STEVE Robinson made no attempts to hide the fact the next manager at Motherwell will have to undertake a ‘big’ recruitment drive to overhaul the Fir Park squad. However, the caretaker refused to throw his hat into the ring on the eve of his first match in charge to be the man to start the rebuilding process, insisting he will treat his situation on a game-by-game basis.
It was only last month Robinson returned to Motherwell following a stint as manager of Oldham Athletic but already he finds himself in temporary charge following Mark McGhee’s sacking on Tuesday. Going back to the club he was previously assistant at under both McGhee and Ian Baraclough was an easy decision for the 42-year-old, despite confessions he had only intended to stay in Lanarkshire for three months until the summer.
Now thrust forward to be the man to steer Motherwell through this brief rocky spell, he did not underplay the magnitude of the role for whoever was to take over on a permanent basis.
“To be honest I came here with the intention of being here for three months towards the end of the season then I had some tentative options,” he said. “I’m taking Saturday and let’s see where we go from there. I’ll sit down with Alan and the board and we’ll get each other’s thoughts. It’s a similar situation to when I came in, but I think it’s a better squad now to the one I came in to. I think there’s a better atmosphere among the players.
“It’s a big job. It’s a big, big job you can see where we are in the table and that we’ve won one in the last 10 games I believe.
“It’s a big job and there’s a lot of players coming to that end of their career that we need replacements for. There will be a big recruitment process within a limited budget.
“We’ve tried to put a little bit of structure into it this week, which was my intention anyway to get them organised and try for them not to concede goals. If they don’t do the basics right, if they don’t win headers, tackles and second balls, it doesn’t matter who is sitting in the hot seat.”
Robinson’s stint at League One Oldham Athletic was an eye-opening experience. The Northern Irish coach lasted just six months in the job. He faced unique and difficult challenges from day one, though, most notably arriving in to find a squad of just three. With this in mind, he is pragmatic about his tenure there and about any impact it would have if he chose to go for the Motherwell job.
“I have to be very careful with what I say in terms of what happened,” said Robinson. “What I will say is the facts. I had three professional players when I went in three and a half weeks after pre-season started and I had four weeks to recruit the players.
“I signed 23 players in four weeks. We were three points off safety with two games in hand. It was an experience I learned a lot from. So no it doesn’t put me off.”
Baraclough, who remains at Boundary Park as assistant, yesterday urged his former employers to give Robinson the job on a permanent basis, even before he has taken charge of his first game away to Kilmarnock tomorrow.
He laughed: “That’s because I brought him in at Oldham! He’s repaying that.
“That’s Ian’s opinion and obviously I worked with Ian here as assistant and as manager at Oldham so he knows how I work. I don’t think it’s any secret I get teams organised and hopefully they are hard to break down and won’t concede too many goals.
“There’s no magic wand. If you can get players doing the basics right you have half a chance.”
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