This is an excerpt from this week's McGarry on Motherwell, a free Motherwell newsletter written by Graeme McGarry that goes out every Thursday at 6pm. To sign up, click here.
I hate to be a contrarian doom merchant amid these times of abounding optimism round Fir Park way, but I think Jens Berthel Askou has some serious questions to answer. How on earth did this Motherwell side only manage a draw against Rangers?
I jest, of course. Had that fixture fallen a couple of weeks later, when the sexy soccer the Steelmen are producing had clicked into top gear, it may well have been a different story.
Now, before I get completely carried away, let me acknowledge the disappointment of the final third of the game at Tynecastle on Saturday. To lose a 3-0 lead was of course a right old kick to the nether regions, particularly for those fans (which may or may not have included my eldest and I) who had been giving it tight to that section of Hearts fans at the corner of their Main Stand.
The only other teams that came close to playing such an attractive style I could recall from the top of my head were the Tommy McLean side who finished third in 93/94 and the Mark McGhee team of his first era who would look to blow teams away in the opening half hour.
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Any notion that I may have been overegging the pudding was soon dispelled as fans from other clubs, and particularly Jambos, in fairness to them, got in touch to coo over the style of football that Berthel Askou’s men had produced.
It was scintillating stuff. This is not to say that the failure to see out the win doesn’t matter, of course it does. But as we were walking from the ground, the chat amongst supporters was all about how much they had enjoyed the game. And particularly, watching Motherwell.
With the greatest of respect to Berthel Askou’s predecessors in the Fir Park dugout, one of whom we will come to shortly, it has been a long time since we could say that.
The midfield triumvirate of Elliot Watt, Lukas Fadinger and Callum Slattery were quite brilliant. Indeed, it was only when Slattery went off and the balance of the team was knocked out a little bit that Hearts got a foothold in the game.
For all that there were doubts around the manager’s insistence on playing out from the back and through the midfield at the start of the season, it was when the team came away from that approach on Saturday that the wheels fell off. Something Berthel Askou acknowledged was the lesson to be taken for his men.
And what about the performance of Elijah Just? I must admit, while being able to tell straight away that the Kiwi had great technical ability, I wasn’t overly convinced over the first few games of the season that he had the physicality to handle the Scottish Premiership, nor the conviction required when he got into the final third of the pitch.
To dispel both of those notions so completely at Tynecastle of all places was hugely impressive. He was the best player on the pitch by a mile, carrying the ball past players, linking the play, finding pockets of space all over the place and showing that composure with his final pass that the fans had been citing as the missing piece in the Motherwell puzzle.
It’s just a great feeling to be excited about going along to the football again, and I can’t wait to see what this Motherwell team will produce on Saturday at Fir Park. When of course, they will be coming up against former manager Stuart Kettlewell.
If Motherwell can come anywhere near the levels they showed in that first hour at Tynecastle though, hopefully that won’t be the case.
It is an intriguing clash of styles, and it will also be interesting to see what kind of reception Kettlewell receives upon his return to the club.
After the way his exit was handled – both personally, but by the club too, it shouldn’t be forgotten – I’d imagine the level of abuse from the fans he referenced as receiving up in Perth towards the end of his Motherwell reign will pale in comparison.
I hope I’m wrong, though. The sour taste left by the last part of his tenure shouldn’t airbrush the fact that on the whole, he did a more than decent job at the club, and for all that you may disagree with the tactics he deployed or his criticism of supporters, that he gave his all for the club can’t be disputed.
Both Motherwell as a team and Kettlewell himself have moved on. I hope he has a thoroughly miserable day at Fir Park this weekend, but only because his team have been run ragged by Berthel Askou’s purveyors of total football.
