Swello

I know it's not the done thing on P&B to be complimentary about fitba hacks - but the Herald & Times have some great Motherwell stuff that isn't standard presser fare - mostly because Scott Mullen and Graeme McGarry are 'Well fans I guess. It's actually worth remembering that there was a time when our press coverage consisted of the phrase "Motherwell have no fresh injury concerns" at the end of match previews and the occasional "Murderwell" hatchet job..... Our current COO can take most of the credit for the change..

I think the robbie leitch situation sums up the difficulties for young players - even at a club where there is a decent path into the first team. Ideally, young players shouldn't make their "big" move before they have decent first team experience because the vast majority of the players who head down south with little or no first team games end up with "boomerang" moves back up the road soon after - usually to a lower level club to the one they leave in the first place. I say "ideally" as Robbie Leitch wasn't near our 1st team and it would have been a tempting offer to join a well funded academy - but he'd probably have been as well on loan to St Mirren over the past year....

I want to get back to moaning about the difficulties in reaching Europa League away games..

Could be worse - they could give him his prediction page back on the BBC website...

Great to see Moulty get Player of the Month (when was our last? ) but the panel seem to have somehow failed to see Alan Campbell when watching our one man team....

I'm sure there was also a shite attempt to wind up accies with some #bantz last season that felt totally out of place on the club twitter account.....

My reaction at the time (probably in the depths of this thread somewhere) was that it read like something a big corporate would put together for a senior job (although it's rare to see a job description of that kind of length anywhere). Given the make-up of our support (ie - not exactly teeming with middle-class, middle managers) - all the talk about Stakeholders and Benchmarks and "creative thinkers" would just turn people off - and that's before they are expected to "diffuse recognisable tendencies towards violence" during the game. The sheer amount of work involved is staggering when you read it back (think of a week with 3 games in it) - and I actually think there is an arrogance there to expect that someone will do that for no pay - the young lassies in the pie stand will be paid more by the club than the SLO (and their only stakeholders are angry old guys whose pie base has stuck to the foil). Simply put, no-one with a job and a family could do the SLO role as it is written down there. Everyone's circumstances are different - but I'd imagine if this role was a paid one that would allow someone to do it (say)part-time in conjunction with another part-time job and make some kind of living out of it - then it would attract non-fleece wearing younger folk that could actually be credible in this role and there would probably be no shortage of people that would want to work for the club (as opposed to being exploited by it...).

I must confess to having some sympathy with Jules. Yes, he was honkingly bad - but he was a totally inexperienced player and was dropped into an utter clusterfuck of a team at that point, with a manager who was beyond help. That's a total sink or swim thing - and he really sunk.

Couldn't agree more with that. First and foremost, it's great to have a proper solid centre half and we look a lot more difficult to beat with him in there. At the moment, it feels like the final piece of the jigsaw. Last season, our defence (regardless of who was in there) was constantly exposed as our midfield offered no protection to them - but now with Campbell, Rose and McHugh putting a power of work in, teams need to work to even get at our defence. Hartley seems to be one of these signings who "gets" the club right away and looks like he's been playing here for years. Almost as important will be the effect on Kipre because with the best will in the world, Henneghan wasn't going to help with Cedric's development as he was fairly inexperienced himself. Now that he's playing alongside an experienced guy who can talk him through games, Cedric should improve further, which is important if he is to be one of our next paydays... The pleasing thing at this stage of the season is that you could pick any part of the team and make a pretty much irrefutable case that it's improved from the last couple of seasons. Regardless of how this season pans out, that's a pretty good achievement...

Yep - we beat them (at Parkhead I think??) before the cup semi & replay....

I guess the marketing bit he can point to some success - I thought the season ticket marketing was really good this year and I would imagine that will be the main thing in his remit. We sold more season tickets and crowds seem to be up - so he can rightly take some credit. The fan engagement thing wasn't a success IMO - I thought the SLO thing was completely overcooked and most people ran a mile from it. It had a huge job description that strongly made it feel like it should be a paid role rather than a volunteer thing with some perks. In a supporter-base like ours, there are vanishingly few people that could ever meet the criteria (eg - committing to be there for every away game) and it was never likely to be a success. To be clear - I like the idea of an SLO but in a club like ours' it would need to be done differently and built up from something more modest at first. It seems that people who actually met the guy found him decent and folk that followed him on twitter found him a bit of a dick. My only impression based on his twitter stuff is that he thought the english lads culture/#bantz worked here, when it really doesn't.

He leaves a strong legacy.

