capt_oats

When is Tam Aldred's contract up in Australia?

May 2021 according to the official site. https://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/player/declan-gallagher/

^^^ Absolutely this. Out of curiosity, how many more internationals are there before the end of the season? Any chance he could end up our most capped player? To add to that TeamTalk article, they've got O'Donnell's situation wrong. It's not even a break. He's only contracted til January although there's an option to extend.

We finished 5th in McGhee's lost season when he was parachuted in to replace Bara. After 12 games we were sitting 10th on 11 points. and finished 5th on 50 points That season was largely defined by two decent runs of form through December then mid-February to April.

Robinson did an interview (maybe with SSN) after he'd spoken to the IFA and Baraclough was about to be announced, the gist was that while managing his country was still an ambition of his "now isn't really the time for him to move into international football" or words to that effect. On first listen it was a bit "didn't really fancy her anyway" but I think there was probably a fair bit about his position that realised that whoever replaced O'Neill would be on a hiding to nothing - at the same time he needed to interview to register his interest and not look like he was swerving them. Coincidentally, in a quirk of timing Baraclough's contract with NI expires at the same time as Robinson's deal with Motherwell.

We seem to pop up quite a lot as a club that others aspire to being. 36 consecutive top flight seasons will do that I suppose. I don't think I've really thought about whether or not we do anything differently compared to other clubs until I read @johnnydun and @Spikethedee's posts earlier. I can't speak to what Killie do but going from McCulloch to Clarke seems a solid example of "getting it right". I had posted a list of the managers we've had since I've been going to Fir Park the other week in our thread. It's roughly the same timeframe as @Day of the Lords: I suppose the thing that stands out is that other than McLeish we've tended to make decisions on underperforming managers quite early (we didn't even sack McLeish, he fucked off to Hibs). On the whole it looks like we tend to deal quite well with correcting mistakes, the best example being replacing Malpas who finished 10th with McGhee who finished 3rd with essentially the same squad. Similarly emptying Gannon after 25 games and bringing Craig Brown in to steady the ship is a pretty good example of identifying a problem and learning from a mistake. Whether it was by design or pure luck our various boards seem to have been able to make the sort of appointments that make a difference (at least initially). Speaking recently Burrows comes across as a guy who has a clear idea of what he wants the club to look like and how the manager fits into that. Comparitively McCann > McIntyre > McPake is some run from Nelms in terms of appointing his own guys.

The Hall of Fame thing is happening again.

+1 on The Queen's Gambit. Enjoyed it a lot.

I had a look back at the expectations around the time he got his first call up and most of the posts were pretty rational given the circumstances and Gallagher's situation. It's back here with some earlier chat here btw. It's fair to say he's surpassed those modest expectations though. It's worth remembering that he was only drafted into the squad as cover after McKenna, Souttar, Cooper, Hanley and Halkett picked up injuries. While Mulgrew, Devlin and Findlay got the nod ahead of him for the games against Russia and San Marino. So absolutely fair play to him for as he's put in the graft to earn Clarke's trust and it appears he's now part of Scotland's first choice back 3 ahead of all of them (given both McKenna and Cooper were available on Thursday). This from @Desp was particularly prescient (and completely fair): Stand out all season Storm to 3rd place Only part that was missing was 6 internationals unbeaten and taking us to the Euros.

Will we get more for a 29 year old with 6 months left on his deal than a 23 year old with 3 years at a club paying multiples of our wages? It's not really a serious question, is it?

I am extremely here for the Tony Watt hype train.

Aye, he's out of contract in the summer. It was a two year deal he signed. If nothing else he's been another in the line of players who have been able to use the club as a platform to build his career. He didn't cost us anything and we're making good on our promise to make him a better player (around 40 seconds in the wee video below from last year).

Not a fucking chance of keeping him. He's 29 and missed a chunk of football on account of his...situation. If his Mr 20% has anything about him he should have the choice of clubs (and salaries) available to him as a free agent that would have seemed an absolute nonsense when while he was jobbing his way back up the leagues with Livi. I mean, even when we signed him it'd have sounded mental if you'd said that inside 2 years he'd be a fixture in the Scotland defence and keeping Mitrovic in his back pocket as we qualify for the Euros. It's fair to say he made the right choice when he knocked back Tommy Wright.

It doesn't really impact on your point in so much as you're 100% correct Long has been disappointing but for the sake of jumping in like an absolute p***k I'd caveat that by saying he's firmly established as our 4th choice behind Watt, Cole and Lang now. So where he was starting games and underperforming in the opening games of the season he's now getting 20 mins off the bench which naturally impacts on how effective he can be - compared with someone like Stewart who's an established first pick for County. Fwiw, reading all the chat in here about where you seem to be is really familiar and echoes our performances at the start of the season where we were dominating possession, getting shots on goal but seemingly couldn't convert anything. Against County, United and Accies we averaged 62.66% possession and had a total of 50 shots on goal - we scored 0 but conceded 3 from 8 shots on target (including 1 penalty).

