capt_oats

Aye, one of his dismissals was in injury time of the game at Easter Road where we (comfortably) beat Hibs 2-0. It was hardly a toys out the pram situation.

Statistically was he not one of the best players in his position in the league? As I said the other day, if we've been showing an interest in another DM then putting 2+2 together it'd suggest that Alexander doesn't think any of O'Hara, Maguire or Crawford are fits for that role and tbf the extent to which we appeared to miss Donnelly last season highlighted that massively. I suppose the other interesting aspect is that it suggests a certain level of "quality" we're looking at, rather than the Newell/Petravicius/Ilic/Manzinga style punts we'd see around this point of the window with the previous recruitment strategy.

Alexander's PA interview suggested we were "hopeful" of one in this week. So assuming he's the one that's "bubbling away"..... I half-wondered if the whole chicanery around English league payments due at the end of July was a factor in the other "targets" that were hinted at. Oh, and it looks like Odoffin's away to Rotherham which isn't in itself a surprise but the fact that we were quoted as having been looking at him interests me, Scott Burns RT'd the story that links to the Record.

It's Flow...

Pretty much. Like, there are certainly doubts based on where we are at the moment, the players we've lost and the fact we still have almost half a starting XI to recruit but considering the circumstances in which he arrived eg: form, injuries, our club captain with a gun to his head, our only creative midfielder spitting the dummy the argument that him guiding us to safety with games to spare and 9 points clear of the play-off made him look "out his depth" is just a complete misunderstanding of what actually happened to our season. I mean he turned Devante Cole into a 1 in 2 goal striker. Prior to Alexander arriving he'd scored 1 goal all season. If nothing else his record at Motherwell and his previous clubs shows that he's a fairly competent manager.

That branch of the timeline is fucking terrifying tbqh. You're point about the strategy is something I've been wondering as well. Like, I guess on a certain level transfer strategy is going to be informed to a degree at a board room level. At least, it'd have to be approved but unless I've missed it there's been no "we aren't able to pay top wages", "we've the 2nd lowest budget in the league" type chat coming from Alexander whereas Robinson leaned into it heavily. I've a lot of time for Robinson but it often felt like he was being clever with semantics when he talked about budgets. The idea that he'd maybe have say for arguments sake £1600 a week budgeted for a midfield position but out of choice we'd be risk averse and go for 2 players on £800 p/w and hope one comes good would lead to..."we can only offer players £800 a week" and spin that into us having "one of the lowest budgets" because of what how the manager has chosen to allocate his budget rather than what we had available. Probably unanswerable question but I'm genuinely not sure that Robinson would have taken the risk of hanging around waiting for Kelly. Anyway, assuming it's big Juhani that's the one "bubbling away" there's the potential of another 2 or 3 options on top of that. That's interesting.

Alexander talking about recruitment. It's PA copy so I'm just chucking it in here:

Confirmed 4,500 home supporters last week.

It's Kev.

The 3-0 in 2019 was 5,964. That was the 4th game of the season. In other news I take it we're the team SSN are reporting on today?

That's the same agent/agency listed on Transfermarkt for the Finnish centre back we're apparently about to sign.

The plan seems to be exactly that. There will be a general sale of a couple of hundred once the club hear back from ST holders as to whether they can make it or not.

There's no doubt that getting scudded by Airdrie was an absolute minter but there's a bit of context around the (admittedly poor) League Cup games. Basically (as @Theyellowbox points out) we've changed up our recruitment. We've seemingly been holding out on bringing players in with a view to ideally getting better "quality" through the door than we did with Robinson whose approach was very much "get as many players in as early as possible and worry about how good they are further down the line". Liam Kelly's a good example of that. That was a deal apparently in discussion for months, Callum Slattery from Southampton was apparently the same and it only got done on Friday night. Where that's come back to bite us is that we've had players either injured or unavailable (Mark O'Hara was injured in a bounce game against Dumbarton, Liam Grimshaw's still recovering from glandular fever, Bevis Mugabi's rehabbing from shoulder surgery) which has meant we've been very thin on bodies and also, moreso than under Robinson, we've very obviously been treating these games as pre-season so it looks like we've been telling players to manage themselves. I don't think there's been a League Cup game or a bounce game yet where we've started with our "best XI" it's been a mix and match to try and get players minutes. Van Veen for example hadn't played more than 60 mins in 13 months prior to the QoTS game, Liam Donnelly had been out for almost a year so got a 10 mins, then 60, then his first 90 on Saturday. In that respect it's difficult to tell exactly where we are as we've got players who are at wildly different stages of fitness and being used or managed in different ways. It's definitely something that has almost come back to bite us on the arse but it seems like we're adding a few more to the squad this week as well. So that's nice.

