capt_oats

Depends on which "clubs with budgets less than ours" you're talking about and whether you're talking specifically about recruitment or just "value" in general. Either way from the outside looking in it feels like a big part of the issue is Nelms and approach to infrastructure. Again, I've no idea if this actually is the case or not but looking at the managerial appointments he's made it feels like he's happy to hand over the "football department" to the manager and just write cheques so there's a lack of direction and you're really just relying on the manager to provide that. I think this impression for me goes back to McCann coming out and highlighting that Dundee's scouting department was pretty much non-existent but a step forward was getting a WyScout subscription or whatever. I mean, even @RandomGuy. has a WyScout subscription now...it's a pretty basic thing. Have the club done anything more to address that, has Nelms set up a recruitment role/department or are they still relying on the manager and his contacts? McCann getting a player like Kamara in was a good example of the club getting value from a player on the park (if not on the player trading side) and Jack Hendry ticked both boxes albeit he was a more known quantity in Scottish football but more recently there seems to have been a pivot away to signing "names" eg: Adam, Cummings, Griffiths etc. Clearly I know Strachan's involved at the club as "technical director" but that position still feels quite vague and undefined. On the face of it while McPake can clearly lean on Strachan should he wish there doesn't seem to be much obvious backroom support in other areas. Again, it depends on what clubs you're meaning but if you look around the league you're seeing more and more clubs with a more modest budget investing in infrastructure and the direction for these sort of changes is coming from CEO/Boardroom level and the intention is to get better value. To use Motherwell as an example it became clear in recent seasons that our previous strategy had run its course. Over the summer we brought in a 2nd data analyst for the first team, we've set up partnerships with analytics companies and we've had the Head of Recruitment role established for years. All of that goes to support the manager. We announced our new HoR and this was the mandate around his role and it feels like, as before, it's part of a broader strategy: Obviously it remains to be seen whether that's successful in our case but to your point about other clubs getting value from their budget this probably goes some way to highlighting why it might be the case. Other clubs are identifying strategies to develop and improve on that front and generally investing in the infrastructure of their respective clubs but I'm not sure the same feels true of Nelms.

I think this is the take. 100%. Our games this season have been fine margins either way. Until yesterday we've been efficient in taking our chances and limiting the oppositions opportunities. That's something that's went very much for us. A penalty wins the game for Hibs opening day, a pen and a free kick wins the game for Hearts yesterday. Equally the ref could have given something for McGinley's nudge in the back against County last week that would have cost us but didn't, if Tony Watt scores that 2nd chance at McDairmid then we beat St Johnstone rather than taking a point. The irony of the game where we have 18 shots on goal being the first league game of the season that we fail to score isn't lost. "It's like RAIIIIINNN on your wedding day"....indeed. Regardless of how the LC group went I think most fans at the start of the season would have taken going into the October international break 4th having only lost 2 and double digits ahead of the bottom 3. I think it's true of any season that we'd take that...is this not our best start to a league campaign in actual, literal decades? When you think about the squad turnover and the fact that we've still not been able to play a consistent back 4 then it's a case of taking the points. We're still a work in progress which speaks to the midfield issue as well. We've been able to get by with O'Hara and Grimshaw in there but it's a set up that clearly has its limitations. Not having Donnelly or Goss available pretty much tied our hands in being able to make any sort of changes. I'd like to think (hope) that midfield is an area we'll be looking to sort out next given we've got our culturally Scandinavian centre backs in the door and a settled front 3 from 4. Especially given we've heard various rumours of having targeted a +1 midfielder around the tail end and post-window.

That's never a red card.

WE CANNOT BE HAVE BEEN STOPPED

#Grezza gets manager of the month then.

Devine away to East Fife on loan.

Corey O'Donnell to Albion Rovers on loan.

Aye, like I realise we're massive and have a cultural impact that transcends Scottish fitba'...I've no beef with Hearts fans singing it as there's plenty of fanbases who have adopted it but actually calling their podcast that is just so fucking weird.

I'm not usually "that guy" about stuff, like I'm not furiously in folks mentions any time someone mentions Iceland and the "Viking Clap", but what the actual f**k is up with a Hearts podcast calling itself Since I Was Young?

Some videos that have gone up on the club IG. Lots of "larks" at the photo shoot. Interesting (not really) but it looks like Corey O'Donnell's in the photo. I think it's him that's between Carroll and Lawleff in the 4th slide anyway. I don't know if that means anything but it's interesting to see which of the players from the Reserve group are there. https://www.instagram.com/p/CUaJuSTKgBZ/ There they are..a great bunch of lads.

