capt_oats
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Posts posted by capt_oats
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3 hours ago, joewarkfanclub said:
For the record, I think Bevis & SOD both get a much harder time than Casey, not just on the forums but our support in general.
Let's be honest the only player who gets a harder time than Bevis & SOD is Kelly.
3 hours ago, MurrayWell said:FWIW I think we'll offer both SOD and McGinn another year. I'd imagine Bevis will be heading for the exit, along with Butcher, Obika, Maguire and Callan Elliott.
There will probably be more exits, given the number of contracts that are up, who knows what will happen with Kelly, I'd expect us to try and keep Slattery.
I think that's probably about right. I don't think there's any doubt both SOD and McGinn will be offered another year, Bevis too probably although I'd imagine given he's 28 he might fancy a change of scene. Whether they choose to stick around is a different question but given the length of time Bevis has been here (outside of Maguire he must be our longest serving first team player?) I just don't see us telling any of the 3 to f**k off - I'd think we'll have a conversation and make an offer but it's a different question as to whether whatever we offer suits.
Same with Kelly. I don't see us just packing his bags given he's a player who isn't only our captain but has been incredibly present, for better or worse. The only games he's missed were the LC games where SK rested him to give big Aston a run out.
Kettlewell and Kelly were on record earlier in the season about having had discussions about a new deal and I'd imagine we'll offer him something as I think we've seen that he goes in cycles of being perfectly fine, good even and going off a cliff.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/local-sport/motherwell-skipper-liam-kelly-parks-31287997IMO, he's a player who'd probably benefit from a change of scenery but it's tough to see where he'd land that would give him the game time he gets here. He was third or fourth choice at QPR when we picked him up and despite the Scotland call ups I don't think his stock has risen any since then so it's hard to see him trading up or what his options would be likely to be if he's wanting to be guaranteed first choice.
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38 minutes ago, ropy said:
I was watching AVFTT and saw Telfer enjoying his teams league victory. Are we missing a trick, nearly everybody has seen their team win a league since the ‘80s while we plod along in the top league. We should take a dive one year then see the crowds increase for our Championship league winning run.
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This is a giggle.
Our equalizing rate is almost 20% above league average.
https://www.soccerstats.com/team.asp?league=scotland&stats=4-motherwell
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16 minutes ago, rowsdower said:
I think we should probably lose that PCA we have with Halliday. I don't think he's particularly bad, but I feel the money would be better spent elsewhere. The only advantage that I could see with him is to add veteran presence for the weans, and cover us if we extend Slattery
Is Halliday doing his badges?
IMO, given Kettlewell spoke about us being understaffed way back when he got the gig (and we haven't really added to that since) Halliday feels like an absolute stick on to get added to the coaching staff alongside Foster etc while we keep him around as a player.
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10 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:
I think goalkeepers can command bigger fees than central midfielders tbh, especially the type of midfielder McCann was (that sounds like I'm playing him down, which isn't what I mean but I don't know how else to word it).
Clubs are absolutely desperate for match winning goalkeepers.
Not to stick my oar in but I’d think that @PauloPerth’s scenario is probably more likely.
You’re right in saying clubs are desperate for match winning GKs but I think because it’s such a specialised position there are more keepers available. Over the past 13 or 14 years we’ve probably had 3 of the best keepers in the league in Randolph, pre-DVT Carson and Gillespie and got precisely f**k all for them.
The closest we came was the supposed £500k Celtic offered for Carson when Gordon was injured late in a January window.
I think generally speaking there tends to be a surplus of good goalkeepers available on free transfers which drives down the necessity to pay big prices unless you’re talking elite levels.
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Tbh, I wondered if we might see some interest from MLS about Oor Thelonius.
On the point of 'the model', I know there was a fair amount of handwringing around the £1.6m loss from sections of the fanbase but the key point for me is that we're generally set up to be break even and profitable in the right set of circumstances and, I think @StAndrew7 mentioned this either here or on SO, it probably ties into why someone like Barmack might be interested in chucking some pocket money at the club - not that he'd make anything out it but unlike say, Dundee FC - given they're in the news at the moment, our business plan means we're not a financial black hole.
