For anyone who has sat in Fir Park's Phil O'Donnell stand, it is immediately apparent that the regulars who sit just behind the dugouts aren't shy of sharing an opinion or two with their manager should things not be panning out as they see fit.
Fans, of course, are entitled to that opinion. They pay their money after all, and they have every right to make their opinion heard. Just don't expect Motherwell manager Mark McGhee to pay any heed to it whatsoever.
McGhee came under fire from sections of the Steelmen support last Saturday for dropping top-scorer Louis Moult, with fans perceiving that Scott McDonald was playing up front on his own as they fell to defeat against Inverness.
Despite that result, McGhee says that criticism from supporters will never sway his thinking, and he will continue to deploy such a formation if he feels it is the best way to achieve a result on any given day.
He said: “Don’t think I don’t hear them but I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’ll live and die by my own decisions, not by anyone else’s decisions or people shouting advice from the stand.
“I am 100% convinced that what we did was right, but the only way I have an argument is if I win the game, that’s the only way for fans to be convinced that I’m right. When you lose then it gets turned on its head.
“I remember going to Parkhead with Aberdeen and Eric Black scored a hat-trick in a 3-1 win. The following week we were playing Dundee and he wasn’t even playing. He went in to see Fergie and he was told that he was part of a team needed to beat Celtic and not in the team he needed to pick to face Dundee.
“I’ve got to do the same. I’m Louis Moult’s biggest fan and supporter and have been talking him up since I got here. But he’s gone a couple of games without scoring and we were playing against a team that’s hard to face if you give them a lot of possession.
“We dealt with that by having three in midfield and three up front. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s one we play – it’s three.
"We put Pearo in against Tansey and it worked a treat, that's why you do these things."
To paraphrase the famous quote, McGhee is also dismissing the notion that his team’s recent actions are set to become their habits.
The Steelmen have lost last-gasp goals in each of their last three matches, costing them crucial points in the league and their place in the Scottish Cup.
McGhee is much more concerned though by the manner of the goals rather than the time they have come at in the game, and he has called upon his men to sharpen their concentration ahead of two pivotal matches against fellow strugglers Kilmarnock and Dundee United.
He said: “There’s an opportunity to make an improvement in our situation, but there’s also an opportunity for the other teams to make inroads on us, so we know the importance of it.
“We’re going into it in a good frame of mind, we’re not going into it as a team who are losing games because there’s no spirit or no real performance.
“We’re losing games for two reasons – one, we’ve got to do better in certain situations, and secondly, we could just do with a bit of the rub of the green.
“Someone said though that luck is where preparation and opportunity meet, so we think our preparation is good, and hopefully we’ll be able to get that bit of luck soon.
“When you go back and look at Saturday and the two goals we lost, there were a couple of things we could have done to prevent them, there’s no doubt about that. There was probably three people complicit in the first goal, so we’ve got to do better in those situations.
“I can’t see losing late goals as a trend though, it’s more of a coincidence. They’ve all come under different circumstances – the penalty at Dundee, the goal against Thistle and the goal on Saturday – they happen to be near the end and the games have been that close they were critical.
“No matter how well we play, if we continue to lose cheap goals like that then we’ll continue to have poor results.
“We’ve got to tighten up in certain things while keeping the same attitude and approach, and I don’t think we’re that far away.”
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