capt_oats

@Desp has already covered it but it's not unheard of for us to pay transfer fees, Moult and Carson are the really obvious ones but if you look through our transfer history for recent seasons it's peppered with 'undisclosed fees'. I mean even Liam Donnelly was an "undisclosed fee". It's fair to say that the majority of our signings don't incur a fee but equally with reference to this season it's not a regular occurrence for us to have received a club record fee of c.£3m. We posted a profit of £346k for the curtailed season and it's predicted that we'll post a record profit for the 20/21 season (our previous record was 17/18 - £1.72m). I'm not sure why there's an inference that the Scottish Government loan made available has influenced our investment of that profit whether it's in playing staff, stadium upgrades or infrastructure.

Scott McDonald appreciation post.

Aye, I've said it on here before but when you look at the rebuild we've seen on and off the park under Alexander (we're advertising for another first team strength and conditioning coach on top of the various other new roles we've created) I genuinely find it difficult to imagine what a Tommy Wright Motherwell would even have looked like.

Sort of related, I noticed this pop up on the BBC Gossip page the other day. Link

That's Alexander in the job a year to the day. Seems like it's been quite the news dump from his press conference. Confirmed the Shaw signing Confirmed the outbreak of the 'vid Said we're not interested in Lafferty (as @crazylegsjoe_mfc mentioned in the post above) Pitched the idea of an expanded top flight (I'll not link to that as it's The Sun running it - f**k The Sun). Pointed out that the whole 'play games in England' won't happen.

So we've had an outbreak of the 'vid.

His loan was only until the January window anyway so I'd imagine it's probably academic in that respect. Given he can only play for us or Hearts this season (unless he's got an exotic option on another calendar) you'd think there will be some clarity whether it's expected he'll be back if/when they run a news story. I'd thought if we'd kept him around he might have got more of an opportunity if Watt ends up fucking off.

I'd say pretty unlikely it's anything more than getting some games. Shaw signed a 4 year deal in the summer. Henderson was out of contract in the summer.

Don't know why but I'm amused at the phrasing here. "Arrives at Motherwell..." like he's jetting in and we're not 20 mins drive away.

There's not really that much YouTube footage of him but he looks fucking huge.

Here you go. https://fminside.net/players/2-fm-22/85081880-ngolo-kante

That's pretty much how I see it as well. Goss has a habit of picking up daft bookings as well, he's currently on 4. @Swello's point about squad building is interesting as it definitely feels like this is a case where we'd look to do our more permanent business in the summer (acknowledging that Tierney's just signed a 3.5 year deal). It's maybe recency bias as we've been doing quite well of late but if we were to add Shaw to the group there's probably far less of a drop off that we'd see with a Robinson squad eg: Campbell to Crawford or Donnelly to O'Hara as the holding mid (I'm not an O'Hara hater but he struggled with that role IMO). Seems wild to say it given it was the area that was of most concern a couple of months ago but you could probably perm any 3 from Donnelly, Slattery, Goss, Maguire, Cornelius plus Tierney and potentially Shaw and be happy enough.

- it came from the no doubt 100% accurate FM22 database (and as such probably shouldn't be taken too seriously). We were talking ramdeuters the other day so it tickled me to see the bold Liam listed as a mezzala.

Aye, I don't think we've been short of bodies either but it feels like we're heavy reliant on Goss so if I was adding to the midfield I'd be looking to take some of that weight off him as IIRC he was prone to some injuries when he was at Shrewsbury and is fond of a daft booking. Digging about the Sheffield Weds forum to see what they were saying and found a few posts in their Liam Shaw thread, aside from the general mewling about him fucking off to Celtic this seems to be what he's about: Oh, and this one's for the position massive (looking at you @Busta Nut).

I think the re-emergence of Donnelly has helped with the midfield but O'Hara's injured and hasn't kicked a ball since the start of November and I'd say this probably puts more of a question mark over whether Crawford stays. It'd also probably rule Grimshaw out of being viewed as a midfield option. In that case it's Maguire, Slattery, Donnelly, Goss, Tierney, Cornelius for the 3 midfield spots. I've thought that while we've a number of bodies in midfield there's still a slight issue with the balance/blend so I get why we'd be looking at another midfielder. Having said that, I know next to f**k all about Shaw other than he got Sheffield Wednesday fans bent out of shape by moving to Celtic for a reduced training compensation.

"Hijacking" St Johnstone's deal is it?

He played wide of the 3 when Cole was starting as well but as @Desp says they generally interchange. The whole Watt thing is interesting as he was our POTY last year by an absolute mile but only scored 3 league goals. His value was massive but it was about all the other attributes that he brings rather than him being a goalscorer. Which is why United looking to go all in on him just feels a bit weird if they are explicitly looking for someone to score goals. It's been said plenty but there's as much chance that he moves to United and reverts to last season's version of himself as he continues the form he's been in over the past 6 months. Which is to say he's still clearly a very good player but not someone who's sat as the league's top scorer. His goalscoring this season feels like it's been something that's been managed. It's been pointed out a lot on our thread but in his short time at the club Alexander has been able to turn players who were clearly good footballers but who were anything but prolific into goalscorers (Cole and Watt) while Van Veen has low-key chipped in and is on 7 for the season. A large part of that seems to be down to him explicitly demanding that his strikers focus on scoring goals (which sounds self-evident but having watched Stephen Robinson's sides there are plenty of managers who don't make it a priority as long as they're putting in a shift). There are suggestions that there were other reasons why Watt was dropped for a while at the start of the season (the rumour is that he had a move south lined up but it fell through in August) but that doesn't make the points Alexander highlights below any less true, specifically when he's talking about the fact that Watt's natural instinct is to be a facilitator.

Wee Ross out with the Covid...

Interesting that's the player at Hibs you flagged as 'wide forward to play off the left' given there's another really obvious one there whose contract is up in the summer (and who has actually made more appearances than I expected for someone whose knee is held together by sellotape). Not that I'm advocating signing him more that he was pretty much the first player I thought of given Maloney seems to be having a bit of an overhaul.

Aye, I mean Tony has been smashing. When you think about the circumstances in how he arrived at the club we were 3rd but had just lost Cole back to Wigan, sold Scott to Hull and Long was Chris Long. He'd sacked off CSKA and hadn't kicked a ball in about 2 month (and it showed). We've been good for him, he's been good for us. Fair play to him he got his head down over the shutdown. He's probably in the best shape of his career at the moment, was deservedly our POTY last season and his 6 months this season have been better than I think anyone would reasonably expected. Him moving to United still feels very weird and he feels like big shoes to fill. But when you look at our forwards/strikers of the past 10 years: Higdon, Moult, McDonald, Sutton, Ojamaa, Murphy etc then Watt feels likes he's a distance from being irreplaceable. Even last summer people were freaking out about "how do we replace Devante Cole's goals"...no one was talking about Tony Watt being that guy and it's an inconvenient truth that Van Veen has a (slightly) better goals per minute than Watt at the moment (and is also in the top 5 scorers in the league).

I think it was @Swello referenced it the other day but with the change in strategy it's difficult to square settling for someone like Nicky Clark with the new approach. I was having a look back at the recruitment stuff the club put out when Daws was announced and also the video that went up post-deadline day and none of this says "Sure, we'll happily take whatever dross Tam Courts is trying to punt.":

It's not that unusual. We had a sell on as part of the deal that took Moult to Preston with 6 months left on his contract.