Makes me angry reading that - and I'm mystified that Regan is still in a job given the debacle he's presided over for the past few years - by any reasonable measure, he's an abject failure and should not be trusted to deliver something this important. If the statement attributed to him in that piece is true, it simply smacks of someone who knows which side his bread's buttered on and understands that his survival simply hinges on keeping the bigger clubs on-side. Even if you charitably interpret it as a negotiating tactic, a threat to disenfranchise everyone except the bigger city clubs just exposes the dysfunctional mess that passes for football governance in this country. The health of the mid-sized town clubs is actually important and the game in general needs these clubs to produce good young players as these are precisely the clubs where there is pathway to 1st team football for them. The OF, despite their facilities, have a fucking laughable record of bringing players through (despite presumably having the pick of young players) and to bet the farm on them changing their ways is hilariously naive. At a time where the game here needs some imagination and skill to re-invigorate it, we're stuck with a total fucking non-entity.

I'm not sure of the latest position on Project Brave - the club have gone kind of quiet on it of late, with only a few oblique references here and there. Given how vociferous Alan Burrows was on the subject (and quite rightly as it could f**k our business model entirely), I'm guessing that there has been some sort of rethink on the flawed pile of shite that was first mooted.

#notaneliteacademy

That's great news - I think a few people were complaining that with all these new players coming in and the long serving guys fading away, we were losing some identity - but both Campbell and Cadden are two of the best players to come through the ranks in years (and that's high praise) - and as both are apparently 'Well fans, it helps with that side of things. I doubt either will be here for the long term but to have two U-21 internationals in the same midfield is really good going for a team that weren't going to invited to Project Brave....

Has Craggs joined twitter?? I think he's the sort that will have total meltdowns

Interesting decision. From an outside point of view, County are arguably performing at the same level as the most of the clubs they would view as peers and it begs the question for any town club in the league as to what is realistically achievable - especially now that Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen are operating without most of the financial restrictions of recent times. I see what St Johnstone are doing now (regardless of how well and sustainably they are run) - and what Motherwell did before them - as an overachievement and not a realistic benchmark. Assuming a smaller club is going to live within it's means - the expectation surely is that with good recruitment in manager and players (and a productive youth system) that a mid-table finish is consistently achievable and maybe a cup run to add a bit of excitement. It looks shite and unambitious written down like that but that is the reality. I think I've seen 'Well finish in every position in the league bar 1st but every season, my goal for the club is to stay up as it simply takes a poor manager or some lazy signings and you're in the grubber. If Uncle Roy sees the club is on a downward trajectory, it is possibly a good decision to change while there is a lot of time to turn things round - but I'd be interested to see what the new manager's target is..

I would imagine if he plays near his current level for a few months, they will want to give him first team wages (and a tasty extension)....

I've found myself listening to it less in the car after the game as generally there is very little mention of non-OF games - which wasn't the case even a couple of years back. It almost makes me hanker for a few years back when it was unalloyed Dons love-in. In terms of the league - Celtic are arguably the least interesting story on any given day. They are better - so much better - than anyone else and so there is only so many ways that you can discuss run of the mill wins (and Radio Scotland have tried all of them).

Just because games between Motherwell and Hibs tend to be amongst the most entertaining in the top flight is no reason for the BBC to make it the commentary game you mad fool! Broadcasting one-sided processions from Parkhead to thick Highlands & Islands-based Celtic fans on Radio nan Gàidheal is where the real audience figures are to be gained...Also - if Pat Bonner is on, they need to choose a game where he recognises at least one player....

That was bizarre - I've always seen Livingston as a slightly more controlled version of Gretna - where they overspent to get to a certain level and then have settled into their natural level once all the financial madness calmed down. They could be a Premiership club of course but should? Nah.

That U20's line-up from last night could probably hold it's own against the bottom teams in the Premiership - I feel a bit sorry for the boys from the Energy Check Stadium at Firhill. It says a lot for the depth of the current 1st team squad that we're having to give fit, overage players a run-out in the '20s (and probably underlines again how little we were getting for our budget last season). I'd never seen The Lithuanian before and I hadn't realised he was another tall guy - Robinson is not a fan of the traditional Motherwell Midget obviously.

Celtic getting pumped by a team on another planet financially is a great wee lesson in empathy for their supporters - not that I expect it to have any effect.

I totally get the financial thing and the "everyone will still call it Firhill" argument - but I can't get past the idea that this type of stadium rename is just really naff. Firhill is one the best known old grounds and it seems a shame to saddle it with a shite name like that. If it was at Fir Park, I'd be dead against it even if it did pay a players wages or whatever (because football supporters are allowed to be irrational).