capt_oats

To that point, a current thread on Twitter dot com Burton currently have a similar vacancy to the WS role at their community trust although salary is just listed as "negotiable, depending on experience". https://www.burtonalbioncommunitytrust.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Business-Development-Manager-Vacancy-Pack.pdf

I've never been in the market for work in the "Business Development Manager" area so this is off the back of a quick Google and presented without comment: Also, according to this article from 15th March 21 the WS brings in £15k+ per month in subscriptions...so £180k p/a. That £30k as a top end of the salary scale comes in at 16.66% of annual subscription income.

Last one I got was 3rd September, which coincidentally mentioned: Not to put 2+2 together but I'd guess that's probably a factor if a replacement hasn't been sorted. We were advertising a 'Development Manager' role as of 24th September.

Aye, Kipré signed 3 different contracts with us in the one season. We had him in on trial along with another centre back (Bira Dembele) who ended up patching us to move back to France. Kipré signed a 1 year deal after the trial games in July, he signed a fresh deal with an extra year in August, then an extension to 2020 in April '18. We sold him to Wigan in August 18. Some boi. Amusingly there were folk who were absolutely fucking furious that we chucked extensions at him when he'd only played a handful of games.

Missed this article at the time during the summer but @Yenitit's post in the Dundee thread about looking at managers from abroad put me in mind of Simo. I see his currently club KuPS are 2nd in the Finnish league just now. Kind of feels like the timings just been slightly off when he's been in for the job previously. We were in free-fall when he interviewed post-McGhee and in hindsight Robinson worked out for the most part.

I was going to say the same thing. Reading between the lines, from what both Watt and KVV have said, the instruction they've both had has been to play as a more traditional #9 and be selfish with it rather than anything fluid in the way McGhee's front 3 worked (even the Moult, McDonald, Johnson version).

Aye, to be clear this isn't me parachuting into your thread claiming we've reinvented the wheel or whatever. It's just that on the face of things there seems to have been a trend/profile that's worked for us. It's why Eric Nicholson getting his feelings hurt that we didn't appoint Tommy Wright in the Courier got a reaction from a few of us at the time. If you look at our historic managerial choices then us going for Alexander ahead of Wright was hardly 'inexplicable'. In fact, in hindsight Wright wouldn't have been anything like the "glaringly obvious ‘two plus two equals four’ fit" he claims (although I'm sure most would have had no real issue if it had been Wright). The idea of Tommy Wright dealing with our media team and relentlessly improving people's lives is quite funny though. In the same way, from the outside looking it's interesting (to me) to try and get a handle on what would be a good fit for Dundee and work out what Nelms has been looking for when he's appointed McCann, McIntyre and McPake (Hartley wasn't Nelms, right?). You obviously had the interest in Jack Ross prior to McCann getting the job permanently then flip-flopped on the "criteria" for the job with McIntyre before going in-house with McPake who'd been viewed as a project being trained up. I can see why folk have been suggesting that Charlie Adam would be a stick-on to get the job next but equally I'm not sure I could confidently second guess Nelms.

Who am I to question Nelms' judgement on that one then?

Clearly wouldn't presume that what works for Motherwell would work for Dundee but it's been a thing with us that barring McGhee's 2nd stint (which was essentially a re-appointment) we haven't appointed a manager who had/has previously managed another club in Scotland since the 80s. The 90s we went through a spell of giving managers their first jobs McLeish inherited a great team but the wheels came off after a couple of seasons, Davies was promoted from within and spent all of John Boyle's money on various family members. Black only lasted 27 games before admin. Davies aside we've swerved the former player/club legend route. (He falls into the former player rather than club legend category obvs). Generally our more successful appointments have been managers who fall in the 40-50 bracket with a bit of previous experience. McGhee was 50 when we appointed him he'd previously managed Reading, Leicester, Wolves, Millwall and Brighton. McCall was 46 and had previously managed 135 games at Bradford and a fair bit of coaching at Bradford and Sheffield United. Robinson was 42 and had obviously been assistant to Baraclough, left to manage Oldham and had come back in as first team coach just in time for your lot to scud us 5-1 at Fir Park and see McGhee get his jotters. It's still early days for Alexander but he was 49 when he was appointed and had managed at Fleetwood, Scunthorpe and Salford before he pitched up here. Those appointments for the most part were left field enough to miss the usual suspects but not wild enough to be totally whacky. The story is that we ended up giving Robinson the job ahead of John Hughes (although Hughes' people tell a slightly different story obvs). I'd say someone who's experienced enough at a decent level to know what they're doing, young enough to have ambition to learn and develop, distant enough from the Scottish game to come in with a fresh pair of eyes and has a background that carries enough weight in the dressing room is the sort of profile that's a good fit for Scottish football. I've said it before in this thread but I genuinely think that if Dundee opened the job to applications and you had a chief executive with half a clue of what makes a good football manager at this level you'd probably be surprised at the sort of applicants you'd get that are outside the usual faces.

