I’ve just been reading an article on the BBC regarding how well Motherwell are doing despite a large turnover of players and losing their manager in the summer. Here if anyone wants a read: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cq8j0vg4y7po

It’s got me thinking once again about the strategy or seemingly lack of a strategy that the club are pursuing. I think most of us have now come to the conclusion that chopping and changing manager doesn’t really change much.

So I thought I’d start this conversation so we can get all our mostly unqualified opinions out there.

Are they doing great? Are we counting the 'Well being pumped 7-2 on aggregate out of Europe and being gubbed by Stenhousemuir in the League Cup? Their 8 league points have arisen from games against Hibs, Falkirk, St Mirren and Dundee Utd. Grass always greener on the other side and all that.

10 hours ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

Are they doing great? Are we counting the 'Well being pumped 7-2 on aggregate out of Europe and being gubbed by Stenhousemuir in the League Cup? Their 8 league points have arisen from games against Hibs, Falkirk, St Mirren and Dundee Utd. Grass always greener on the other side and all that.

The 7-2 on aggregate score across two matches against Freiburg, while not a great result isn’t a total disgrace. I probably wasn’t concentrating hard enough to notice the league cup result.

I was hoping to stimulate some conversation regarding our own strategy. But it’s hard not to compare ourselves with others. I suppose to that end I’ll put some of the questions that I’m trying to consider out there. Should we be focussing more on bringing through talented youngsters? Do we have to lower expectations for a few seasons to allow our rebuild to come to fruition? What kind of culture are we attempting to embed at the club?

As a side point, Another thing that has been going through my mind is; Who has been our best manager since McInnes? Generally doesn’t seem to be a standout, but I always wonder about Stephen Glass personally. Coming soon after McInnes he wasn’t afforded the patience that some have since had, but I remember that although the team was struggling to break opponents down we played out a lot of games with 70%+ possession. On top of that he wasn’t afraid to put the young guys into the team. He got sacked as we were concerned we weren’t going to make the top 6. Not through a fear of relegation as has generally been the case since. I do wonder if given a bit more time he might have done quite well for us.

Agree with you @DantheDon , I wanted Stephen Glass to be given much longer, and I think there's a lot of similarities between then and now - namely the squad is average, an unpopular manager is trying to win over fans with one hand behind his back, and the main issues appear to be bigger than the manager.

Glass was crying out for a director of football or at least some more experience. Well we have Lutz now and Robinson is experienced, so there is that at least. And despite my criticisms of Robinson so far he deserves a fair crack at it.

The form under Glass wasn't actually that bad. We won four from five in December, started the year with a draw v Rangers, and went into that Motherwell cup game with a run of W5, D2, L4. But we lost the cup game and Cormack - not for the last time - panicked at fan anger.

Let's hope Robinson has more luck in the League Cup next week because much like Glass, Goodwin and Leven, it'll be toxic if we lose.

Have said it previously- although Glass was inexperienced, the likes of him, Cathro at Hearts and Maloney at Hibs, who tried to introduce progressive football at clubs outside the ugly sisters were doomed to fail because of the likes of Robinson’s St Mirren or Martindale’s Livi where teams on a fraction of the budget were hard working, physical and bullied “nice” footballing sides.

At least with Glass I knew what he was trying to do. Right now, I have no idea what our management are doing and not convinced they know either

As said while Glass was here you could actually see a vision of where he wanted us to be and we were pretty enough to watch. In my opinion what failed most was our chairman's reluctance to throw money at his vanity project. Scott Brown, Ramirez and JET were a drop in the ocean compared to the cash he has wasted under the following managers. This meant that the players were simply not good enough to bring the vision to reality especially up front. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I don't think we would be nearly as bad now if we had stuck with Glass. Don't get me wrong we were still rubbish but we had some forward thinking.

Compare that to now and we are a leaderless, rudderless mess of a club with no positive identity and no sign that anyone has got a clue what to do about it. The players we are now being subjected to are a hark back to the good old days of Paterson where ICT players were our ceiling.

Glass hasn't really pushed on as a manager though. Maybe a better coach, or dare I say it, a Director of Football, whatever the hell that actually is.

