The Alfred Johansson Thread

[grizzlyg]

Was thinking of all the players we have signed in summer, how many were recommended by AJ. I think Kanga definitely an AJ signing but the rest probably scouted and then I assume AJ has the final say 

I actually think a lot of our signings will come good. At start of season it was looking good but for some reason has just went all pear-shaped

[0Neils40yarder]

57 minutes ago, grizzlyg said:

Was thinking of all the players we have signed in summer, how many were recommended by AJ. I think Kanga definitely an AJ signing but the rest probably scouted and then I assume AJ has the final say 

I actually think a lot of our signings will come good. At start of season it was looking good but for some reason has just went all pear-shaped

Dare I say it? The vast majority of the signings would have been brought in on JBAs watch

[grizzlyg]

19 minutes ago, 0Neils40yarder said:

Dare I say it? The vast majority of the signings would have been brought in on JBAs watch

I think you are right bud.  I think they all have potential but AJ not utilising them properly 

[star sail]

5 hours ago, wellfan said:

You and I could do a better job than Alfred. 

No you could not. None of us could .

I think this is where the majority of my arguments stem from . We completely underestimate as fans how difficult it is to be a football manager, particularly with a team like Motherwell where expectations are high and the budget in relative terms is low.

Let's just look at one single variable from last season. The players that AJ has had available to him.

Away

Ward, Welsh, Slattery, Just, Watt, In other words, the top performing players last season..That is 5 players for a start.

Injured

McGinn, Koutrombous, Priestman, SOD. Mainstays in last year's team

 That is 9 players so far.

Then we have our friend Maswanhise who has hardly kicked a ball since February.. Remember he was not performing well under JBA either towards the end.

Then there is Fadinger who has not been allowed to play in the same way as last season because he does not have the players around him to do so.

The names mentioned bring you close Motherwell's best starting 11 last season Longelo and Said apart. 

This is one single factor of many that Alfred has to manage. To say play SOD at right back and play central defenders in central defence and all will be fixed is simplistic in the extreme. 

The manager is suffering a perfect storm just now. An inflated expectation of where Motherwell should be in the food chain, players that think they are better than they are because of reasonably brief purple patches last season, significant injuries and on and on and on..........

Look at Dundee..The Dundee fans wanted Presley out this time last season. Look where they are now. We have to be capable of looking beyond the very small timescale of a one month window.

I hope the Board have a little more patience than the supports.

[wellsince75]

For me the biggest doubt derives from steadily getting worse as each week passes and appreciate confidence is part of the issue .

July and Aug we had a similar identity - passing , ball retention etc . It’s hard not to correlate the longer the manager has had to get ideas across the worst we’ve become .
 

it’s not obvious what we’re working on in training - put individual errors to the side - in most games we completely lose our shape and teams carve through us for long periods of time - that’s got to be down to training etc and not just individual errors