capt_oats

#bitored

Apparently that's County interested in Stockton. I've you're willing to take a pinch of salt Morecambe are still holding out for more money than folk are willing to pay. This site has lifted Nixon's article: https://insidefutbol.com/2022/12/19/ross-county-make-bid-for-motherwell-and-forest-green-rovers-target/587859/

According to Flow we've spent over £2m on the stadium and pitch over the past couple of seasons.

Definitely favourite rather than best; 1. When Harry Met Sally - dir. Rob Reiner (1988) 2. Kicking and Screaming - dir. Noah Baumbach (1995) 3. Back To The Future - dir. Robert Zemeckis (1985) 4. Raiders of The Lost Ark - dir. Steven Spielberg (1981) 5. The Empire Strikes Back - dir. Irvin Kershner (1980) 6. The Godfather Pt. II - dir. Francis Ford Coppola (1974) 7. Gregory's Girl - dir. Bill Forsyth (1981) 8. Beautiful Girls - dir. Ted Demme (1996) 9. Before Sunrise - dir. Richard Linklater (1995) 10. Say Anything - dir. Cameron Crowe (1989)

Given the nick of the damage to the stands I suppose it's possible there's been an idea floated about reversing the fixture on Friday with the game scheduled for Rugby Park in February. Fwiw there was no issue with the pitch on Friday.

Nah, I'd imagine the numbers related to the fact that Saints apparently paid the guts of £100k to get him and it's suggested he's one of their higher earners.

@RandomGuy.

Aye to be clear that wasn't a ding on Saints it was more that (IMO) a player like Clark wouldn't have done anything to placate the folk who were wildly underwhelmed by signings like Paul McGinn, Blair Spittal or Josh Morris. With a month of the window to go when Hammell got the job then Nicky Clark and a hugely regressed Christian Doidge seemed to be the sort of options that were available. Even now, with the benefit of hindsight and having seen the way the season has panned out, if we're given the choice of paying a fee for Clark or signing an obviously broken Louis Moult on loan then a high percentage of Motherwell fans would still be cuing up Spandau Ballet.

I think there's definitely an argument that, if nothing else, signing Moult went some way to getting a certain section of fans back onside after the way things went sideways with Alexander. Is that enough to justify the signing? Possibly. Sometimes it's just nice to give people what they want. Not only did Hammell not really have much time it was/is a pretty shallow pool he'd have been recruiting from. Looking around the other squads in the league it's difficult to see a centre forward who was signed in our price range that I'd have advocated taking a punt on. Regardless of how little Moult has played I imagine a fair number would have been absolutely fucking furious if we'd went out and chucked money to pay a fee for someone like Nicky Clark instead. Cards on the table, I'd almost certainly have been in that number. As has been mentioned, this is now the test for Hammell as he's had a bit of time with the squad and has been in the job for a while. It's pretty much acknowledged that he was essentially flung into the job in the summer and circumstances presumably informed his signings. Either way, it'll be interesting to see who our targets are.

Ha! I noticed that earlier. Nah, the club haven't announced it. Sligo's manager has confirmed it and that's wee Rossi just went ahead on his socials but nothing official from the club. Given the state of our squad I wonder how many deals we have ready to go as soon as the window opens. With the break being World Cup related rather than "winter" and coinciding with the window being open if feels like we should really have been trying to get things locked down as much as possible over the last month.

Oh...

So we did have a training camp. We were down at St. Georges.

This has been one of my biggest concerns about the break landing when it has. In previous seasons where we've had the break it's allowed us to focus on getting some bodies through the door and bedding them in. Looking at our line-up for the Spurs game it was a heavy comedown to realise that we're basically still asking the same group of players to go again. With Moult seemingly done we're actually a body down from where we were for the St Johnstone game.

Us (Motherwell). Although we've not announced it, it's been confirmed by the player's previous manager.

I mean, we've scored in 13 of our 16 league games. So that's something. The problem is that we rarely seem to score more than 1. We've only scored more than a single goal 3 times in the league.

Sort of the same with us although we've only lost one league game by more than the odd goal this season (Hearts at Fir Park). (I think) the only game we've come from behind to win this season was Aberdeen at Pittodrie and even then we initially went 1 up. @thisGRAEME covered it well on The Terrace Patreon; we're not a team that's well placed to chase a game as we don't have the depth of players who can change a game for us. As @Casagolda points out, if Moult is away back down the road that leaves us a body down from where we were before the break and we were massively light at that point. If you look at the squad we had for the Spurs game with our current injury situation we're essentially running with the same 14 outfield players plus a bunch of school weans.

Chat is that he's injured again and is away back to his parent club. We confirmed that we'd cancelled Aarons loan at the start of November so it'd be a similar situation.

I'm sceptical as to whether anything will come of this but I tend to be of the opinion that there's usually at least a crumb of truth with Nixon's stories, whether or not they actually happen is a different matter. Either way, it's no secret that we're in a position where we're looking for bodies so that crumb may well be that Stockton is one of many we're looking at. What's interesting to me is whether or not this is an indication of the type of forward Hammell's looking for given the options he currently has and the fact he seems wedded to the 4231. Ultimately he was parachuted into the job with a month before the deadline in the summer so the business he ended up doing was probably reflective of that. It'll be interesting to see what his targets look like now he's had his feet under the desk for a few months.

Basically this. From what I can tell from the bits and pieces about him over the summer the feeling was that Morecambe were pricing him out a move. No one was willing to match their valuation so he handed in a transfer request and tried to force the move. Seems he's pretty much downed tools this season as a result.

It's apparently Cole Stockton. Football League World have no problem lifting from his Patreon articles: https://footballleagueworld.co.uk/league-one-club-rivalling-scottish-premiership-outfit-for-morecambe-talisman/

I see Nixon has Forest Green 'rivalling' us for a striker. Possibly worth mentioning that yer man Stevie Grieve is now FGR's HoR after leaving St Johnstone. I don't subscribe to Nixon's Patreon but I imagine the name will appear somewhere. He had us in for a striker a while back, Tyler Smith at Hull.

Aye, it's worth mentioning that Spurs chucked their weans on around 74' compared with us emptying our bench just before the hour.

We've kept quiet on that tbf.

Tbh, the fit is pretty much the same as most of the recent Macron shirts. Which I realise isn't much use for reference if you're not generally buying football shirts these days. Don't get me wrong it's slightly fitted but I've consistently been a Large across brands (Adidas, Nike, Puma etc) and I'm Large with Macron as well. I've not had to size up with any of their stuff including this one (I've a feeling that's not the case for everyone though). Although the tag is 'Matchday' Third Shirt it's not like the player issue Techfit or Formotion shirts Adidas used to do. It's also not skin tight elastane like the sort of shirt Kappa do. Depends on what sort of fit you're looking for I suppose.