Alfred Johansson told his Motherwell players to “go home and eat some barbed wire” in preparation for their Conference League qualifier against HB Torshavn at the Torsvollur Stadium on Thursday night.
In the 35-year-old’s first game as Well boss after taking over from Jens Berthel Askou, the Steelmen beat the Faroe Islands side 2-0 in the first leg of the second qualifier last week at Fir Park thanks to goals from Martin Moormann and Lukas Fadinger.
Johansson, however, was at pains to point out that qualification is far from certain as he revealed his tongue-in-cheek message to his squad. “We’re going to try and have a good performance,” said the Swede, who revealed star attacker Tawanda Maswanhise will be available albeit he will not start and will wear protection for a facial injury.
“Of course, me saying that means that of course you’re going to try and win the game. But at the same time, you have to respect the team that we’re going to play and the place where we’re going to play.
“In 10 years, I believe they’ve lost twice at home in European qualification. The last five years, they lost zero times at home, in European qualifications, and that includes Brondby, a big club in Denmark. It includes Maccabi Haifa (Israel). It includes Helsinki. So these are pretty big clubs.
“Maybe not from here, but pretty big clubs from other regions of Europe. You can’t neglect the fact that they’ve done really, really well at home. And to think that you’re just going to go there and grab a victory real simple, then you fool yourself.
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“So I told the guys today to go home and eat some barbed wire and prepare for the battle because it’s going to be a battle and you’re going to have to be strong and brave to play our way.
“But the intensity is going to have to be there. Otherwise, there’s no need to travel.”
Johansson admits there are aspects of play that need improvement from last week. He said: “I want the bravery on the ball to be the same because I think we looked real confident on the ball at times.
“We were playing out from stress areas with quality. I felt that we were attacking their box. We definitely looked dangerous and I think we need to continue with that. That’s number one. After both goals in this game, we had a decline in performance.
“It doesn’t matter what metric you’re looking at or if you’re opening the computer and looking with your eyes.
“We had a decline in performance after we scored our two goals. And we need to stay focused if we score a goal. We can’t stop focusing because they will be more aggressive.”
