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.
At last, the wait is almost over, and we will soon have the opportunity to watch Jens Berthel Askou’s Motherwell in the flesh once again.
I’m not one of those fans for whom club football is the be all and end all, and I am as big a Scotland supporter as anyone. The results from the international break were great as the national team looks to make the World Cup, and I am more than delighted with that.
But, let’s be honest, it just wasn’t the same, was it? It may well be possible that Berthel Askou has ruined all other football for me.
I am slightly wary mind you that the team and their new, easy-on-the-eye style are racking up more plaudits than points at the start of the campaign, and it would be nice to put the cherry on the icing by getting the first league win of the season at Dens Park on Saturday.
If they don’t, it’s not the end of the world, and a point on your travels – even if it is on the back of four consecutive draws – is not to be sniffed at. But if for no other reason than to maintain or even ramp up the feelgood factor around this team at the minute, a win would be fantastic.
It was great to hear that once again, just as on the opening day against Rangers, there were around 6000 Motherwell fans or thereabouts in attendance at the home game against Kilmarnock. They may have left disappointed at the 2-2 draw after Calum Ward’s late clanger, but they would also have left thoroughly entertained by what they had witnessed.
In the end, when the discounts were no longer available and the novelty wore off, the floating fans would drift away and the same hardy 3-4000 or so souls would turn up to Fir Park no matter the fare that was being served up on the pitch.
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Who knew that the one thing which might just have a chance of capturing the imagination of the casual fan, and maybe persuade them to hand over what is an increasingly large portion of their hard-earned cash, was the chance to watch a team who is focused not only on winning, but on a style that entertains in the process?
Well, it seems chairman Kyrk MacMillan knew, saying upon Berthel Askou's appointment: “I don’t want to be in a conversation where we’re just feeling that we need to low block constantly and try to navigate other teams. It’s about how we impose ourselves, and you need to have a bit of confidence about you to do that. And I think he’s got that.
“He likes to play football on the front foot, which is really important, press high up the pitch and be aggressive in terms of how we equip ourselves on the pitch. That style is going to continue, for sure.”
This is especially important, I think, when trying to attract young fans. There has been a core of kids that have gone along with my own son for years now, but without the ritual of being dragged there by their dads – sometimes kicking and screaming – many of them would have rather not bothered a lot of the time.
And who could blame them? What is it we’re selling? The chance to finish somewhere between third on a good year to scrapping it out for survival on a bad one? Or, as it has been more often than not in recent years, the purgatory of the lower-mid table blob?
Not to sound like an old man yelling at a cloud, but the attention spans of these kids are about equivalent to that of those goldfish you used to win at the Strathy Fair. Or in the best cases, equivalent to their tragically short lifespans.
As these lads have entered their early teens, it has become more likely to see them glued to their phones during a game than glued to the action. But since the start of the season, that has changed. What’s more, their group is swelling in number, to the point where they are frequently doing my box in and blocking my view half the time, but that’s my own issue.
With the League Cup quarter final on the horizon at Pittodrie next week, it may be understandable if many fans will prioritise travelling to that match than going to Dens this weekend, particularly with Aberdeen’s apparent insistence in squeezing out a few extra pounds from the occasion in their ticket pricing.
I still expect a healthy following to go up to Tayside though, because while those fans may not know the end result they are going to get, they know exactly what they are going to be served up on the pitch.
A team that gives their all for one another, that knows exactly where they and their teammates should be, and that will be committed to a football identity that has captured the imagination of the Motherwell public and beyond.
A few wins along the way are vital, of course, but give the fans that, and they will keep coming along. And more of them will come back, too.