If you look at our accounts for last year, we saw a reduction in 'player trading' of £780k - we only brought in one significant fee c. 200k for big Sol (£194,246). Conversely our reporting for *this* season has us having brought in c. £1m (£991k) presumably for Max Johnston and KVV.
The point is that while there's been this narrative about the £750k shortfall (in the absolute worst case) it doesn't actually take that much to move the dial in the other direction.
Similarly, again from doom scrolling through the SO thread, the whole £1.6m losses came about because we *had* money to spend - so we spent it. The idea that we'd be seeing expenditure such as installing new pitches and knocking down the front of the east stand to rebuild an annual occurrence is just daft.
Presumably if we hadn't seen the Turnbull money in, we wouldn't have been spending £1.2m on a new pitch which means the P&L over the last two seasons would have been totally different.
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14 minutes ago, Doctor Manhattan said:
I don't normally mind Steelmen, but I've been avoiding it lately because it's going through one of its periodic phases of being dominated by a small number of people who seem to think they have to post every single thought that flits briefly across their minds, usually followed by "It's all about opinions" when anyone sensible points out that they're talking bollocks.
I mean, I stopped posting years ago (July 13th 2022 to be exact but it's going on 5 years since I've posted with any regularity). I was never a Day 1 guy anyway but a brief scan of the last few pages of the New Investment Options thread is exactly the reason I binned it.
That's absolutely fucking exhausting.
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3 hours ago, Busta Nut said:
Yeah I wasn't sure about the uproar about the article either.
I didn't actually realise there was uproar about the article then I looked at Steelmen.
Fucking hell.
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33 minutes ago, Al B said:
I take the point that we can't think of ways that an outside investor could make any money from Scottish football, so we should be wary of anyone who thinks they can, but isn't that the point of us trying to look outside the "bubble" so to speak?
Sort of like a "is there anyone out there that can think of ways to generate business income that we haven't thought of, and are you able to fascilitate that."
I hate using Wrexham as an example because it sounds like I'm jumping on some "ooooh we're the new Wrexham" thing which I'm absolutely not, but as it's an easy comparison to make:
No-one involved with Wrexham would have been able to think of a way to increase replica shirt sales. It's extremely unlikely any external businessman from Wrexham would have been able to come up with a way to increase replica shirt sales. Even if you expanded that out to the rest of Wales or even the UK, it's unlikely you'd have found any businessman that could sell a Wrexham shirt to anyone that wasn't in, or from Wrexham. It was effectively a closed market with a finite ceiling.
A businessman/men then comes on board who's, lets face it, an expert in exposure and global marketing who has the means to also fascilitate it, and they had sold nearly 25,000 22/23 replica shirts by the January of that season. That's almost £1.5 million in half a season, and that's only going to increase.
Now again just to clarify I'm not directly comparing us to Wrexham, our situation to theirs, or for a second thinking that that's what's going to happen to us. I'm just saying that for me, the mindset of "no-one's going to be able to make any more money from this than we already are, because we can't think of any other way to generate it", is exactly why we're moving out-with the confines of what we can think of.
I know people are tying themselves in knots over the majority shareholding thing but the part that I keep bumping against is that there's absolutely nothing in Barmack's background or CV that suggests that either he or his wife actually want to own a football club, let alone a Scottish football club, let alone a mid-tier Scottish football club at that.
I can understand why in any normal circumstance an investor would say, "I'm putting in X amount, I want X% ownership" but I guess there's a chance that doesn't actually matter as long as he's protected and there's scope for him to benefit.
I'm kind of in a similar place to @Al B above in thinking that there's a chance that people are getting too focussed on the Scottish football 'bubble' or "how can he make money from Motherwell?" (answer: he probably can't) rather than a more general question of "how can he make money?".
Which is a very different proposition.
Based on the US culture/media pods I listen to (*waves at The Ringer*) the general feeling is that the next big market for the streamers in going to be live sport/events . Apple already have the rights to MLS & MLB, Netflix aired the SAG awards live etc.