Alexander took over a massive squad filled with Robinson recruited dross and riddled with injuries (at one point he had 17 players unavailable) that was sitting at the bottom of the league and finished on the same points as St Mirren and ahead of United. That, to me at least, doesn't scream a manager who's out his depth. Also, are you talking about a different Robinson to the Stephen Robinson who managed us? His method was to get as many players in as quickly as possible so I'm not sure where you'd get the idea that he recruited slowly comes from. I'm no Graham Alexander stan but you're absolutely miles off with those takes.

The same Alexander who has a 48% win rate and had the 3rd best points/form behind Rangers and Celtic from the point he took over? That Alexander?

I posted this August 20 just after the Turnbull sale so there's really only whatever we got for Campbell to add. They're all "reported" (by the press) fees before anyone gets snarky. That's only from the 14/15 season onwards. For earlier in the decade you have sales of Reynolds, Murphy, Ojamaa, Anier etc.

Genuinely no idea. It's a question for Burrows I suppose as he was hinting at a new direction when he was on the MFC Podcast the other month but obviously didn't get into detail about it. Ultimately the notion was that the Turnbull sale was, to use his word, transformational. It remains to be seen if we get The David Turnbull Complex training ground out of it but I'd guess that on top of the security it provided allowed us to look at medium term plans. The fact the SG have come along and offered an interest free loan with a very favourable repayment term (along with our insurance) means that the Turnbull money can be used for the projects it had originally been earmarked (more or less). A penny for Robinson's thoughts as he's watching us dish out 3 year deals to players and paying fees for Southampton re-gens. When it comes down to it everyone understood what our model was, and I suppose still is, we bring in players to offer a platform and help them progress their career. However, from the outside looking in I think we'd hit a point at which our approach was completely unsustainable when we're seeing the sort of turnover of players we had under Robinson. Mini-rebuilds on an annual basis and full scale rebuilds every two years is going to catch up on you. While signing a pile of players through the summer and then chapping the board up in January to replace the ones that haven't worked out is just a false economy. If the Scott/Turnbull/Campbell sales have allowed us to take stock of that and re-appraise our approach then it probably makes sense. What would be interesting to know (IMO) is how it fits into an overall strategy going forward. I'd assume the 3 year deals and in principle signing better "quality" is being done with a view to providing a more stable environment at the club while also consolidating "value".

This was kind of touched on the other week when there was a discussion about the £3m and our accounts. As far as I'm aware the credit facility of the SG loan is tied to losses incurred as a result of the pandemic. However we're in the position where we've turned a profit on the books to May '20 (largely down to the James Scott sale) and since then we've sold Turnbull for a club record fee, had our Business Interruption Insurance accepted (according to the note in the accounts to May 20 the total of the sale and insurance is expected to be £4m+). That's without the SG loan factored in. To put that in context, our turnover in a fairly boring, normal year eg: 18/19 is £4.5m. So going by the noises made at the AGM our accounts this year should show we're in a "good" position but there will probably be a substantial operating loss. If my understanding of it is right then it means that the operating loss as a result of Covid will be covered by the SG loan rather than David Turnbull (he's just paying for the capital expenditure on the stadium and, I'd guess, everyone's free season tickets). If that makes sense.

The boy who posted the original Tweet I took the screenshot from has locked his account.

Is Macleod's USP not that he's a sicknote who gets injured in bizarre ways? Like tripping over a twig. Obviously he had his hype when he bailed from Rangers to Brentford to help them keep the lights on but is he actually any good?

Taking a moment to enjoy this quote from Alexander:

This is pretty much what's sent me for a walk more than once tbh. Like, I don't actively go seeking out people with terrible opinions but oftentimes a simple search for "Motherwell" on Twitter has people volunteering them free of charge...you also get regular updates on whatever crime has been going down in South Africa (a lot it seems). On one hand you have people who are knee jerking that we sack off signing "bargain basement players that no one else wants" while on the other the same usual suspects are deep in Burrows' mentions wanting to know where the signings are in the first week of July. The fact that we've qualified is obviously a relief because I had a genuine worry that Alexander hadn't quite grasped how the pre-season landscape worked with the LC Groups and the fact he was acknowledging that it was his first summer up here and we'd changed strategy gave me a slight fear to the extent we might be undercooked. While it seemed like deflection, I agree with a lot of what he was saying about how the nature of the group stages being as they are puts players at risk of injury. I think it's fair to say it's a lesson learned for him though and presumably if he's still here this time next year the extended deals we've been chucking out like sweeties means there's less pressure on a full scale rebuild.