Motherwell Sink to Six Straight Defeats as Johansson Searches for a Way Out

Motherwell have lost six Scottish Premiership games in a row, their worst league run since Terry Butcher was in charge 23 years ago.

The slump is hard to square with what came before. Last season, Motherwell finished fourth in the Scottish Premiership, the top flight of Scottish football. BBC Sport reported that Chris Sutton, the former Celtic and Blackburn striker who now works as a pundit, called them the best team he had seen north or south of the border last season.

Much of that side has gone. Elijah Just, Stephen Welsh, Elliot Watt and Callum Slattery all left in the summer. Jens Berthel Askou also departed, joining Toulouse in France. Rebuilding a squad after that kind of exit takes time, and the results have reflected it.

Alfred Johansson is now the man in charge. His first league game brought a win at Easter Road, away to Hibernian, and that is the only good news on the run. Since then, the defeats have piled up. Motherwell were also knocked out of the League Cup by Stenhousemuir, a club from a lower division.

The goals have dried up. Motherwell are averaging 1.1 goals per game this season, down from 1.55 last season. Expected goals, a measure of how good a side's chances are, tells a different story. Their average has risen from 1.48 last season to 1.6 this season. In plain terms, the team is still creating good openings. It is not putting enough of them away.

That gap is what makes this a puzzle rather than a simple decline. Chances that should be scored are being missed, and a side that is short of goals can quickly lose confidence. Fans will be hoping the finishing comes back before the table gets any worse.

The table is now the real pressure point. Motherwell sit one point above the foot of the Scottish Premiership, meaning one point clear of the bottom club. A small run of results in either direction could change their position quickly, and the season is still young enough for that to happen.

Earlier this season, Motherwell also played Freiburg of Germany over two legs in European competition, a reminder of how far the club has travelled in recent campaigns. Now the focus is much closer to home. Johansson needs to find a win, and soon, to stop the slide and steady a squad that has changed a lot in a short space of time.