capt_oats

Right this is really, really fucking dull but to the point of recruitment, no judgement on whether it's been good or not but here's a list of players we've either been linked with (vaguely or otherwise...in one very specific case completely made up) or reported to have had in on trial or have signed. For the most part it's just names lifted from scrolling through Viva Motherwell's timeline but...it's quite a list (Confirmed signings in bold, trialists in italics): Sondre Solholm Johansson (Mjøndalen) (DF) Sofian Feghouli (Galatasaray S.K) (MF) Robbie Gotts (Leeds) (MF) Juhani Ojala (Vejle) (DF) - signed (2 yr) Marc McNulty (Reading) (FW) - signed for Dundee United Calum Slattery (Southampton) (MF) - signed (3 yr) Mich'el Parker (Free Agent) (MF) - signed - trialist (6 month) Liam Kelly (QPR) (GK) - signed - loan made permanent (3 yr) Kevin Van Veen (Free Agent) (ST) - signed - played for Alexander at Scunthorpe (2 yr) Ash Taylor (Free Agent) (DF) - Signed for Walsall Pawel Zuk (Free Agent) (DF) - trialist Josh McPake (Rangers) (FW) - signed for Morecambe Jamie Ness (Free Agent) (MF) - trialist - played for Alexander at Scunthorpe Tom King (Free Agent) (GK) - trialist -signed for Salford Darragh O'Conner (Free Agent) (DF) - trialist - signed (1 yr) Shayon Harrison (Free Agent) (ST) - trialist - signed for Morecambe - scouted by Nick Daws for AFC Wimbledon Joe Muscatt (Free Agent) (DF/MF) - trialist - played for Alexander at Salford Kaiyne Woolery (Free Agent) (FW) - signed (3 yr) Justin Amaluzor (Free Agent) (FW) - trialist - signed (1 yr) Luke McCormick (Chelsea) (MF) - signed for AFC Wimbledon Ethan Robson (Blackpool) (MF) - signed for MK Dons (I refuse to believe this was a real link given the teams quoted as being interested were Rangers, us and MK Dons) Louis Moult (Free Agent) (ST) - signed for Burton Albion Kyle Lafferty (Free Agent) (ST) - signed for Anorthosis Famagusta - played with Alexander at Burnley Ben Heneghan (AFC Wimbledon) (DF) - signed by Nick Daws for AFC Wimbledon Connor Shields (pre-contract QoTS) (ST) - signed (3 yr) 25 names. Dunno, it genuinely doesn't feel like we've been quoted with an interest in as many as that.

Something that I was wondering off the back of the link to big Sondre was whether it's possible to register and process a signing subject to a visa. On the face of it we seem to have had less hassle than St Johnstone and United have with their Finnish signings. The first report from Denmark that Ojala was over here was on 15th July and we announced him on 29th July. So a fortnight give or take. Maybe a bit longer if he was over a few days before that initial report was published. Even then, the news story around the signing had a quote from Alexander saying we'd been waiting "a while" for the visa to be processed. A week and a half until the window closes doesn't give much of a paperwork processing timeline. Anyway, the question I'm asking is, given Alexander was saying 3 weeks ago that we're "scouring everywhere" for players would a delay on a visa f**k us up or could a player be registered prior to the window "slamming shut" pending the visa going through? As an aside, I don't know if it's maybe just my perception but while I get we're not exactly a go to club for clicks it feels like there's been a lot less Scott Burns exclusives with our transfers chat this window. Like, I think he mentioned KVV the day before he signed or whatever but the initial story broke via the Scunthorpe fansite. Same with Ojala, the general whispers that he'd signed came around the Airdrie game but at that point there hadn't been a peep in the press over here AFAIK. I'll not lie when the window opened signing a Finnish international from a top flight Danish side wasn't a direction that I saw us going in. Even a 30 year old mercurial Dutch centre forward has been a pretty welcome curveball.

There's an argument that that probably gets more out of SOD as well. with the 343/352 against Annan, the 4231 that seems to have been our Plan B and the 433 it feels like Alexander's been bouncing things around to see what, if anything, works. Based on the players we have available that 343/352 is probably the one with most players in their natural positions.

