capt_oats

I mean, it was the same recruitment team who brought Biereth in so that's something...then again we had a whole summer to work on that. It feels like turning a similar deal round in January is a much tougher question.

Reading Kettlewell's comments from the presser I think a major problem for us now is that naive as it may be it doesn't look like we've seen this coming so I'm guessing we're not best placed to deal with it, Essentially it sounds like we had the discussion last week and were told by Arsenal that the plan was for Biereth to see out the season with us and we've taken them on their word in good faith.

Tierney has been injured since the end of November. He wasn't in Walsall's squad at the weekend. IIRC it was a hamstring issue he's had. Anyway...this is a giggle.

And there it is...presumably from Kettlewell's presser. Here was me thinking that fucking video was going to be the worst Motherwell related news in January.

Looking forward to the double dunter of Mika being recalled and Halliday being announced. Although, having said that I noticed Scott Burns updating a reply guy about Halliday so maybe it’s not so much of a given we’re signing him.

This is kind of the way I'm looking at it as well. I mean, for me the positive is that we actually identified and signed him in the first place (yes we've since signed Oli Shaw et al) but you'd hope that if we've been given a steer that this might have been a possibility then we might have some sort of an alternative identified. It's been well covered but we've a decent track record of bringing in strikers - even the bold Curtis Main did us a proper turn short term when he replaced Moult. Who knows maybe there's some other wonderkid just kicking their heels around London Colney. I guess the problem is that making that signing is probably much easier in the summer than it is in January and we really need this one to make an immediate impact it feels like it's much higher risk and it also needs the board to actually back the manager since the policy they've put in place of trimming the numbers the way they have has been, respectfully, counter-productive.

According to his IG the other day he was boarding a flight to Amsterdam so….it seems unlikely seeing as his most recent post is of him cutting about with family.

Who the f**k is Connor Smith (that we aren’t interested in)?

Not really the put down you think it is there. Lee Erwin made us £500k and absolutely battered the ****. Some boi.

I mean, I could see why Kettlewell might have been interested but ngl I always thought the idea that he’d choose come back here was a bit optimistic. It’s not like he had a particularly warm and fuzzy relationship with the support or anything.

I mean, Biereth is their player and the reason he's here is for his development rather than helping us out. Given in the short time he's been available he's looked more than capable with us at this level the step up to the Championship makes sense and given Arsenal's previous for this it was always going to be a risk so you'd hope we might have built in some sort of contingency (lol). The one thing that I thought might have been in our favour was his injury and the fact it's a relatively small sample size. I doubt we'd necessarily get much of a say in it but if the loan is essentially having to be "ripped up" you'd hope that were would be some sort of quid quo pro since it's a fucking pain in the arse for us. All of which is to say is if Arsenal are going to take our beautiful boy Mika away they can at least do us a solid in return. Bring him home...

This fucking season man...

Aye. Reading my posts back from last night there was quite a heavy "Poor Jake Hastie..." vibe which wasn't really intended. Clearly it's on him to take ownership of the direction of travel of his career. The whole 'Stop The 10' incident had a daft laddie who's out of his depth energy. At the same time I definitely stand by the idea that he was poorly handled - Rangers seemed to decide they'd been sold a pup immediately and the loan spell he had where he was destined to continually run into dead ends on a weekly basis because of the way Robinson set up (and was doing nothing to correct it) shot any confidence he had left to pieces and I don't really think his career has ever really recovered from it.

Basically that the opposition found out how to nullify him in the position Robinson persisted in playing him. To the point @Gianfranco made earlier about the impact Hastie made on the at Development level - Craigan often used him on the left or even played him through the centre whereas Robinson was completely fixated on his 433 with inverted wingers. I went along to watch that Development side a lot and tbh, I'd argue that Craigan was the only manager who actually managed to get consistent performances out of Hastie. Even then it was pretty common knowledge that he wasn't viewed as a priority when he was brought back from Alloa - the main focus was getting Turnbull and Scott tied down on long term deals. Given the way Robinson handled his loan spell then chances are that it'd have gone the same way even if he'd knocked Rangers back and signed an extension with us. He'd just have had far less money in the bank. Clearly a lot of the responsibility is on the player but that's not to say that his career couldn't have gone a different way and his all round game been developed because he had all the tools.

A hill that I will absolutely die on is that he was badly managed by Gerrard and Robinson. Firstly Gerrard binning him off out on loan like a month after signing him then that loan spell he had with us where Robinson kept playing him as an inverted winger despite it being clear he'd been found out and was crushing every fibre of confidence from his soul. Fucking hell.

What a time though...he's 19 here.

Aye. I've kind of talked myself round on the Halliday signing. It's a low bar but not being Bob Malcolm is a start I guess - clear that and we can work from there. The Open Goal-ness of it all is more a me problem than an Andy Halliday problem but no one's asking me to go for a pint with him or his idiots by association. Also, I had no problem with Scott McDonald, Craigan and McManus taking on media work while working for the club so I'm not about to clutch my pearls about Halliday doing a podcast (that I don't listen to). As I said yesterday this feels like the shortest of short term windows and I'd guess Slattery's injury has blindsided us - so if this is a straightforward deal that's able to be done quickly then crack on. Taking all that into account, if he does sign, we'd be getting an experienced player who can cover a couple of positions and adding him to a squad that quite frankly we've been saying needs a certain *type* of player added to it. I wouldn't necessarily be quick to place Halliday alongside Lasley, Hammell, Hartley, Aldred or Allan Campbell but equally he found himself as stand-in captain of Rangers on occasions on The Journey. Ultimately even when we're doing well we're working in a pretty limited market in January. The bigger picture signings feel like projects for a Summer window.

I mean, ultimately unlike the other backroom roles Alexander/Burrows created that were quietly wound down at the end of last season I'd guess that the club see value in the HoR role so if we were to have moved Daws on then we'd have been looking to recruit one anyway. IIRC Kettlewell made the point when things had settled down a bit last season that he didn't have the benefit of the sort of infrastructure we have when he was at County. If that's the case then it's not like he had previous working relationship with a HoR that we'd have brought in to work alongside him (sidenote: I see Adams has our very own Greg Strong in that role in Dingwall now, having previously worked with him at Morecambe and Plymouth). I guess it's a pretty subjective thing. I've pointed out before that Foyle and Robinson brought as many, if not more, competition winners to the club as Daws but whether it's the Alexander association he seems to take far more heat for decisions that are ultimately being made by the managers.

On that point, I know Nick Daws has been taking a lot of heat because...recruitment. Also, as we know, there's a section of our support are permanently furious about us signing players from the English lower leagues. Dunno, Adam Montgomery and Andy Halliday feel pretty much...not that. I wonder how much of that is based on Kettlewell's direction like.

Aye. He feels like a really obvious choice with this but even though Martindale seems to have taken the huff with Kelly I guess it'd still be a surprise if they sold him to a relegation rival at this point in time. I suppose if Miller is back in training (per @Casagolda) then really all we're looking for from Halliday is another body who's not Barry Maguire to get us through to the summer.

Disappointed to see you writing off Toby like that.

Tbf with Butcher AND Halliday in the team our c**t rating would be off the charts.