Both Barmack and his missus hold/have held senior positions at ESPN, Netflix, Google, Snapchat etc does a small stakes investment in a small market league give them any benefit down the line when the media landscape changes.
Although, having said that there's an argument that Scottish Fitba' is still too beholden to more "traditional" broadcast agreements I'd argue that there's probably more likelihood that they'd be able to make some sort of ROI in this sort of market rather than expecting any sort of profit via the Football Club.
I mean, I absolutely cannot wait for our Twitter bio to change to "We exist to connect dots between big media companies and fanbases" but ultimately that's his business (not making money out football clubs).
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25 minutes ago, Handsome_Devil said:
We've all heard the rumours of what the deal was, I suspect GM has it from sources. I find it a little sloppy from the Herald this wasn't made clear.
Aye, tbh that’s why I mentioned his erm, partisan coverage of the accounts. Where he was giving himself a stroke over the wage bill compared to Killie etc.
Basically, it’s not the first time he’s gone off piste.
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32 minutes ago, eliphas said:
I can only imagine how much Alan/Grant/Laura would be giddy with excitement with, if they were still here, and a guy who talks about social media growth and content initiatives was cutting about the place.
This isn't a criticism of anything by the way...just ironic they all did a bunk and then this guy pops up.
I noticed that Flow and Grant are following him on socials and he's following Burrows on IG:
Also, I'm not sure why people are still focusing on him making some sort of documentary given the mention of it was a) because he was asked and b) his reply was "It would depend on the right elements coming together, but that's not the reason for our interest in Motherwell"
It kind of feels like people are just jumping to conclusions without actually reading what's been said.
Similarly I noticed that the PA journo McCafferty was kind of misrepresenting things again (IIRC it was him that was kicking off over the accounts before Weir clamped his points about Killie in that interview in January).
I mean, that may well end up being true but as yet there's nothing that's explicitly said that it would "end majority fan ownership". It's just what has been rumoured off the back of vague comments from the AGM.
This is the quote about it from Barmack: "Our perspective is we never want to make an investment that disempowers the Well Society and the connection the fan-owned group has with the club. There's a bunch of different ways to construct deals that can accomplish the objectives of a fan ownership model, alongside outside investors.
Any of those deals are dependent on trust and having good relationships. But while it's early stages, we're only interested if we can co-invest with the Well Society."
As I say, the deal may end up being something that "ends" majority fan ownership but as yet, as far as I can tell there's been nothing from either Barmack, the club or the WS that even indicates what the deal is.
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2 hours ago, wellboy1991 said:
I missed your earlier post on this in amongst all the nonsense since tbh. But good effort.
Ha! Tbf it was in a big screed of my nonsense and there's clearly been a lot of other stuff going on since I posted that.
I also wasn't intending to make any grand claim, just point out something I'd read on the internet.
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40 minutes ago, wellboy1991 said:
From what I am hearing about some guests attending Fir Park at the weekend, our singing in the stands better be ‘pitch perfect’.
Also if ’The Boys’ don’t perform then could lead to a ‘Hunger Games’ sty free for all.
I’m being a bit daft here, but the spouse of a movie star who has appeared in all of the above is seemingly coming to the game and is interested in investing in the club along with oor Erik B. Seemingly.
On 05/04/2024 at 12:04, capt_oats said:I don't know if you're being facetious about the contacts book thing but he wrote a book, published by Simon and Schuster in 2006 called Why Fantasy Football Matters: (And Our Lives Do Not). What's interesting about that is that it was co-written with Max Handelman - who is Max Handelman you might ask? As well as being a sports writer he's also Elizabeth Banks' husband and partner in Brownstone Productions who produced the Pitch Perfect series, the Charlie's Angels Kristen Stewart re-boot, Cocaine Bear and Bottoms amongst others.
Long and the short of it their estimated net worth according to the internet is $50m. I mean, it's not them who are investing but taking things at face value Barmack seems to be an actual, real person rather than a Walter Mitty type of the Craig Whyte 'wealth off the radar' school.
