Motherwell manager Alfred Johansson has told his players to "go home and eat some barbed wire" as they prepare for a Conference League qualifying second leg against HB Torshavn in the Faroe Islands. The Swedish coach's message, reported by BBC Sport, is as vivid as it sounds: steel yourself, because this is not a fixture to take lightly.

Motherwell carry a 2-0 lead from the first leg at Fir Park on July 23, 2026, and might expect the job to be done. Johansson is not in the business of expecting anything. The Conference League — UEFA's third-tier club competition, below the Champions League and Europa League — has a habit of producing awkward evenings for teams who travel to Europe's smaller football nations, and the 48-year-old knows it.

HB Torshavn have not lost a home match in European competition for five years. Go back a decade and the record reads only two home defeats in qualifying. Johansson spelled out the scale of the task by naming the clubs who have travelled to the Faroes and come up short: Brondby, Maccabi Haifa, and Helsinki — all bigger names than Motherwell, all unable to win on HB Torshavn's patch. The second leg takes place on Thursday, July 30, with a 6pm kick-off local time.

The clubs have history. Motherwell and Havnar Bóltfelag — HB Torshavn's full name — met in European competition back in 1994, a tie that predates most of the current squad. There is also the added subplot of a former Motherwell player lining up in the HB Torshavn squad, a detail that adds a touch of reunion to an already loaded fixture.

For forward Regan Charles-Cook, the tie represents a first taste of UEFA football. The Grenadian international joined Motherwell in the summer of 2025 without a full pre-season and has had to wait for his European debut. He arrived after previous spells in Belgium and is now finding his feet under a manager who is himself still new — Johansson is Motherwell's latest appointment, making this the second consecutive pre-season where the squad has had to adapt to a new boss.

Fans who want to watch the away leg live can do so via SolidSport, with the match available to stream for £12, as confirmed on Motherwell's official website.

What stands out about Johansson's approach is the refusal to let a two-goal cushion breed comfort. His barbed-wire line is the kind of phrase that sticks to a dressing-room wall — the sort of thing a manager says when he has seen a comfortable lead dissolve on a windswept pitch in the North Atlantic and is determined it will not happen to him. Motherwell are in a strong position. Johansson is making sure nobody forgets that strong positions can still collapse.