capt_oats

Tbf, Hibs rocking up and saying "we'll give you less than half what you'd be due in development comp, if you sell us your best player now with less than a week of the transfer window to go" while we're sitting counting our cool £3m of Turnbull money is a weird flex but OK. I mentioned this in the Aberdeen thread earlier but their tribunal fee paid to Accies for Lewis Ferguson was £237,950. Comparatively Ferguson had been at Accies from 2013-2018 and had 14 first team appearances. Campbell's been with us for 12 years (13 by the end of his contract) and is sitting on 131 appearances and 21 u21 caps.

Funnily enough there was a rumour about Hastie to Atlanta prior to him signing for Rangers: https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/sport/17545591.rangers-pull-race-sign-jake-hastie-english-sides-atlanta-united-target-motherwell-kid/ Depends where Campbell ends up going. There's been rumours that a couple of Championship sides being particularly keen, Stoke being one - the O'Neill/Robinson connection makes that seem quite a good fit. Just having a quick check, with Ferguson's tribunal the fee you paid to Accies was £237,950. Comparatively Ferguson had been at Accies from 2013-2018 and had 14 first team appearances. Campbell's been with us for 12 years (13 by the end of his contract) and is sitting on 131 appearances and 21 u21 caps. I think we'd hope that a Cat II development fee would be significantly more than you guys had to pay for Ferguson. I'd imagine our position is probably similar to it was when Moult was heading out of contract in so much as Campbell's has more value to us in the side just now and we also have the protection of training comp next year (which we obviously didn't have with Moult).

His current deal is up at the end of the season. Unsurprisingly been offered a new one. He joined the club in 2008: https://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/player/allan-campbell/ For comparison our training compensation fees that have come in have been £350k for Hastie to Rangers, £210k Ben Hall to Brighton and £500k for Lee Erwin to Leeds. Chris Cadden to Columbus Crew is still in dispute - the story was that had he went to Oxford we'd have been due €300k as they're a Cat III side.

Also mentions Hussain to Airdrie (rather than Peterhead) on loan as well

I know people are talking about the squad size and everything but assuming the rest of the #YoungMotherwell group are loaned out (not including Morrison) we've got a first team squad of 24 bodies. Of whom Carroll has been out long term and still a month away from games apparently, it's debatable whether Dunne kicks a ball for us again any time soon, Fox is out for the season and Donnelly's out til an undetermined, TBC date in 2021. That leaves us with 20 fit bodies. I'd be kind of surprised if we didn't bring a few in tbh. IIRC Robinson was talking about the English leagues when we signed O'Donnell in August. His point was that many of the players in the lower leagues hadn't kicked a ball since March and hadn't started their pre-seasons yet so it was slim pickings. Given all their leagues are back (for now) you wouldn't imagine that would be an issue. You'd also think that the lower league clubs will be looking to trim their squads given all their talk about impending financial implosion.

I'd happily have Cole back. Equally agree with everyone else saying our priorities are elsewhere though. Without wanting to be cold about it I've wondered whether we might see White end up Alex Fisher-ed. Hylton's another one who doesn't seem to have had much by way of game time this season and he's been wholly ineffective in what little he has seen. Hastie's loan has a break in it for January.

They won't lose him for nothing next summer*. They'll be covered by training compensation for every year he's been at the club. * - unless he fucks off to MLS.

Aye, it'd need a Cat 1 club to be in for him for it to be €900k.

It's Scott Burns so there's probably something in it. It's a weird story though. It basically says Hibs like Allan Campbell (I'm sure they do) but goes on to say: So Hibs can't afford what we want for him just now and even what they're willing to pay we'd be due more than double that in development comp if he leaves at the end of his deal. It 100% sounds like an agent flying a kite.

The Jesus Lizard - Mouth Breather

Aye, it's some whip. Seeing that then looking at this season where we've had Lamie, McGinley and Grimshaw playing in there is a laugh. Going by the Team News section it's still Oct/Nov for Carroll coming back.

I liked him. He wasn't prolific by any means but we struggled to replace him once he went back to Wigan. Our dip in form in February was largely down to us losing Cole and Scott in January. His leap against Killie was one of our most aesthetically pleasing goals of last season IMO.

I'd argue that the windows where we've tried to supplement the squad have been the ones we'd struggled the most with rather than the full rebuild jobs. Looking at our starting XI from IMO our best performances this season 0-0 vs Hibs and 3-0 vs Aberdeen. Hibs: (433) Carson, O'Donnell, Gallagher, Mugabi, Lamie, Campbell, O'Hara, Turnbull, Lang, White, Seedorf Aberdeen: (352) Carson, O'Donnell, Gallagher, Mugabi, Lamie, Grimshaw, Campbell, O'Hara, Polworth, Long, Watt Against Hibs 4 of that starting XI were new signings (ie: players not at the club last season), vs Aberdeen it's down to 2. This window we've signed 8 new players of those I'd say only O'Donnell, Hastie and Lang were brought in as definite starters: Lamie White McGinley Fox O'Donnell Hastie (loan) Lang (loan) Crawford (loan) I'm not entirely sure what my point is there but it's probably something, something as a strategy knowingly signing players who aren't actually going to improve the starting XI probably causes more problems than it's actually worth.