Aye, this is actually what low-key interested me tbh. We've got goals from both Watt and KVV when they've played centrally but pushing one of the two into the wide role feels like it's clipping their wings a bit. For all the 433 has its faults with the balance of the squad we have (*looks at our midfield*) since he's come in, give or take a few tweaks with how it's implemented (eg: we've flirted now and again with playing from the back), Alexander has used 433 but consistently had our central striker scoring goals in a way we never did when Robinson was here. Compare the scoring return from Cole, Watt and KVV under Alexander with SR's 433 in the Sexy Motherwell phase which was the same shape in terms of "formation" but had a far heavier lean on our midfield to score (Turnbull, Donnelly) and came unstuck once those midfield goals dried up and few of our "anywhere across the front 3" forwards were scoring. Which I suppose is how we landed on 68% possession, 17 shots on goal and 13 corners but still lost 1-0 against Accies. It's not exactly the same thing but @PauloPerth made a point in the St Johnstone thread earlier about Davidson putting an emphasis on his front players pressing and closing down in their system, which felt familiar with what we saw around the Main era Motherwell but it made me think about the difference we've seen in that specific role. Like, Cole literally went from having scored 1 goal in 10 appearances under Robinson to 11 in 21 under Alexander in the same season with both managers playing a 433. Agree though, it'd be nice to get a way of having both Watt and KVV in the side and getting the best out of both. Actually, here's the scoring split in all competitions since Alexander took over in January:

Again, the SPFL Twitter admin knows the score.

I'd stop short of calling this interesting but it feels like precisely the same conversation Alexander had with Watt a couple of weeks ago and got goals out of him as well.

Sorry for the B2B posts from me on this page. I know yer man @RandomGuy. mentioned this when we were first publicly linked with him but it's interesting to see where Tierney plays for Bohemians vs how we set up. It mostly looks like he's slightly advanced in a midfield 3 but not quite a #10. You'd imagine that's a 433 with 2 sitters but not quite a 4231. At the moment do we have anyone who plays in this sort of area? I don't think we do. Big ask for a 20 year old to come over and step in to run the show but still... Anyway, these are the team lines from the most recent games he's played (more in the spoiler). I know there's been a criticism about our midfield recruitment this summer but tbf there wasn't really any midfield recruitment beyond Slattery and Goss so it feels like a conscious decision not to just bring in randoms if we missed out on actual targets (and from Alexander's chat the other week Tierney was someone we were keen to bring in through the summer). Looking at the contract expiries of all our current midfield options: 2022 - Grimshaw, Maguire, O'Hara, Crawford, Donnelly, Parker 2023 - Cornelius, Goss 2024 - Slattery So 6 or our 9 midfielders are OOC in 22 (Parker's obvs in January at that). Hmmmmm...

Interview with Tierney in the Irish press. Worth a read.

The SPFL Twitter admin knows the score lads. Classy.

Aye, I wasn't disagreeing with your general point. It's just that a cruciate injury will account for a chunk of those missed games in relation to his overall career. Similarly, it's worth pointing out that that injury was 5 or 6 years ago now. To speak to the point @'WellDel made, last season before he joined us he made 25 appearances for Vejle BK (23 in the league) with 6 international appearances on top of that and 19/20 he made also made 25 club appearances and completed the 90 in the majority of them. For context it looks like the Danish Superliga is a 32 game season to complete. Home and away then split after 22 games. So the bold Juhani missed 9 league games last season either through suspension or injury with a couple as an unused sub. That feels quite normal tbh but again, no disagreement with your broad point. I'd guess that there's a trade off somewhere. There's also a positive conversation to be had about Ricki Lamie, I thought he was smashing when he came on at the weekend and it feels like this is actually the squad role he was meant to have when we signed him rather than having him as a starting centre back. Or perhaps more accurately it suits him better. He seems to have become far more steady since Alexander came in compared to his form while Robinson was here.

That wee cup of the ear to the Aberdeen fans btw.

The problem Ojala had seems to have been that he did his cruciate when he was in Russia (2013-16). Which in part explains why he's maybe not played as many games as you'd expect. If you look at his playing record in Denmark last season he seems to have been subbed off a few times but he had a decent run playing 90 mins. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/juhani-ojala/leistungsdaten/spieler/88257/plus/0?saison=2020

I mean, I know Alexander has spoken about him and essentially said he's signing but he's not officially signed but it still feels a bit weird to be calling him "new Motherwell signing". Anyway, it seems he's actually scored two now. Also digging about the Bohemians website I've found they've a shirt with a Fontaines DC sponsor. Which is something I can get behind.

It'd genuinely break your brain but if it boils the piss of some of the Scottish Fitba analytics crew and their fantasy "Expected points" pish then crack on Grezza. To put this witchcraft into a bit of context we're currently only 4 points off our total after 13 games the most recent season we finished 3rd and we've scored the 4th highest number of goals in the league. Not to mention Anthony Paul Watt is currently the league's top scorer on 7 in 13 (so better than a goal every other game). Van Veen's 4 in 11 but on a goal every 188 mins which isn't bad considering he's been bounced in and out the team. That's on top of the turnaround we saw from Decanter last season. Overall Alexander has a 43.9% win % but in the league he's P 31 W 13 D 7 L 11 which gives him a 41.9% win rate and we've only failed to score in 5 of his 31. For context Robinson's overall league win record was 36.49% and McCall's was 45.89% (mostly without Rangers in the same league). All this is obviously easier to post after we've just beaten Aberdeen 2-0 but it still feels...weird in the sense that despite all that the points that have been flagged through recent weeks are still remain completely valid. Murderball eh? What a carry on.

Alexander was quoted in his press conference saying we had a few players carrying knocks. I take it Slattery was one.