capt_oats

PM'd you.

Out of curiosity how different was the 15/16 Dundee side to the one he got Top 6/promotion with. Although last season was clearly when the wheels came right off, it seemed to me (as an outsider) that the warning signs were there in 15/16 and the whole relegating United at Dens thing seemed to paper over a lot of cracks. There was a run of 1 win in 11 (the win was against us) and then there was another run with 1 win in 8 or something. Which given he had Stewart and Hemmings in the side along with Bain getting his hype seemed like he was slightly underperforming especially with the number of draws. When you look at the insane number of players he signed it seemed to me that he just began to lose a lot of focus the longer he went in the job. Was his budget increased around then? I can see Hartley being a really good fit for Falkirk tbh. The opportunity to get a side promoted and back into the Premiership seems like it'd do much more for him after the Dundee job than simply taking a job like Killie and keeping them safe season on season.

Curious you say that as it's something that had crossed my mind too as the recruitment this year already looks to have been miles better than last summer. I seem to remember Robinson suggesting that it had been him that had recommended McHugh to the club in one of the pre-season videos on the MFC YouTube. I alluded to this in the Killie manager thread but without wanting to have a pop at McGhee, it does raise questions as to whether he had any idea what the players he was getting were like. As far as I can see our chief scout/head of recruitment is the same guy, our COO is the same guy and I can't imagine our budget is drastically different given the whole fan ownership thing yet the "quality" or at least the fit of the players who have come in are markedly more suited to what the manager seems to be trying to do with the side. The key difference seems to be the manager. When Alan Burrows did that extended interview for the YouTube channel he seemed to be quite pointed as far as the effort Robinson was putting in to recruitment and highlighted that he had been putting in the miles going and watching players. It's the benefit of hindsight but given Clay came in on trial seemingly because he was pals with Tait and we'd dealt with their agent and we were short of a midfielder with Pearson having left, we ended up giving Samson a new deal and making him first choice (and sticking with him) simply because he'd hung about then and well...Jacob Blyth's entire Fir Park career is worth questioning it seems entirely possible that, given he's the only change in the set up and recruitment structure, that McGhee was simply picking some names off a list and a cursory glance at WyScout or Scout7 in a sort of "get me a 6ft 3" target man please"-style, "OK, he'll do" type way. Even the difference in Bowman between this season under Robinson and last season under McGhee suggests that we brought him in without a clue what to do with him. As for the SLO thing, the only appropriate response to that Job Description (that's not a paid job) is "f**k that". The level of grief the poor lassie who was eventually announced got from the utter maniacs in our fanbase was unreal too. No wonder she sacked it off within a day. On the whole I found Murrant's whole Soccer AM #bantz grating but that was pretty easily resolved by just not following his personal account on Twitter. Overall the Season ticket campaign and fan survey seemed to work really well and I think that while by no means perfect the commercial side of things has been showing an definite improvement. I'm curious to see if he turns up at another club down south soon and whether we bring someone else in for that role.

Enjoy (I went straight to this video after reading Casagolda's post earlier).

Aye, I'm not saying it was a stick-on red or anything or that we were done in him not being sent off but watching it back and given the ref's position you could imagine certain refs would have been totally fine with showing a red card. There's a decent angle to enjoy in the GIFs below. It's just a really lazy challenge tbh.

Celtic game bumped from 21st October to 29th November at 19:45 (on account of the LC semi-final). Means we've now got a home and away double header against them on 29th Nov and 2nd December.

He could easily have been off the park after leaving his boot in McHugh's stomach as well. He seemed absolutely miles off it.

2019. Signed an extension last year. http://dundeefc.co.uk/news/mcpake-signs-extension/

it was Alex Neil. He talked about it in an extended interview on Sportsound.

Shea Gordon in the bold Baraclough's Northern Ireland u21 squad (along with Ben Hall).

If his Wiki is anything to go by (and who am I to doubt Wiki's veracity) he apparently turned down Celtic, signed a new deal with Burnley then moved to Bolton 6 months later with Burnley 14th in the Premier League and Bolton 18th. He kept Bolton up in 14th place (season prior they'd finished 13th under Megson and 16th the season before that) and Burnley were relegated. He finished 14th in the Premiership the following season and got to the semi-final of the FA Cup. The season after they were relegated on the final day of the season and he was binned by October 2012. Suffice to say that seems to have been where it seems to have gone wrong for him (lasted 23 games at Wigan and 37 at Blackburn with 1 season in Houston) but looking at it his time at Bolton wasn't actually as bad as it's made out. Kept them up twice with an FA Cup semi-final to boot. Granted, knocking Celtic back (if indeed he did) to stay at Burnley only to jump ship for Bolton the same season is mentalist behaviour but he actually lasted longer at Bolton than I thought.