*Not affiliated with Motherwell Football club*

There he is.

Aye, it's the end of the month. I guess it depends on what the injury situation is like with those players. Cornelius was coming back from a knee issue he picked up in the Betfred groups. He had an IG post up on the 15th suggesting he's back kicking a baw. Outwith the #YoungMotherwell bois there are a couple who could probably do with a loan. Along with Lawleff you've also got Shields and Crawford as for all he's been on the bench the past couple of weeks it seems pretty unlikely he's going to actually get on the park.

This was my first experience of buying a Motherwell shirt when I was a wee guy as well. My Mum took me in although it was a slightly later Matchwinner shirt than yours. The '89/90 one was my first...still have it.

I saw that as well but thought it'd seem salty to mention but aye...he's a fucking oddball. As an aside Martindale's always reminded me of someone but it took me ages to place him....it's the guy from Lost Highway.

The bootleg Motherwell ones I got were from Aztec Retro which AFAIK ended up shutting down because of "issues". When you're cutting about repro'ing actual brand logos and the like in a way you can only respect the hustle. I ended up getting the Umbro '86-'87 home shirt and the Adidas '80-'82. Both came from different company names but were clearly the same folk they'd just evidently had to have a "rebrand". Aztec Retro for the Umbro one in 2019 and Retro Shirt City for the Adidas one in 2016 The quality on those was surprisingly decent and while their Trustpilot ranking is through the floor now at the time I bought the Motherwell ones they were worth taking a chance on. An absolute random appearing on Twitter seems less so. I was absolutely seething to see that there was a Dortmund style away shirt on sale at one of Classic Shirts pop ups in Glasgow pre-pandemic and I hadn't bothered my arse going along. That one and the 94 away are the two iconic shirts I don't have.

The whole thing seemed sketchy as f**k from the get go tbh. An account just pops up and says "Oh hai guyz...I'm going to start making retro Motherwell shirts. Show me the money." Given how *extremely online* the club are I was quite surprised that the account lasted as long as it did. I say that as someone who's chanced it and bought 2 bootleg shirts in the past. Granted they ended up coming from China or wherever but not on the promise of some absolute fucking random on Twitter.

No Declan? That's a wee shame for him.

This is broadly where I am as well. We feel like a pretty efficient team at the moment. We'll cede possession and the trade off is so far teams are taking more shots but generally of a lower % while we're converting a relatively high % of the chances we get. Where Hearts are interesting is they also seem to have a high rate of conversion. Going by the SPFL stats page Hearts have registered 28 shots on target and scored 12 goals (42.8% conversion), we've 27 shots on target and scored 11 (40.7% conversion). For context Celtic and Rangers are 29.8% and 30.7% respectively and at the other end of the shots on target table St Johnstone and Livi are 15.7% and 18.7% in terms of conversion. Dundee's conversion rate is 12.9%. I mentioned this in our thread the other week but if you look at Alexander's league record since he got the job he's now had 25 games and we've failed to score in only 3 of them (one when we were down to 10 men, one when we had 17 injured/unavailable and a 0-0 draw). There's a point at which you probably have to consider that if certain things are happening consistently the probability of it being down to "luck" diminishes. It's also deeply ironic that that a manager who gets his fair share of grief for being "negative" has been putting out a team that consistently scores goals. Thinking back to last season, a massive part of our good form (3rd best points total in the league between Alexander taking over and the end of the season) was down to Kelly making "big" saves to keep us in the game. That feels like it's less the case this season and while Kelly has apparently made the 2nd highest number of saves in the league (according to the SPFL stats) the vast majority of them feel like they've been routine rather than game-changers. Again, that feels like it's something that's down to teams (to date) ending up taking lower percentage shots eg: 11 of County's 18 shots on Saturday were from outside the box.

By my count he's not even been in a match day squad since he was an unused sub for the Livi game on August 24th and we've added Roberts to the squad since then. There's a way to carry yourself as a Motherwell player and he absolutely isn't it. Tbh, based on what we've seen of him since he came back up the road he'd be doing well to get a loan lower end Scottish Championship club or League 1 team.

Loans to the lower leagues are still a thing until the end of the month. Make it fucking happen Burrows.

Citation needed here but in absence of fact checking I'm happy to go with it.

It was 100% a shitebag's challenge. @Merkland Red called it right.

Cormack's writing manifestos about "playing the Aberdeen way", he'd have a fucking aneurysm at the very thought of Murderball.