PRE-SEASON is normally a time of boundless – and often groundless – enthusiasm over how the coming campaign may go for your favourite team. Not for Motherwell fans this time around though.
The domestic season hasn’t even started yet and there are loud rumblings of discontent among the Fir Park faithful, with an embarrassing exit from the UEFA Conference League to Irish League side Sligo Rovers by three goals to nil on aggregate the final straw for many of them when it comes to manager Graham Alexander.
It is fair to say that the former Scotland international, despite exceeding what were presumably his targets since arriving at the club in terms of league placings, has never really been taken to the hearts of the Motherwell supporters.
When he arrived, he managed to rescue the Steelmen from a dire position at the wrong end of the table and safely deliver them to an eighth placed finish. He followed that up by achieving a fifth placed finish last season, achieving qualification to the UEFA Conference League.
From the outside, you may well be asking what precisely the problem is then. Well, dig a little deeper, and cracks start to appear in the façade that the league placings have given his reign in Lanarkshire.
In this same slot last summer, I wrote that fans were now expecting Alexander to finesse the rather brutalist style of football that he had employed, with the benefit of the doubt being given to the former Salford City boss until he had sufficient time to put his own stamp on his squad.
A year down the line, and not only is he still doggedly sticking to the 4-3-3 system that has proved so unpopular with fans, but he still hasn’t convinced those supporters he has the players that suit it.
In the loss to Sligo, his team were pedestrian, lacked creativity, had no clear game-plan to break down their opponents and were all over the place at the back.
If that match was taken in isolation, perhaps it could be explained away by pre-season rustiness, but what was served up was exactly the same fare the Motherwell fans have been forced to stomach since the turn of the year.
Alexander’s side have won just five games from 23 in 2022, with three wins in the league and Scottish Cup victories over Morton and Aberdeen. Many point to the loss of Tony Watt to Dundee United as a key factor in that stark downturn in fortunes, and there is no doubt his exit was a bitter blow to the team, but the alarm bells were ringing long before Watt’s departure.
It is often said that when teams are winning, nobody questions their style of play, but that wasn’t necessarily the case at Fir Park, with fans expressing concern about what they were watching even when their team were pulling out results that their performances arguably didn’t merit.
That appeared to be unsustainable, and after the winter break last term, the worm indeed began to turn. Naturally, when the results tailed off and the losses piled up, the standard of football on display was then subject to even greater scrutiny, with very little for fans to cling to in the face of a horrendous run of form.
If anything, it was a massive surprise that Motherwell indeed rallied late in the campaign, with a last-gasp scrambled equaliser at Livingston taking them into the top six and a win at Ross County securing European football, but alas, it wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone who has watched this team regularly over the past seven months that their foray into the Conference League was short-lived, even at the hands of such modest opposition.
The match in Sligo panned out in remarkably similar fashion to the 2-0 defeat to local rivals Airdrieonians in last summer’s League Cup group stage that so angered fans, suggesting that little has changed and little progress has been made in the intervening period.
To add to the seeming unrest around the club, captain Stephen O’Donnell has been relegated to the bench, with new arrival Paul McGinn supplanting him at right-back and goalkeeper Liam Kelly taking on the armband. Officially, at least, O’Donnell remains club captain, but having a Scotland squad member on the bench seems an unsustainable situation.
So, a bruised and battered Motherwell side under an embattled manager head to St Mirren on Sunday for their Premiership opener, and the fans who are sticking with them for now will travel in trepidation.
Long-term aims for the season seem impossible to consider just at the moment, with Alexander’s target in the short term simply to survive on a week-to-week basis.
Another defeat to former Fir Park manager Stephen Robinson’s side this weekend and the pitchforks will well and truly be out. Happy new season, ‘Well fans!
Manager: Graham Alexander (for now)
Captain: Stephen O’Donnell (for now)
Key Player: Kevin Van Veen. The one ray of light for Motherwell fans this summer has been the news that the talismanic Dutchman has signed a contract extension that will keep him at Fir Park until 2024.
On his day, the striker has shown that he has the ability to trouble any defence in the Premiership, and his 11 goals last season were a key reason why they finished where they did in the table.
The flipside is that it often isn’t his day, and his lack of discipline also led to needless suspensions as he picked up a raft of daft yellow cards last season, going into the book on no less than 15 occasions.
When he is in the mood though, and when he gets some decent service, he can be a huge threat, and the Steelmen may be reliant on him producing some magic given their lack of creativity elsewhere.
In: Paul McGinn (Hibernian), Josh Morris (Salford City), Blair Spittal (Ross County).
Out: Justin Amaluzor (Aldershot), Liam Donnelly (Kilmarnock), Liam Grimshaw (Released), PJ Morrison (Falkirk), Victor Nirrenold (Released), Darragh O’Connor (Morton), Mark O’Hara (St Mirren), Jordan Roberts (Stevenage), Kaiyne Woolery (Sakaryaspor).