Both Motherwell and Hearts appear to have switched out managers fairly seamlessly, whereas, we struggled to replace Jimmy and appear to have panicked and went with a back up option, in Robinson, which has fractured an already fractured fanbase.

Maybe it is just luck with them, although this Hearts data thing does appear to have some merit in it, as applied to other clubs with a degree of success.

I imagine Dave is like my old (American) work overlords.

Wants gazillions of data, but no real idea what they/he actually wants it for, other than other firms actually use it.

Me, I just want to go back to the days when fitba was much simpler and to read the thoughts, of Ed Webster, of Errol Place, Aberdeen, in The Green Final.

A lot of rewriting history with Glass. He had absolutely no idea how to implement the ideas he had, or said he had. He wasn't a good manager.

What I would say was it was the right idea to employ someone like Glass, but probably the wrong guy, and most certainly within the incorrect structure. All of this was, and continues to be, Cormack's failure.

The correct approach, and not in hindsight, would have been to keep McInnes for a bit, whilst implementing the strategic changes around him, running down his contract, whilst being entirely transparent with the fans. Before McInnes left, we should have had the technical director and recruitment director in place with a complete strategy on data collection, what it was being used for, and the balance identified between signing known/low risk SPFL quantities, project players and managerial accountability over youth minutes. All recruitment needed to go through the chain of command - you can't just sign Greg Tansey or Brad Lyons, you've got to show why you're signing them and why and how they fit in. If McInnesinson says that Greg Lyons is ace, but the data shows that he only covers 8K in a game, then he doesn't get to sign Brad Tansey. If the data says that Ante Briedl is fantastic, but the manager points to the fact that he doesn't fit the 4-2-3-1, and we already have three players that can do the same, then the data is overruled. The recruitment director remains agnostic on the actual player, but signs off the signing based on the case presented. At no point do we rely on contacts and word of mouth (see Lutz and the weird and worrying signing of Germans recently), as these contacts and "players we've seen previously" have a very short shelf life and leave you with virtually nothing after a year away from that previous club/country.

Again, all this should have been in place before Glass entered the building, and refined under McInnes previously. It shouldn't have wavered over the years, and should have informed every single managerial appointment. That hasn't happened, with nothing in place for Glass, no sporting director until the end of Thelin, and Thelin seemingly being given recruitment and basically being a Swedish McInnes (which I'm not convinced he signed up to) prior to that. Now we've got a sporting director, he seems to be far too involved, with players coming in from Germany, rather than him being part of a recruitment process, which seems to be an extremely short term approach. Again, there seems to be no real plan and balance between what the manager is allowed to do and what the recruitment team do with regard to signings this season. It won't be long before we hear Robinson complaining about "players he didn't sign".

The managers themselves are a perfect illustration of the mess, with Robinson just another symptom. There is no world in which Robinson fits the strategy originally laid out years ago by Cormack. He's just a shitter version of McInnes. I'm trying not to be too critical of him, as this isn't his doing and my expectations of him are massively tempered by knowing the type of manager he is and why he is here.

Been waiting to reply to this thread as as much as I wanted Robinson gone (and not at the club in the first place) i thought best to wait. Now Im still not sure what the club strategy is; but it does appear that they’re trying to find a ground zero of sorts and rebuild from there. Shifted the bulk of the failed squad, have now got rid of both manager and burrows (and FD), and brought in what appears to be a proper CEO. Robinson may be the stop gap to stop the recent years of turmoil and going too far in one direction (a strategy but possibly not). But it does appear that cormack has serious egg on his face. His reign, by and large has brought complete and total chaos to the club, despite delivering a major trophy.

I would love youth to be given more of a chance, and I’m not sure that Robinson is the man to willingly do that, but I’d like to find a bit more of a balance than what we had. Surely there has to be a bit of a sweet spot than buying in journeymen? There are signs we might make mid table, but there is a long way to go yet. Again, it’ll be interesting to see what the new CEO does and brings to the table.

Bevington MIGHT be a good CEO, and I'm not going to judge a man who I know little about.

However, he has got the job because he is Cormack's mate...

Edited September 22Sep 22 by Panda