Win your home games?
Ahead at Home
Even though the outcome of a football match is always about the efforts of two sets of eleven men, we are continually told that there is a significant advantage in playing at home. There are typical managerial cliches like "We must win our home games" and after every cup game "Anyone at home".
With Motherwell however, playing at home seems to offer very little advantage. In 1997 we played twenty two competitive games at Fir Park and we won seven of them (two against lower division sides in the cup). In the same year we played twenty one away games and won eight of those. Not much of a difference, but why should the surroundings make such a difference to our players performances.
The popular reason for this is the fans. Away from home 'Well fans sit together and back the team throughout the game and generally forgive more mistakes. In his programme notes, Alex McLeish continually thanks us for our support away from home before begging us to do the same at Fir Park. At home though, Motherwell fans seem to be totally different people. The scattering of supporters around the ground does nothing for the atmosphere and on matchdays Fir Park sounds like the local library. The away fans get the South Stand which doubles the noise they make. If a player makes a mistake he is immediately jumped on and abused by a couple of thousand people, particularly if he is near the East Stand.
The club (if they have even noticed) don't seem to be doing much to change this. But why should they? We are scraping just enough points to avoid relegation each year and we have one of the smallest, most apathetic crowds in the league.
Recently however, our home record has been improving. Before the Rangers cup game, we have won four and drawn two in our unbeaten home 'run' of six games. I think that if the fans put more energy into supporting the team and less into abusing them, then we will have a decent home record. Look at how well we play against the Old Firm when the fans support the team. If we did that in every game we would be mid-table at worst (which we could be by the time you're reading this). Having said that if we signed Ronaldo and Shearer we would probably be top of the league! Ah well, never mind. At least Lee McCulloch is starting his 40 game scoring run!
Derek Wilson
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