There's yer David Turnbull included in the Scotland u19s squad.

Posted in the Falkirk thread about Coyle. The chat was that he was Motherwell's preferred choice after McGhee was emptied and he was keen on the job. Apparently it fell through as it transpired that him taking it would have had an impact on his pay-out from Blackburn. Given we indicated we were looking at making a quick appointment then missed that deadline, opened the job up to interview and ended up appointing the guy who was interim manager anyway suggests that our first choice falling through doesn't seem that outlandish. I'll be interested to see how he does at County. For all he's clearly a joke figure down in England he was successful at St Johnstone and Burnley while 3 of his last 4 clubs have been/are absolute basket cases so other than saying he's made some dreadful career choices I'm not sure how much you can read into his time at those clubs. County are a pretty stable club and reading Uncle Roy's comments about there not being the right "chemistry" and "blend" in the team is quite telling. It's going back a bit but Kevin Davies' comments on Coyle at Bolton are illuminating in that respect:

There's yer Allan Campbell in the Scotland u21s.

The Terrace guys are good guys tbf.

That's it official. http://www.rosscountyfootballclub.co.uk/news/archive/breaking-news-rcfc-part-company-with-jim-mcintyre-and-billy-dodds/

On the whole Coyle thing, there was fairly reliable chat (from guys who are genuinely quite #ITK) that he was our preferred candidate when McGhee was emptied and that he had essentially agreed to take the job in principle. Apparently it fell through as it transpired that him taking the job would have impacted on his pay-out from Blackburn. There's a lot of that checks out in terms of us having indicated we were to announce McGhee's replacement quickly (within a week). That deadline passed, we then started interviewing and in the end we appointed the guy who was interim manager. There was enough about all that to suggest that we had someone lined up but for whatever reason it fell through and put us on to a Plan B. Given this is a new season and all that there's a fair chance that the pay-out obstacles relating to Coyle no longer apply and as others have said, there's next to no chance of him getting a job in England again any time soon. Edit: There was a bit on the radio earlier about McGhee talking in the press about wanting to get back into full time management...

That's Houston gone apparently.

Signed an extension in 2016. He's contracted until 2019.

That's Alan Burrows tweeting we've (finally) received clearance for Wee Petey. He's eligible for selection from Sunday onwards.

Pretty sure Woods had been training with us. There was someone who looked very like him in one of the wee training videos the club puts up on YouTube. We've hunners of midfielders so it's more than likely he was in as a favour more than anything.

Perhaps I'm being whooshed here but...Saturday was only your 5th league win this calendar year. With you having only won by more than one goal once...

Aye, as I said to my pal who covers Thistle's dev side for their Twitter feed that was closer to a reserve side we put out last night. It was as much about Motherwell having more about them physically than anything, even though technically they were playing some good stuff (as did Thistle). Even Liam Brown, who's still 18, has a season of first team league games under his belt with Queen's Park while half of the starting XI have either played or been involved in match day squads with our first team. Craigan touched on it in his interview but the first team guys like Plummer, Fisher, MacLean, Petravičius and particularly Tanner all turned up and played like first team players. There was less Blyth-a-like "going through the motions". Even though Fisher was the only wildly "over age" player it still seemed a bit of a mismatch particularly as Thistle were missing players. It's game like that where you really see the differences in terms of strength & conditioning though. James Scott's only 17 and physically quite imposing compared to Thistle's lot. Turnbull's 18 and has gone from being built like the side of a fiver at the start of last season to being able comfortably hold his own in the competitive games against Queen's Park and Crusaders. Edit: that starting XI we put out yesterday had an average age of 20.4 and there's probably an argument that those who didn't start or weren't involved; Bowers, Maguire, Gordon, MacDonald, Semple, Agyeman, Scott et al would make the core of a fairly competitive Dev League side. That's not even including the likes of Ferguson, Watt, Hastie or McMillan who are out on Dev Loan.

So Wee Petey made quite the impression for the u20s this evening. Suffice to say he's not Belic mk2. Absolutely rapid and has a bit of height, decent in the air put the cross in for Fisher's first, won the penalty and scored the 3rd. Granted he's a full international and was playing against actual teenagers but still...looked like he has something to offer.

So Wee Petey made quite the impression for the u20s this evening. Suffice to say he's not Belic mk2. Absolutely rapid and has a bit of height, decent in the air put the cross in for Fisher's first, won the penalty and scored the 3rd. Granted he's a full international and was playing against actual teenagers but still...looked like he has something to offer.