I don't think it would be a massive surprise if it pans out the way @Desp talks about purely based on Watt's career to date. Then again he had the security of a 3 year deal in Bulgaria (presumably on a far better wage than we're paying) and he sacked that off after 6 months. He had a 1 year deal at St Johnstone and just seemed to drift after a few months there. He's some boy is our Tony. Ultimately he's been in the building long enough to know Robinson's expectations and absolutely fair play to him, he's put the graft in and he's probably in better shape now than he's been at any other point in his career to date and in contrast to someone like say, Chris Long - it seems like Watt genuinely wants to be here so that extra year seems a bit less of a risk. @Jim McLean's Ghost's post nails it, it's up to Robinson/the club to keep him motivated/engaged enough to maintain that level and equally it's up to Watt to see the value in that. On the face of it he seems to be responding to having a manager actively trying to build a forward line around him and just generally buy into the "culture" around the club. The concern I'd have (and it doesn't just relate to Watt) is what happens if/when Robinson leaves. There seems to be a clutch of players at the club who have fully bought into the manager and are playing their best football under him. As others have said Robinson's been great with improving players and there's a list of those who were better when they left than they were when they made their debuts.

He hinted at it in a tweet yesterday when he said "see you tomorrow with some good news" although in fairness that could have been anything...he could have been talking about his Twitch account or getting some new trackies. Some boi though. Pleased to hear he's sticking around.

Yeah, for avoidance of doubt I'm not advocating ripping everything up and starting again or that we should be phoning Bowman and Andy Rose up to get the 17/18 band back together. It's just that it's apparent it's a higher bar to clear against Celtic and Rangers than the rest of the league. A point that speaks to that is the fact that to date this season we've conceded 17 goals in the league - 12 of them have come against Celtic and Rangers which is more than double we've conceded against the rest of the teams we've played in the league combined (5) - 70% of our league goals conceded this season have been against the OF. In fairness to Robinson, he tried changing it a bit last season at Ibrox when we switched to a back 3 and true to form we shipped a late goal in a 2-1 defeat. As I said in my post last night I've sympathy for Robinson in so much as the team he put out yesterday was the best XI he had available and didn't have the luxury of being able to make tactical tweaks.

Although I said at the top of the page that I have no strong opinions...I do have some thoughts. I posted in the match thread about how Robinson had a fairly decent run of form against both Rangers and Celtic when he took over (at Fir Park at least). 01/04/17 - Rangers 1-1 Motherwell 22/10/17 - Rangers 0-2 Motherwell (Hampden) 29/11/17 - Motherwell 1-1 Celtic 18/03/18 - Motherwell 0-0 Celtic 31/03/18 - Motherwell 2-2 Rangers 26/08/18 - Motherwell 3-3 Rangers 05/12/18 - Motherwell 1-1 Celtic Clearly I'm skipping the 5-1 at Parkhead and 7-1 Ibrox but IMO it's fair to say those were outliers. Even the cup finals were 2-0s. Since we've switched to being more 'open' the results have went off a cliff at FP. Our results against both OF sides at Fir Park since that point have been: 07/04/19 - Motherwell 0-3 Rangers 10/08/19 - Motherwell 2-5 Celtic 15/12/19 - Motherwell 0-2 Rangers 05/02/20 - Motherwell 0-4 Celtic 27/09/20 - Motherwell 1-5 Rangers 08/11/20 - Motherwell 1-4 Celtic I get that the players are being asked to be 'brave' on the ball and such but 23 goals conceded in 6 games compared with 7 conceded in 5 at FP during the Thunderdome era...fucking hell. I mean, I'll happily go all in and say that Rodgers' Celtic side was fucking miles better than Lennon's iteration. I don't think that's a controversial take. I thought Robinson taking responsibility for the Polworth mistake made sense. There's an argument that in trying to be braver on the ball we're pushing them out their comfort zone a bit and asking them to improve on the ball against better sides but the upshot is that we're just coughing up cheap chances in dangerous areas against sides who have better attacking players than the other 9 teams in the league. If Maguire just launches the ball rather than playing it short to Polworth we probably don't concede that goal. Similarly if Polworth plays it to McGinley rather than Gallagher it probably gets cleared without hassle. I've a degree of sympathy with Robinson today because that was his best XI he had available and it included our 2nd back-up goalkeeper but where today it was Polworth making the mistake it's been a common theme when we've been asking players to take risks rather than just play the %s. I mean, fair enough if Edouard turns up and ragdolls our entire back 4 or McGregor is pinging in genuine worldies but look at the first goal today then look at Turnbull vs Rangers or Donnelly vs Celtic.

Based on his CV I'd have thought Archer has been brought in as 1st choice of the two but he's not played since 4th January so it'd have been a bit harsh to bounce the Pieman after he kept a couple of clean sheets and chucking Archer in against Celtic would have seemed to have the potential to be a bit counter productive given the time since he last played. As it stands he's had a chance to get in the building and presumably we'll have a couple of bounce games through the international break. It seems a natural point to give Archer a run now though rather than chucking him in 5 mins after he's through the door though.

Aye, Archer was on the bench. As others have said, I'd imagine it'll be Archer starting from now.

This is pretty much my takeaway. I have no strong opinions beyond that.

@Swello's is the correct answer in the case of this particular controversy. Taking the question semi-seriously though, I think it's definitely a different vibe with no fans around and players/subs sitting in the stand rather than on the bench. If he's been subbed off and is parked up in the stand with a big jacket on then there's zero issue IMO. If it was normal circumstances with fans in the ground and everyone in the dugout then there's next to no chance it'd happen.

I'm not sure that's actually true, at Fir Park at least. Looking at Robinson's games we fared far better during the Thunderdome era compared to the results we've seen since he's changed the style. Robinson was unbeaten at FP against Rodgers. 29/11/17: Motherwell 1-1 Celtic 18/03/18: Motherwell 0-0 Celtic 05/12/18: Motherwell 1-1 Celtic Under Lennon though...which coincides with our change of style and being a bit more 'open'. 10/08/19: Motherwell 2-5 Celtic 05/02/20: Motherwell 0-4 Celtic