I think the 4231 is an interesting one not least because it's a shape we've not really used (effectively at least) since the McCall era. On the face of it, it solves a few issues. If we play Watt as the #10 it gets him into the area of the park he wants to be and gets him closer to Van Veen. While, at the moment, we probably don't have the midfield to make the 433 work - Donnelly and Slattery as the two sitters seems fine. The main issue I'd see with the 4231 is that we don't seem to have any players around the squad who are obvious starters in the wide area. We've been talking about the deficiencies in Lawleff's game over the past few pages and Woolery doesn't seem like an obvious winger...more an 'across the front 3' forward. Same with Shields. I mean, it's not an insurmountable problem and right now it feels like a more natural or balanced shape than the 433.

Aye, I don't think anyone's actually trying to make an argument that Lamie's a better player than Gallagher but to me Gallagher set the tone for his 20/21 season in the opening game against County when he needlessly gave away that pen. He followed it up with selling the jerseys against Hapoel by rugby tackling the boy in the penalty box and getting himself sent off at a point where we were still only 1-0 down - the fact he was our captain only compounds it. I'm not going to, but (IMO) you can pick apart Gallagher's season under two different managers and there are glaring mistakes and lapses in concentration that are every bit as bad as the ones Lamie gets crucified for. Even under Alexander you saw Gallagher go full Shane Duffy against County and once his toys were back in his pram and the gun had been removed from his head he was swinging and missing at clearances (in his first game back off the bench against HIbs). That's not to say there weren't games where he was decent, good even but in terms of consistency I'd err on the side that Lamie probably played closer to his ceiling over the course of the season than Gallagher did. It's academic now given he's an Aberdeen player and I've not actually seen how he fared against Raith at the weekend but I'm interested to see how he adapts at Pittodrie given that I'd imagine Aberdeen fans probably have higher expectations of him. Either way, I don't think anyone's actively claiming that Ricki Lamie should be starting 38 games a season for us. The link with big Sondre the other day suggests that Alexander is of a similar view.

I've mentioned it on our thread but I genuinely think Crawford's extension was to give us some continuity over the summer. The fact the we're a fortnight from the end of the window and we're still 3 or 4 short and the whole notion that we weren't diving in to signings means that had we not given him an extension then we'd have had another player to recruit and conceivably been even shorter in midfield when the group stages started than we were and potentially even more heads would have exploded. The fact that he's not had a minute since the Airdrie debacle (and we're still in the market for players) makes me think we might see him loaned out by the end of the window if there's a taker and depending on who we bring in.

In fairness I don't think either signing for us was particularly weird. They were brought in as squad filler. If there's one thing that Robinson loved it was padding out a squad with players he thought he could "improve" or at the very least could "do a job" now and again over the course of a season. Ironically, as @YassinMoutaouakil says, it's Alexander who seems to have been able to get more out of Lamie than Robinson ever could. What fucked us was that we ended up having to play them a lot more than intended because of various injuries.

Slim pickings for RB and LB... Stevie Hammell's retired which pretty much leaves the alternative choices as Joe Chalmers, Stephen Hendrie or Richard Tait. Tait gets RB ahead of amongst others Josh Law and Tom Hateley. The only alternative I'd have considered would be Chris Cadden but not only is he a snake, he's also barely kicked a ball since he left Fir Park. If his knees hadn't turned to Weetabix Moult would have been the obvious choice at centre forward but as it stands big Lukas is still kicking a baw in the Championship. Randolph Tait Kipré Hutchinson Johnson Campbell Gorrin Turnbull Ainsworth Jutkiewicz Ariyibi

Given we made a big thing about how we'd deep dive into getting the right "character" in by checking their socials Lawleff's "unapologetic ***" persona is one that made me think we were either willing to overlook it on account of us needing a body in or we've just sacked off trying to avoid signing obvious c***s. Liam Kelly's Twitter TL also marks him out as OFTW but the less said about that the better given we've made him vice-fucking-captain.

I think what's telling is the context of the games he's been marginally better this season. He scored against Queens Park, he had an excellent assist off the bench for Watt's goal against St Johnstone but it seems relevant that he hasn't been trusted to start in either of the league games but he started against QP, Queen of The South, Airdrie and Dundee without being a stand out in any of them. As it stands with the way we set up he's a bit of a curate's egg that I don't think fits with either the type of player we look like we've been trying to bring in or with the qualities we need from a senior player in the group.