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1 hour ago, Busta Nut said:
Trying to separate politics from anything is a bit weird. Everything is political, I'd suggest the ownership of a club is very political.
100%. I've never really got the whole "keep politics out of sport" stance for exactly this reason.
Especially in this case, given that part of the brief that surrounded the McMahon video was (I'm paraphrasing) the hope that we could seek partnership with someone in line with the "values" of the club and matched our ethics.
Given the trend toward 'sportswashing' that's prevalent in both football and sport in general it's a fairly natural response to want to establish what the values and ethical stance of the club is in the first place or as a fan owned club what we think those ethics should be.
That is, one way or another, political and tbf, it's a subject that @crazylegsjoe_mfc covers well in his response to @Wellin's post on the previous page.
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8 minutes ago, redstarcvedza said:
One of the advantages of football (Old Firm excepted) is that in general it is apolitical. As Motherwell fans do we really give a monkeys about the private politics of our players, owners, management team or fellow fans ?
I mean, yes.
No Tories thanks.
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Anyway, on big Theo, just look at him…he’s thriving
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51 minutes ago, Handsome_Devil said:
I can no longer remember the massive list of guys we failed to get but there was more than half a dozen and not one of them makes you think we missed out on much at all. So far, at least.
I think I said at the time that not getting a replacement for Biereth through the door in January was a failure regardless of what happened. Which, tbh, I stand by.
I agree that I don’t think we’d have been any better off had we got KVV, Eamonn Brophy, Stevie May, Aidan Keena, the laddie who ended up at Hibs or any of the other names chucked around but while clearly it’s great that big Thelonius has gone on the tear he has, finding ourselves in the position where, by our own admission at the AGM, we were phoning around anyone who would answer at 10pm on deadline day and in some cases being openly laughed at as we scrambled can’t really be chalked up as a W. Otherwise we presumably wouldn’t have been in full blown panic mode trying to get hold of literally anyone before finally bringing back a guy whose loan we’d cancelled a fortnight earlier.
Having said all that, another goal involvement for Jack Vale at the weekend. Some boi.
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41 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:
That loss is last seasons, FWIW. So that's what they lost in winning the Championship.
True.
Although the reporting has mentioned they're expecting a similar loss next year for this season so @thisGRAEME is just 12 months ahead of the curve.
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Bailey Rice getting his arse handed to him is it?
We cannot be stopped.
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What is this witchcraft?
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17 minutes ago, eliphas said:
Unless I'm not following we'd have another round of fixtures to go...
Someone else can explain in more detail but you need to have 38 games maximum or something like that to allow for European/International commitments which means you can't have another full round of fixtures as that would take it to 44.
It's essentially why the split exists rather than all the "it adds excitement/meaningful games". It's purely functional.
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"Far from ideal build up..."
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Lads, honestly, I'm still giggling watching this.
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13 minutes ago, rowsdower said:
I dont actually think we'd lose 5, but that seems to be whats generally mooted as the downside of top six. With absolutely nothing to lose, we could be a dangerous prospect for the teams that have something to play for. Then you have killie and hearts just seeing out the season...
I was at peace with "just don't be stranded at the bottom come the split" in December, so I'm not going to be distraught if we don't get it done next week.
Aye.
Fwiw, I don't think we'd lose 5 either.
We'd definitely draw a couple.
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Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons
in Scottish Premiership General Chatter
Posted · Edited by capt_oats
Aye, I mean, going by form we're 7th in the last 4, 4th in the last 6, 7th in the last 8, 5th in the last 10 and 5th in the last 12.
It's annoying it's not 'mathematically' sorted but unless our plan is to actively try to lose all our remaining games in some Major League style hi-jinks we're in reasonable enough form and while it's possible we lose all 5 we've only lost 4 in our last 17 (vs Rangers (h), Hearts (a), Celtic (h) and Aberdeen (a)). The Hearts and Celtic games are our only b2b defeats since the start of November.
Long story short; chances are we'll pick up a few points in order to land the plane.
Even in the play-off season we took 5 points post-split (a win vs Killie and draws vs County and Thistle).