capt_oats

Christina Aguilera - Candyman

The Beatles - Happiness Is A Warm Gun

Patsy Cline - Walkin' After Midnight

ESG - Moody

Question Mark & The Mysterians - 96 Tears

Yeah, the Oldham situation was wild. IIRC he inherited a squad of 3 first team players or something 3 weeks before the season started. In that respect his signing policy there seemed to be quite literally "we'll take who we can get" and in that respect signing players he'd worked with before in Ripley (who has been outstanding for them by all accounts), Law and Erwin is understandable. I pretty sure there was also some sort of transfer embargo came into play at some point too. I'm still quite undecided about the "success rate" of our signing policy tbh Moult and Johnson being the obvious stand-outs, it really depends on whether you're distinguishing between "ability" and "squad role" I suppose. McHugh looks good and captain material, Frear seems to have potential and I'm a fan of Tait but guys like Bowman who were actually brought in for the first team look to have struggled with the step up and I remain to be convinced by Heneghan. I mean he's been alright but he's 23 and his game is absolutely littered with pretty glaring deficiencies. Having said that he's been asked to play week in week out regardless of form or injury. There's probably a pretty reasonable % (probably far too many) of our signings fall into the "bang average, have done a job & filled a jersey" category but the number who you'd say have genuinely improved the side is fewer and really that's where we need to be better IMO. Sifting through the dross you've got guys like Wes Fletcher, Jacob Blyth, Joe Chalmers, Craig Clay, Jake Taylor, Morgaro Gomis and FA Cup Hero Theo Robinson etc. Unlike someone like Lucas, who I'm pretty sure we've just taken as a punt and felt would at worst offer some cover or Belic who'd be in the same mould players like Taylor and Gomis were brought to contribute to the first team and they offered very little. OK Gomis was last minute because the Grimshaw deal fell through but even still... Craig Clay's started 32 games this season when he should at best be a squad player to offer cover from the bench (IMO). It took that 5-1 horror show against Dundee at Fir Park for someone to finally make a decision on Joe Chalmers. One thing I would say is that when there was talk in January about McDonald being tempted with his return to Australia it seems we were looking at players like Christie and Ciftci to replace him albeit on loan. That suggests that at the very least we're aware that someone like Skippy is a key player and isn't going to be someone we'll be able to moneyball our way to replacing with some jobber from the National League. Edit to add: I suppose as an extension to the point about Clay above is whether he'd have started as many had McHugh been fit but as a general point it's probably worth highlighting all the same.

The Twilight Sad - The Wrong Car

Ride announced as support for Mogwai at the Hydro in December.

Absolutely. I've no problem with them not rushing McManus back but given he'll be 35 this year there's surely a question mark over the extent to which an injury like this (the first serious one he's had since he's been at the club) might affect his performance levels. If we're able to bring in another experienced centre half then we absolutely should IMO. It's all *imagine if* but imagine if McManus had picked up this injury during the period McHugh was out with concussion? We would have been absolutely fucked at centre half. The other point for me, and I'm loathe to sound overly harsh about this, is the base that we're working from is currently 10th in the league and has struggled all season with Moult and McDonald pretty much keeping our heads above water. Between them Moult and McDonald have scored more goals (27) than the rest of our squad put together (21) this season and defensively we have the 2nd worst goals against record in the league and that's with our first choice keeper and back 4 having been available for the majority of games. I like players like Tait, McHugh, Campbell, Cadden, Frear et al and having a season to bed in you'd hope they'd kick on but as I've said before I hope that this season has been an eye-opener of the club in terms of the limitations of the squad and also the extent to which their approach to recruitment could/should be reappraised/improved/modified.

I've never been a particularly huge fan of Mannus though that's just more because he's not really the *type* of goalkeeper I like but I can see why we'd go for him if he's available. Realistically he's probably as good a goalkeeper as we'd be likely to get just now. Casagolda's mention about experienced players moving on got me thinking, I saw McManus at Fir Park alongside Moult for the u20s game against St Mirren last week and he looked as if he was moving very gingerly indeed. Given he's 34 as it is and turns 35 this year I wonder if this might throw up some issues. Whilst I don't think he's been as bad as some folk make him out to be he's still hardly been #flawless. Either way his injury has totally shown up the extent to which we've been relying on him for experience at the back. One thing I'm quite curious about is what Robinson's preferred shape is and how much the 3 at the back he's been using has been a case of needs must. So far we've seen 343 (3412), 352 and 442. Looking forward there's a very real chance that we could be looking at needing an entire new spine to the side once Samson, Lasley, Pearson and more than likely McDonald go. Plus question marks over McManus and Hammell's fitness and the inevitable departure of SuperJoe and the likelihood of Lionel moving on that's before the terrifying thought of Moult and all his goals leaving. GK - ? +1 RB - Tait RCB - Heneghan LCB - (McManus) LB - ? +1 RM - Cadden RCM - ? (Campbell) LCM - McHugh (+?) LM - Frear (+?) ST - ? ST - Moult (Bowman) 2 new goalkeepers, 2 new left backs, an experienced centre half, 2 midfielders and potentially 2 new strikers. That is some rebuild job. I kind of alluded to it in my post the other day but I think we've possibly tried to be too clever with our recruitment. I'm fully on board with the whole "strategy" but to bring it back to Casagolda's post it'd be nice if we were able to just go out and bring in some solid, proven players at this level and build from that foundation, ideally working from the GK and back 4.

not quite, his dev loan had expired rather than him being recalled but yeah the point still stands.

just checked with one of my pals who knows more about dev loan rules than i do and apparently since Mackin has played for Alloa's first team we can't recall him. Which thinking about it & registrations, makes sense. re: Hastie I think Craigan actually said that both he and Turnbull were 2 he'd ideally have liked to have loaned out. In all seriousness though if it's just cover off the bench I'd be more than happy for Hastie to be in there. In truth I'd rather he was there even if Blyth was fit!