I think that's pretty much it. The whole thing had a strong marriage of convenience feel to it. It seems he hadn't settled at Burton, he'd picked up an injury and wanted to come back up the road. We were heading into panic signing mode and given the circumstances with the 'rona and everything it was extremely slim pickings so on the face of it a player who's local, knows the club and the league not to mention had done well "at our level" with Thistle and Livi. Add to the fact that he'd played with a bunch of the squad at Livi and Thistle then in theory you're signing someone who should integrate with the squad. Where it gets all "Captain Hindsight" is when you realise that Robinson had been considering his position since mid-December as had Foyle so given Robinson resigned on 31st December, Alexander was appointed on the 7th Jan and Lawleff was announced on the 15th and Foyle had given his notice after Robinson left it seems doubtful to me that he was "an Alexander signing". In fact most of the business in that window was unapologetically short term. Fast forward to now and we've got a player who hadn't played much when we signed him, was injured after 20 mins of his 2nd debut and has a manager who may/may not have signed him and doesn't really seem to know what to do with him given he's been shuffling him between wide right and #10 and not really having much joy other than against lower league sides.

As @crazylegsjoe_mfc says, I don't know if fans of other clubs thought it was just sour grapes or whatever when a lot of us were saying that Gallagher had been miles off it for us last season but there was no lie. Our form actually improved when he was out "injured" with "a gun to his head" and Alexander launched him from the side as soon as we were safe and Aberdeen announced his pre-contract (against our wishes). On the game itself...f**k knows man. Despite us defending like idiots the performance against Hibs was a lot better than a lot of us were expecting and while the performance against St Johnstone wasn't great overall we still dug out a point and scored a, quite frankly, smashing footballing goal. The LC game on Saturday saw us rest O'Donnell for a guy who hasn't kicked a ball in over 8 months, pair him with a guy making his debut who is new to Scottish fitba' behind a paper thin midfield and minus our two best strikers instead going with a guy like Lawleff who simply isn't good enough and Connor Shields who was making his 2nd appearance and is stepping up from the Championship. I for one am stunned we didn't show up. As it stands we're probably about 3 or 4 players short of what we need and it feels like we've been bouncing players in and out for fitness in the League Cup games so the only games we've actually played what on paper looks like our "best" XI were the two league games so we're still very much in the bedding in process. Assuming Ojala is here as a starter we'd be as well keeping him in and running with it tbh. If everyone's fit and we've not signed anyone else: Kelly O'Donnell Ojala Lamie Carroll Slattery Donnelly O'Hara Woolery Van Veen Watt All in all though, f**k knows...

Nah, they've definitely got his strong foot correct. That 10 min video from YouTube has him clearly playing LCB but his distribution is almost entirely with his right. In an ideal world I'd prefer a left footer playing on the left side but if he's comfortable there (and he's been playing there at the top level in Norway) then it's fine with me. As I said in a post earlier, I'm just into having an alternative to Lamie because as far as I can see we don't have one at the moment. Mugabi isn't comfortable playing on the left of a pair and as far as I'm aware Ojala's right sided as well...after that you're looking at inexperienced players like O'Connor who's also right sided. The only other left footed CB we have (I think) is McGinley who pretty much seems to be viewed as a back-up left back now. For all Lamie gets criticism the biggest flaw in his game is that he's inconsistent and prone to completely switching off. In terms of actual attributes there's actually areas where there's a fair amount to like about him. Given Alexander's preference seems to be for his centre backs to just defend their box an old fashioned stopper is pretty much a good fit.

