This is an excerpt from this week's Claret and Amber Alert, a free Motherwell newsletter written by Graeme McGarry that goes out every Thursday at 6pm. To sign up, click here.
It’s not easy following Motherwell at this time of year. While everyone else is getting excited about the festive season and anticipation builds ahead of the big day, Motherwell fans are instead bracing themselves for the dreaded annual ‘bad run’.
And like selection boxes in Asda, it seems to be getting earlier every year. This season’s is already in full swing, it appears, with three dismal displays in succession yielding three defeats against ‘peer’ clubs (that may be stretching the term in the case of Hibs, of course, but I think is fair when taken in the context of their season).
I’m struggling to remember a sequence of three Motherwell games I have enjoyed less than the 2-1 loss to Ross County, the 3-0 scudding from Hibs and the collapse that brought about the 4-1 defeat to Dundee on Wednesday night. It has largely been horrific to watch, with long balls being shelled at an increasingly forlorn-looking Apostolos Stamatelopoulos at one end, and embarrassingly powder puff defending at the other.
Followers of this newsletter will no doubt be thinking that my mate ‘Davie’ from a few weeks ago, who was disgruntled at the style of play despite the favourable results, will be feeling a bit smug about himself at the minute. And despite his own disappointment at the defeats, yes, yes he is.
Funnily enough mind, the performance overall against Dundee was actually much better than the previous two, with the addition of Tony Watt alongside Stamatelopoulos at least giving the Australian something and someone to work with.
That may be an approach worth persevering with, but the selection of Jair Tavares as some sort of hybrid wing-back/winger ahead of Marvin Kaleta on the right was a baffling one, and an experiment we hopefully won’t see again.
What we can never see again from a Motherwell team, or is acceptable from any team at this level, is the sort of collapse that was prompted by Dundee’s second goal.
Yes, manager Stuart Kettlewell has a point in his post-match protestations about that second goal, with Kofi Balmer clearly taking a blow to the head. Whether that merited a penalty award is open to debate, but what is not a matter of conjecture is that referee John Beaton should have stopped the game.
We’ve all been there as fans when players are ‘at it’, and get frustrated when the opposition stymie a potential counter attack in such a way. But not only was this not the case in this scenario, it is not for Beaton (who I do not think is in possession of a medical degree) to make a snap judgment over whether a player has suffered a concussion, is using the dark arts, or something in between.
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So, there is sympathy there for Kettlewell’s position. But there can be no allowances made for the sort of defending that followed, and that has, worryingly, become a hallmark of Motherwell performances recently.
There was insult added to Balmer’s injury as he gave away the ball for the third and then the eventual shot deflected in off of him, before he was outmuscled out wide by Simon Murray all too easily for the fourth.
This isn’t about singling out individuals though, with the lack of aggression and intensity in Motherwell’s general defending a failing throughout the whole team. I said earlier in the year that the addition of Liam Gordon and the introduction of Aston Oxborough in goal had stiffened up the heart of the Steelmen’s backline, but that air of robustness has tailed off dramatically.
Motherwell are simply too easy to play against. The Celtic game was a prime example of what happens when you allow good teams the space to play, but that has carried on into other games, and Kettlewell’s side have been punished accordingly.
The Terrace Podcast account tweeted out a stat this week that showed that Motherwell are, as they put it, the ‘most stand-offish’ team in the division. And by quite a margin. What it boiled down to was that Motherwell are the team that press the opposition with the least intensity in the league, while frequently coming under an intense press themselves.
It doesn’t explain away all of the defensive ills and individual errors that are also proving costly, but it does chime with the eye test of what the fans are watching on a weekly basis. It isn’t only Celtic who have come to Fir Park and passed the ball around for fun. Even in a game Motherwell won, St Johnstone did it too.
If Motherwell are going to arrest this current run of form before they slip into a similar sort of winless hellscape that they did last year (and looking at the fixtures, there’s every chance), resulting in a slide down the table and ruined Christmases all over ML1, then upping that intensity and letting the opposition know they are at least in a game would be a start.
Getting experienced defenders like Paul McGinn and Stephen O’Donnell back in the mix after injury would be a positive too, and hopefully sooner rather than later.
A trip to face St Mirren away and the patented Stephen Robinson ‘Thunderdome’ approach will be a huge test of these Motherwell players, and whether they have the minerals to stand up to this period of adversity.
Or as non-Motherwell folk call it, the festive season.
AND ANOTHER THING…
On a slightly more positive note, I can’t thank the club, the MFC Disabled Supporters Association, the staff and the players enough for how they treated my eldest as he had an amazing day as the team announcer at Fir Park last week, also taking part in the coin toss with Lennon Miller.
It was all for a good cause too, raising awareness of International Day of Persons with Disabilities, the great work done by organisations like the MFC DSA, and the need to improve accessibility in football.
And, to answer the question I know you are all asking…yes, he kept his top on.
