capt_oats

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.

Monty announced...

I mean it's Andy Halliday so my reaction is obviously... At the same time though...this honestly feels like the shortest of short term windows so also this...

It looks like he's been injured tbf. Peterboro had put him on the "transfer list" when they announced their retained list in the summer though. https://www.theposh.com/news/posh-confirm-number-players-available-transfer

Tbh, I'm probably a bit more optimistic in terms of the numbers we might bring in. I'd like to think we'll replace what's gone out the door (Souaré, Spencer and Wilko) with one or two on top of that. Before the window opened Kettlewell was quite clear in saying he felt we needed to add a couple on top of what we already had. Taking a quick look through previous seasons I think the fewest we've brought in was back in 15/16 when we only seemed to bring Gomis in on loan from Hearts (plus McFadden in December). The caveat there was we started the season with a daft sized squad when Baraclough was running around signing Theo Robinson and David Clarkson so McGhee had clearly been telt to trim the squad. Here are our January/Winter signings since then: 16/17 - Elliot Frear, Shea Gordon, Stephen Pearson (February), Russell Griffiths (loan), Zak Jules (loan) = 5 17/18 - Curtis Main, Nadir Ciftci, Tom Aldred, Stephen Hendrie = 4 18/19 - Ross McCormack (loan), Gboly Ariyibi (loan) = 2 19/20 - Tony Watt (February), Harry Robinson (March), Mikael Ndjoli (loan), Rolando Aarons (loan) = 4 20/21 - Steven Lawless, Sam Foley, Liam Kelly (loan), Harry Smith (loan), Jordan Roberts (loan), Eddie Nolan (loan), Tyler Magloire (loan) = 7 21/22 - Ross Tierney, Victor Nirennold, Joseph Efford, Robbie Mahon (March), Liam Shaw (loan) = 5 22/23 - Shane Blaney, Mikael Mandron, Riku Danzaki, Jack Aitchison, Dan Casey, Calum Butcher, Harry Paton (April), Ollie Crankshaw (loan), James Furlong (loan), Jonathan Obika (loan) = 10 (lol) That's not including the likes of Peter Hartley, Robbie Crawford and Jordan Roberts who all made their loans permanent in January. It's clearly worth mentioning that we brought Hastie back from loan in the 18/19 season as well. I mean, I don't see us going on a trolley dash akin to last season but we've generally been good for getting 4 or 5 in through the winter window if they're needed.

I see that's Monty following Gent on IG now so I guess that's one of those accounted for now.

Tbf I don't necessarily think Kettlewell doesn't trust Gent. Certainly not enough to send him back. It's probably more the case that he's less inclined to go through the 2nd half of the season with him as our first choice - if that makes sense. On RB I wondered if we might be holding off to see if we'd get Spencer back given we're the only other team he can play for now but I see he started for Huddersfield against Plymouth at the weekend so I'm guessing that ship has sailed. Fully expect him to be replaced by another regen with a similar profile though.

Vaguely related to Penney but I clocked this absolutely wild take on Twitter the other day. I mean, I definitely can't think of anything else that might have had more of an impact on our defensive record after Penney left.

Aye. He's a forward/winger who's been converted to play LB/LWB. I seem to recall had a fairly shite time at Aberdeen but from a quick check that was in the death throes of the Glass era and it looks like he was being used as a LB whereas he'll more than likely be playing as LWB/left mid in whichever variation of 343/3412/352 Kettlewell goes with. As I say, this feels like an entirely sensible move.

I think I’ve always instinctively been unsure about Montgomery because he looks about 12 years old. Setting aside irrational biases like that though, I think swapping him in for Souaré seems an entirely sensible bit of business. Fwiw, I don’t think we’re any more/less focused on LWB than any other position. I mean, we definitely need one, just as we need to fill the various other positions.

IIRC the pre-contract rules in England are different so I don’t think clubs down there would be able to speak to him in the same way as they can up here. Pretty sure that was the point Grezza made when he was blindsided by United signing Watt on the PCA. I'm not sure if that only applies to teams in the same league or if it's an association wide thing - clearly the PL and EFL are separate organisations. https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/rangers/motherwells-alexander-wants-scotland-to-copy-england-over-pre-contract-3520547

Cheers. It’s interesting to see those names as I wondered if Kelly’s name would be there when I posted that earlier especially as Slattery is currently out of contract at the end of the season and Martindale, weirdly, doesn’t seem to fancy Kelly now.

Both mentioned it. Arsenal haven't announced they've recalled him either. Having said that, he's Arsenal's player so I'd imagine circumstances could have changed in the time between those Tweets having been posted and now.