It's no real consolation for getting bodied out the cup but the link with big Sondre is interesting from a recruitment POV. He's started all 15 games with his club so far and played 100% of the minutes available and he's under contract until the January window (on account of whole summer football thing in Scandanavia). Going by the numbers @thisGRAEME quoted off WyScout earlier in the thread is seems like he's actually quite...good? Albeit his team's 14th of 16 in the league at the moment. The general line of thinking is that at this stage of the window it's loans and free agents that we'd be looking at or players who aren't getting a game for their club. This is pretty much the opposite of that - which given the whole "we'll take our time with recruitment" approach that's made it a tough start to the season is actually quite heartening if we actually are looking at players who on the face of it aren't absolute punts. The fact that he's mid-season and presumably match fit is a bonus too. I'll not lie I kind of had the fear that was us done for the defence after we announced Ojala and we were looking at running with either Mugabi on the left of the pair (where he's not comfortable) or pinning our hopes on Lamie. Assuming there's something in this and the guy who Tweeted it out isn't cashing in on our massive status for the #numbers then yeah it's...interesting. Alexander hinted that we were still looking outside the UK at players after we signed Ojala and in terms of profile it's doesn't actually feel that much of a stretch given we've already brought in Kelly, Ojala and Slattery who still had time on their contracts. I mentioned it when we signed Ojala but I wonder if this is one that's been thrown up as a result of our involvement in the TransferRoom patter: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/rangers-hibs-motherwells-transferroom-ticket-24305484 Either way...Sign. Him. Up.

I never knew big Sondre even existed until an hour ago but I will be absolutely fucking devastated if we don't sign him now.

This is pretty much where I am. Devine has one appearance off the bench and a pretty ropy loan spell at QoTS and has barely kicked a ball since what with the Pandemic and what not - I'd have thought he'd be out on loan at some point. McGinley looks like he's considered a left back now and just as Crawford hasn't got off the bench since Airdrie, Toby's not had a minute since Annan. O'Connor has been...fine but as I've said before I've a feeling that he's been brought in as cover rather than any grand designs on him being a first team regular. We signed him at a point where Lamie was the only fit centre back so we've given him a deal to see how he goes but mainly to allow him to play in the group games. At the moment Donnelly is our only DM and O'Hara's a midfielder...he can probably cover at CB but I get the feeling we'd like to move away from Robboball and shifting players about the park. Which pretty much leaves our first pick CB options as Ojala, Mugabi and Lamie. As I said, big Sondre looks like he plays in Lamie's area of the park so I'm strongly on the sign him up immediately bus. I mean...look at him! https://www.instagram.com/sondresolholm/

I started watching that video very much with a "lol, culturally Scandanavian" mood and finished having seen 10 mins of interceptions and him spraying passes about from Ricki Lamie's position like....

I'm quite up for us bringing in another centre back as I'm just not 100% sold on having one of Mugabi or Lamie as a nailed on starter. So while midfield is clearly a massive fucking priority if we're looking at another centre back then that's nice too as I wasn't sure it was likely to be on our agenda after Ojala was announced. Yer man has been playing in the Norwegian top flight for the past 3 seasons and the first section of that near 10 minute video is "goals and assists" also in the "interceptions" section it looks like he's playing left side of the CB pair. So that seems like a positive.

St Pauli obvs.

Well...this is interesting. I have no idea how credible big Stian is as a journo.

Can only echo @well fan for life. There's 100% a pler there with Hastie. I've argued for a while that that purple patch he had fucked him in a way because he seemed to be defined as an inverted winger. He made such an impact stuck out on the right and cutting in on to his left that it became his position. The problem is (IMO) that he's not technical enough to do anything other than cut on to his left from that area of the park so all that happened is teams quickly got wise to him showed him outside and that was that. He looked a shadow of the player we'd seen when he came back on loan and his confidence was absolutely shot. The fact that 2nd time around Robinson just kept shoving him out there even when he was literally tripping over the ball trying to beat his man seemed mental to me. I watched him a lot for our u20s when Craigan was managing him and for the most part he was used wide left (his natural side) or occasionally as a striker and he had pace, directness and scored a lot of goals. Different types too. A club like Thistle 100% makes sense as a move and I genuinely hope he gets the chance to kick on. Obviously everyone's aware of him based on the form he had for our first team that got him his move to Ibrox (and got him paid) but here's a u20s game against Accies where he scores a hat-trick.

There's an element of that but I don't think it's wide of the mark to say that while we maybe defended like idiots we played on the front foot and with an intensity that we didn't haven't seen in any of the LC ties. the full 90 is available on MFC TV...£6.99 or whatever and you get a month's access to an archive of games. There's a fair bit of that that I agree with. Adapt or die etc. The thing is taking the numbers from the games we've played against top flight opposition on face value not as any sort of deep dive only Saturday stands out as any sort of WTF scenario as I don't think anyone would be looking at it and thinking "Holy shit! Hibs and St Johnstone had 2 more corners than us" whereas Dundee's 17 corners to our 7 hits a little different.... Which I suppose begs the question as to what was so different about Saturday?