Quite. This is from 2009.

IIRC with Norwich they wanted him to start in their u23s (which is the level Reece McAlear was playing last season when he signed for them) and work his way up. Which is fine and everything as Norwich were an EPL club last season but it always seemed that he'd be far closer to Celtic's first team. Also, it's not simply the case that he appeared on Celtic's radar when he started pinging them in for our first team. They (and Rangers) had been trying to sign him since he was 9 and was in our academy. https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/sport/17705446.gordon-young-celtic-rangers-chasing-david-turnbull-years/

Agree with that tbh, for me it's more a question of the attitude side of things rather than anything Tait did on the park (certainly last season since as you point out he was hardly in the team). McGinley looks and carries himself like a fucking estate agent FFS.

I mean, in terms of the result yesterday I think it's naive to think that a round trip to Israel, playing a 90 mins in testing conditions with a day recovery wouldn't have an impact physically and mentally. From our starting XI yesterday only Bev didn't play a part on Thursday. Rangers rotated a bit after a trip to Holland and in the end had a fairly comfortable 4-0 win. That mitigates things to an extent. Having said that, Robinson put forward the same point in his post-match but admitted himself that it wasn't really an excuse for the result. He wasn't necessarily chucking players under a bus as he did post-Livi but there's definitely an implied question about mentality when he's talking about "players looking for excuses". I thought his comment about the club not necessarily judging themselves by results against the Old Firm, but he judges himself by those results was...interesting.

We also went public in May saying that our budget was to be significantly reduced. Indeed that was part of how Tait ended up at St Mirren as there was the whole revised contract affair (which Robinson actually hinted at below).

Absolutely. That 3-0 defeat against Rangers was the sexy Motherwell 433 edition. Like I said in my edit above, it's not a criticism as such but there's a definite point at which it's clear we've erm...found it more difficult.

So that was Robinson's heaviest defeat against Rangers at Fir Park since he's been manager. It also equals the biggest margin of defeat against the Old Firm at home on his watch (there is no Old Firm etc). I've thrown his results against Celtic at FP in there because, why not? Interestingly he had a better record against Rodgers at Fir Park than he does Lennon and Gerrard. 06/08/17 - vs Rangers 1-2 (L) 29/11/17 - vs Celtic 1-1 (X) 18/03/18 - vs Rangers 2-2 (X) 31/03/18 - vs Celtic 0-0 (X) 26/08/18 - vs Rangers 3-3 (X) 05/12/18 - vs Celtic 1-1 (X) 07/04/19 - vs Rangers 0-3 (L) 10/08/19 - vs Celtic 2-5 (L) 15/12/19 - vs Rangers 0-2 (L) 05/02/20 - vs Celtic 0-4 (L) 27/09/20 - vs Rangers 1-5 (L) To be clear that's not a criticism of Robinson but I'm definitely finding it hard to imagine this iteration of a team going down to 10 men against Celtic and keeping a clean sheet.

Possibly one of the more 'yer da' type posts I've made but listening to Robinson's comment post-match where he said (and I'm paraphrasing) that we basically chucked it after the first penalty and we didn't really have much belief of getting back in the game it made me wonder just how much we're missing the leadership element of folk like Hartley and Tait. Looking at the players we've brought in there's not one that you can imagine bringing the sort of attitude that either of them did.

It's probably worth comparing it with the 18/19 summer window: In: Gillespie, Donnelly, Johnson, Taylor-Sinclair, Gorrin, Mbulu Loans: Sammon, Aldred We didn't get a tune out of Gorrin until post-winter break, Donnelly took a full season to find his feet, Taylor-Sinclair was a write off and we were trying to get shot of Sammon not long after he arrived. When Robinson started chucking bodies under the bus after Livi he was talking about him signing the players and it was his responsibility. His post-match today was very "it's-my-responsibilty"-heavy today. One of the things about this extended window is it's given managers longer than normal to live with their signings, I kind of wonder whether we might be tempted with trying to cut some of our losses earlier than we normally would eg: we moved Fisher and Sloth on in the January after they signed. 8 penalties given away and we're not even out of September yet. For a manager who takes more than a bit of pride in being organised Robinson can't be happy with that sort of patter.

The gist is that we brought in Lamie as someone who's got a decent amount of experience and his versatile so he offers a bit of cover in a couple of positions. Which is fine in principle. We've been unlucky with injuries this season - McGinley and Donnelly were both injured after the opening game (Donnelly is out til the New Year) and Jake Carroll's still injured after popping his Achilles shortly before the season shut down. Upshot is that we've been re-jigging our defence on an almost weekly basis and from that POV Lamie's been playing week in week out and the more he's playing the more mistakes he seems to be making. I'm loathe to pile on but this is a fairly accurate summary of Ricki Lamie's season so far in GIF form:

Aye. It was mentioned a page or so back - the story broke last week. He's 16.