MOTHERWELL manager Graham Alexander believes that his club were hung out to dry by the SPFL after agreeing to bring forward their home match against Rangers, scheduled for tomorrow lunchtime, by 24 hours.
His Rangers counterpart, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, had appealed last week to the governing body for the switch to allow his players an extra day’s preparation for their Europa League semi-final first leg against RB Leipzig in the Red Bull Arena on Thursday.
Alexander was unhappy, however, that it took league chiefs over 96 hours after the Lanarkshire club had consented to it to confirm the date change, thus interfering with his own arrangements in the build-up to today’s meeting.
“I was involved in discussions last Friday and we didn’t get a decision until late afternoon on Tuesday,” he said. “We listened to everyone’s opinions about the game being moved, we could understand that, we gave our own opinions but said whatever happens can we have a decision by first thing Monday because we’ve got a week to prepare.
“We didn’t get that until after 3 o’clock on Tuesday, [by which time] we’d already trained. I just feel a little bit disappointed. The reasons for it I could understand but we’ve been right at the back end of the queue for the decision.
“We’ve trained, we’ve prepared and it won’t affect what we’ve done in the last two or three days but I don’t think we were a big part of the equation when they were coming up with the decision - and it shouldn’t take four or five days to make it.
“I gave my thoughts on the matter to our chief executive, Alan Burrows, and Alan shared my opinion on it. We spoke on Friday morning so to not get a decision for [another] four days I don’t think is right.”
Five Premiership clubs are guaranteed European football next term and Motherwell are one point behind fourth-placed Dundee United.
“The players are well aware that European football is potentially available to them so I don’t need to speak to them about that,” Alexander added.
“It’s something for me and the board to discuss but we want to over-achieve if we can and us being in the top six is a real achievement for us in itself.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here