Aye, I doubt it was as overt as being a case of "right lads we're going to play the rezzies...LOL" in fact he had been laying the groundwork in some of the stuff he'd been saying prior to the game. Paraphrasing but the chat was about how he didn't believe in a two-tier squad and he needs everyone to be able to play their part and that taken as an isolated statement is fine. As a principle there's absolutely zero to argue with it...in fact it's probably a good thing. SOD has had like 10 days off since he signed last year and played through the Euros, we chucked Bevis in against Hibs without him having even played a bounce game (I think) and I'm sure I saw in the Twitter mentions that Van Veen is carrying a knock...so it's fair enough not risking him. Taken as individual cases I get giving Grimshaw a run out, Ojala...if not now then when does he get chucked in and Shields has only been available recently...all three missed the LC group games that were supposed to be our "pre-season" as did O'Hara. Going by his IG today Watt was doing his Sunday treadmill workout so...¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What interests me is how it contradicts a lot of what we'd hear from Robinson when we had injuries and the like in so much as "we don't have a squad to lose X number of players" and something that I'm fairly sure Alexander echoed himself in that we're not good enough to have all our players not at it. Choosing to name the line up he did feels wildly naive though and I'd be amazed if anyone looked at that teamline yesterday and didn't think "f**k!" It kind of feels like yesterday should have been a harsh reality check for Alexander in terms of what he has to work with. We knew the midfield needed addressing and we've brought in one midfielder so far...so we're still limping along trying to make do with what we have. I get that transfers take a while to complete so in that respect I have sympathy but even if we bring in a bunch of decent quality players in the next fortnight we've still been papped out the cup in a winnable tie. Which is pretty shite tbh.

I suppose it depends what your POV is and whether you give credit for defenders and goalkeeper simply doing their job in keeping a clean sheet or if you decide to spin it as being lucky or we got out of jail because Kelly makes a wondersave or whatever (I'm not saying you're doing either btw). The 1-0 win against Killie when he was not long in the door sticks in the mind as being one of the better examples of Mugabi and Lamie just dealing with everything that came into the box and Kelly being a good goalkeeper. Ultimately Alexander managed more clean sheets (7) in 21 games as Robinson managed (6) in 23 last season (or 6 in 18 vs 6 in 19 if we're only counting the league). The obvious difference was that we seemed to score more goals and that made the difference in games where fine margins mattered because he won more games. I don't think it's any secret that Alexander changed his tactics last season either. Up until the Accies/St Johnstone games at FP we were doing the thing we're doing at the moment with the split centre backs and trying to play from the back and all that malarky. We won 3 from 7 and drew 2. The losses were when Polworth had his shitfit at Pittodrie and the 2-1 at Parkhead. It seemed to be the 4-1 against Killie at RP which was the point we were properly spooked and chucked any pretence of style out the window. Ironically we only lost one of the next 8 (if you call the Hibs cup game a draw, which I do). As others have said though, he came in and did the job he was brought in to do. Anyone who's bumping their gums about style in a season where the team he took over were joint bottom of the league on points is at it. This season is really what he'll be judged on long term and tbh, I'm not actually sure what Alexanderball looks like. To be objective about it we played a pile of trialists and school weans in the bounce games against Dumbarton and Millwall to the point that I'm genuinely not sure they can reasonably be considered part of our pre-season in any meaningful way. The League Cup group looks as if it was used as pre-season. In fact Alexander referred to it as "pre-season" post-match yesterday. The Hibs game is one where it felt to me like we put out our "strongest" XI and I don't think it's a particularly controversial to say that there was a marked difference in style vs anything we saw in the LC games. Whether that's a more accurate representation of Alexanderball IDK. So far it feels like we've played 7 "competitive" games this season but only put out close to our "best" XI in 2 of them (both in the league). That's not a defence as such more a general observation. Either way, the fact we're still openly talking about being "light" in areas and still have recruitment to do means that it still feels like a very incomplete picture. To lift from @DrewDon's post in the Aberdeen thread earlier "Some of the fringe players gave Glass Alexander good reason not to trust them today yesterday."