Oh absolutely but given we've been playing with 3 up front (kind of) I could see Hastie being able to at least make a half decent attempt playing on the left side of the front 2 with McDonald playing off them. I reckon at the very least he'd win us a few penalties playing off the shoulder of defenders.

I'd just go with Hastie as cover tbh. Totally different type of player I grant you but he's got more pace and is more of a goal threat than Blyth will ever be tbh. Can Mackin even be recalled from his Dev loan anyway?

He went off the park on crutches this evening. Didn't actually see what happened, just looked up and he was lying crumpled on the deck. I'd imagine he'd be out for a while now.

Neil McCann.............

If they're looking at making a quick, short term appointment then I can see the logic behind it. It seems wild but in all honesty I can't really see a candidate who'd want the job long term wanting to come in with 5 games to go and risk a relegation on his CV as soon as he's in the door. Having looked at SkyBet's odds on candidates the first 5 names are Stubbs, Hopkin, Duffy, Butcher and Locke. Hardly names to fill you with confidence and in the case of Stubbs and Duffy I'd have thought both of them would wait until the end of the season before making any decisions. If they're honestly talking about making an appointment in such a short timeframe then you have to think it's something that's been discussed before now.

A quick look at his wikipedia suggests the last team he managed was Dundee in 1986. Every other job (bar the Scotland u21s) has been an assistant gig. Edit: Sorry, he had 2 games as caretaker of Bolton in 2007.

Errors - Slow Rotor

Not to be a dick but unless you're talking about the 0-0 at Fir Park or the 2-0 win at Dens after your goalkeeper fell into the net with the ball then fair enough but I wouldn't be in a rush to use that 5-1 as any sort of a benchmark for Hartley's ability. It was the single worst Motherwell performance I've seen in nearly 30 years going to Fir Park, it said much more about us and McGhee than it did Dundee. The back 4 consisted of two 19 year olds (one of whom was only making his 2nd first team start in his career), a centre half who prior to joining us has been playing solely at National League level in England and Joe fucking Chalmers all playing in front of a limited goalkeeper whose confidence has been absolutely shot to pieces and a manager in charge for whom the writing was absolutely on the wall after an increasingly regular series of meltdowns. Well done on winning that game and everything and of course you can only beat what's in front of you but a bit of context about the shape of the team you stuck 5 past is probably in order.

Cheers both. Given the other options we've got up front at the moment (Bowman & Blyth) haven't exactly hit the ground running in terms of goals there's a chance he may see some game time with us next season if he sticks around. Pleased to hear he's at least added a bit to your side though.

Yassss! That's pleasing to hear.

How's Mackin getting on for you guys? He's been pitching up on the bench for our u20s now and again. Has he made much of an impact at all?

I can't really disagree with that tbh. I think McGhee was on the whole "a.good.manager" for us but he's clearly got a lot wrong this season and it's clutching at straws to say that this season has been anything other than awful. We've had good results certainly but even with the 4-2 against Accies it amounted to a good half of football, we fell out the game completely and needed the 4th. I totally take on board the injuries line as well. McHugh looks to have been arguably our best signing of the summer window and we lost him for almost the entire first half of the season. Having said that, every side will have had injuries; Thistle lost Cerny for 10 games, Doumbuya has been out most of the season, Bannigan hasn't played for them at all since he signed his new deal. Killie had Kiltie injured, Addison's only played 11 games and they sold Magennis and Coulibally (the latter having contributed 11 goals to their season). You can absolutely point to injuries having had an detrimental impact on our season but we're not some sort of exceptional circumstance in that respect. I completely agree that had we been able to put our *best* team out consistently that we'd probably be in a much safer position than we are just now though. While it's fair comment that we haven't been able to put out our best team once, let alone for a run of games the back 5 of Samson, Tait, Heneghan, McManus and Hammell has played regularly. You could maybe make a case for McHugh being a better defensive option but on the whole that is our first choice defence and they've not been anywhere near good enough. You would hope that the more they played together they more solid a unit they'd become but by the time McGhee got his jotters our defence looked as porous as it did when Hibs were reaming us 4-1 in pre-season. Whether that's the fault of the coaching staff or the individual players IDK but McGhee's shrug of the shoulders and line of "we're capable of those kind of results" wasn't really the answer. If we weren't improving as a defensive unit through coaching then we really should have been looking to reinforce, we didn't do that. By the time the January window came around we were sat in 9th place with the 4th worst goals against record and 5th worst goal difference. Since the January window opened we have the worst goals against record (26 conceded in 12 games) and a -17 goal difference. OK you can be generous and put the 7-2 and 5-1 results down to freak occurrences with a radically altered back 4 playing in the Dundee game but either way the upshot is that we've not been anywhere near good enough defensively. Where Thistle were able to welcome Cerny back to their side and add Keown, Killie brought in Woodman for MacDonald and loaned in Ajer from Celtic we released Brill and Laing, brought in Griffiths and Jules and kept playing the same goalkeeper and back 4 that had been conceding 1.65 goals a game. Since the January window Thistle have the 2nd best goals against record (7), Killie the 5th (14). In that respect I wholeheartedly agree that recruitment is going to be key for us but equally I think there needs to be an honest appraisal of the squad as a whole and a re-think of the approach to bringing players in. I'm all for bringing players with potential to develop and sell on, that's fine but at the same time I think at a boardroom/managerial level we really need to be asking whether the players we've been identifying and bringing in have been anywhere near good enough and if they're not, why not. Similarly we need to be looking at the current first team and honestly identifying where the weak links are and making sure we fix that.

Teenage Fanclub - The Shadows