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 all hell has broken loose down Fir Park way already, with a wretched run of form that stretched back to the turn of the year finally being topped off with an embarrassing exit from the UEFA Conference League to Irish League side Sligo Rovers by three goals to nil on aggregate.
But that result is where a sliver of light has finally appeared for many of the Fir Park faithful, as the shambolic display over the two legs against the Bit O’Red resulted in manager Graham Alexander finally being ‘mutually consented’ right out the door on Friday evening.
It is never nice to see anyone losing their job, but Alexander’s position had become untenable, having lost the fans some time ago. And 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 was 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 was he still doggedly sticking to the 4-3-3 system that has proved so unpopular with fans, but he still hadn’t convinced those supporters he had the players to execute 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 had led Motherwell to just five wins from 23 in 2022, with three victories in the league and Scottish Cup triumphs 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 had changed and little progress has been made in the intervening period.
To add to the seeming unrest around the club, captain Stephen O’Donnell had 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 seemed an unsustainable situation.
So, a bruised and battered Motherwell side now head to St Mirren on Sunday for their Premiership opener, but the fans will be travel there now with some renewed optimism as club legend Stevie Hammell – who has been heading up their academy - leads their side to Paisley on an interim basis.
Long-term aims for the season seem impossible to consider just at the moment until a permanent successor for Alexander is found, but there is no doubt that Motherwell supporters are feeling a little better about their prospects in the coming season now than they were on Thursday evening.
Manager Stevie Hammell (interim)
Captain Stephen O’Donnell
Key Player Kevin Van Veen. The one ray of light for Motherwell fans this summer (up until Alexander’s departure) had been the news that the talismanic Dutchman had 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, going into the book on no less than 15 occasions last term.
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).
Last season A term of two halves. The opening part of the campaign was profitable in terms of points gained, and if concerns remained about the manner of the football being played, there were no complaints about Motherwell’s lofty position in the league.
The wheels came off after the winter break, and while Alexander’s team managed to scramble a fifth-placed finish, there will be few among the fanbase who will mourn the passing of his reign.
