Post by chipbarm on May 14, 2022 16:58:30 GMT
Fair play to him, but the Scottish league is a strange one where it splits in half after so many games and then each half only play each other. Up until a couple of weeks ago Motherwell had won one game in 2022. They've won a couple recently and are 4th, although bizarrely the team in 7th would be above them if the league hadn't split. 6 points separate 4th from 10th. Outside of the 2 big clubs it's a poor league.
Your point about the team in 7th being "above" the team in 4th is an understandable misreading. What it comes down to is that the team in 7th is playing "easier" fixtures post-split than the team in 4th so it stands to reason that they have a greater chance of taking points if they're playing the teams in 10th, 11th and 12th than the team in 4th who are having to play the teams in 1st, 2nd and 3rd.
If the mid-table section is close (as it has been this season) you end up with the scenario you're talking about.
I appreciate that it looks daft to an outsider but once you get your head round the fact that the "league" itself only runs to 33 games and the extra 5 are to make up a balance to 38 so it confirms the title and relegations issues along with an extra Old Firm game for SKY it's a bit less strange (we can't go to 44 games a season on account of scheduling due to teams playing in European competitions).
Alexander has had a very, very weird season. From when he took over for the calendar year 2021 he had accrued the 3rd best points total in the league (behind Rangers and Celtic) however after the winter break everything went off the rails. We'd sold our top scorer (and the top scorer in the league at the time) and didn't replace him and seemed to completely forget how to defend so the games we'd been winning turned to draws and the games we'd been drawing turned to losses.
The main complaint he's had from a section of our fanbase is his style of play which has been quite attritional albeit relatively effective. Going by Neville's comments when he was sacked I take it it was something similar down there (I know Neville kind of walked back on it a while back)?
Although we were 1 win in 15 in the league we'd won a couple of cup ties and had drawn our fair share so it wasn't quite as bad as the headline suggests. Although had he not picked up the wins in the past week and confirmed Europe it'd have been a pretty awkward position for everyone concerned as he'd just signed a new 2 year extension in January just there.
He then effectively went from the 3rd best performing team in the league to 12th. No in between.
Did he ever have any similar sort of circumstances where he had wild dips in form with you guys and what was his squad building like?
It's to his credit he's rescued it and managed to get a European qualification out of it though. The wins against Ross County and Hearts came about off the back of half the team having been unable to train due to illness. So it's fair play to him for digging out 1-0 and a 2-1 wins getting scudded 6-0 by Celtic on TV today was pretty much a team whose season had finished on Wednesday and a group of players ready for their holidays.
Anyway, apologies for the length of the post and all the best for next season.
Some of what you said rings true, particularly the attritional style of play. He is quite a pragmatic manager so his default setting is to not give much away rather than playing more expensively. The game that ultimately cost him his job wasn't the first time we'd dropped points from a winning position due to his attempting to shut up shop. Personally I got a bit frustrated with him on several occasions where we were leading at half time and you just knew 2nd half we'd retreat to the edge of our box and defend the lead. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't
Re the swings in form, during his first season with us we did hit a poor patch around Xmas and lost a few games before we recovered a bit around Feb/March and got into the play offs. Next season was odd in that we had great away form but couldn't buy a win at home. I put that down to his style of play to keep it tight and counter attack being more effective away from home.
Squad building is an odd one in that we have a director of football who is responsible for recruitment. It's one of our collective bugbears on here that the manager doesn't really get a say but has buys, usually ageing journeymen, foisted on him.