Alexander holds hands up for rout
MOTHERWELL manager Graham Alexander yesterday insisted that he was culpable for Sunday’s 6-1 rout by Rangers at Fir Park because of his refusal to park the bus following Stephen O’Donnell’s second yellow card with a quarter of the game to play.
The hosts were leading with three minutes of the first half remaining but were 3-1 down when O’Donnell walked and Alexander, who had never watched one of his teams breached six times in his decade in the technical area, held his hand up yesterday.
“I’ll take responsibility for the last three goals because we’d gone down to ten men and, me being a bit naive and silly. I thought that we could still salvage something from the game so I kept two strikers on and tried to get something back,” he claimed.
“When I reflect on it, it would have been easy to switch to a back five or six and just sat in there defending our goal but I’m attempting to instil a belief in our mindset and our DNA about never giving up so I stuck with that and, obviously, we got punished heavily.
“I maybe exposed the players too much at the end against a very good team. We were confident about getting a result but then we let it go a little bit and I didn’t take that into account and just give up the game and keep it to 3-1. I still wanted them to believe because I’ve seen mad things happen in football, games which can change with a goal being pulled back, so I wanted to maintain an attacking threat but it didn’t transpire that way.
“One thing about football: you’re always going to be tested as a person – your character, personality. When you’re getting to know your players then these are the
times when you’re stripped bare. With football, you’re right in front of everybody on match days. But behind the scenes Monday to Friday, that’s when you see who has what it takes to show they’re a better person or player the week after. Who wants to win? Who’s hurting? We focus on the future. That hurt from last week will still be lingering at the bottom of our stomachs for quite a while, if not forever.”
Meanwhile, Dylan McGeouch hopes he is finally on the way to kick-starting his Aberdeen career. The 28-year-old has struggled to establish himself at Pittodrie since joining in January 2020, and admits he was wary of being “forgotten”.
However, after starting only one of the opening 10 cinch Premiership games this term, his return to Stephen Glass’s side for the last two matches has coincided with
an impressive 2-2 draw at Rangers and a home win over Hearts.
He said: “Personally, it’s been a good week for me to get back in and play my part in a couple of good results.
“I’ve had to wait patiently and keep myself right so that if I got my chance, I’d be ready to take it. Hopefully I can do that now and go on and have a good season. When you don’t play for a while you can get forgotten about and you have to wait patiently to get your chance again. I’ve had one or two injuries since I’ve been here but over the piece I’ve been available. That’s the way football is.
“When the manager’s got a big squad to pick from, people will always miss out, and a lot of the time I’ve been missing out. It’s frustrating but you’ve just got to keep yourself right and hopefully when you get the chance to go and play, you can prove yourself.
“I think the Hibs game before I came back in was a bit of a turning point for us but hopefully myself being in the team has helped get us a good balance between being hard to play against and also being more offensive going forward. I’m delighted to be back involved.”
McGeouch’s recent start at Ibrox was his first since the ill-fated Premier Sports Cup defeat away to Championship side Raith Rovers in August. The former Hibs player does not believe his involvement that day was the reason he spent the following two months on the periphery.
He said: “I’m not too sure. Obviously a lot was made of all the changes but if you watch up until about 50 minutes of that game, we played really well, probably one of the best we’ve played this season.
“When you look back and see the end result, you think it must be down to that. But personally I thought I played really well so I don’t really put it down to the Raith game.”
McGeouch has set up goals in his last two games with deliveries from corners, and will hope to continue that trend if he keeps his place against Motherwell today.
He said: “It’s something you work on. Set-plays are a big part of the game nowadays. It might be the play that turns a game around. Thankfully in the last couple of games we’ve got a goal from them, so hopefully we can keep getting results from it.”