style that some keep referring to, as if this is some sort of modern football versus dinosaur football debate. Calling a spade a spade isn't creating toxicity either. The situation is plain to see for me, and if others can't see it, I think they're allowing the transition argument to overshadow some pretty obvious problems.

This is also an entirely different situation from the ones we found ourselves in under Alexander, Hammell, Kettlewell et al. The needle has shifted since then, and I don't think criticism of Alfred should automatically be lumped in with the discontent that surrounded those managers.

A defeat to Killie this weekend, coupled with another poor performance and no evidence that Alfred is learning from his mistakes, will only accelerate what is increasingly starting to feel inevitable.

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.

[Great Balls of Shire]

1 hour ago, mfc88 said:

To be fair, there was a very good post highlighting the sign on block E facebook page, which pointed to scottish womens aid charity and helpline i.e. more focussed on help for any victims.

In the moment, the sign didn't necessarily come across like that, I would agree.

Ive only seen the pic on FB but theres no context with that...who would be a polis these days ? Can't do right for doing wrong and every move gets filmed just in case...ive probably gone off topic but its taken heat off Alf a bit.

[grizzlyg]

55 minutes ago, David said:

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.

💯