capt_oats

You were on about the total limit of 5 from all Scottish clubs around the loans chat from earlier today. This only relates to domestic loans though rather than cross-border. Speaking of which...we've signed King Krule.

I mean, we know the rumoured wages Groningen were supposedly chucking at KVV in the summer so if it's correct that Killie are covering the guts of that plus performance related increases then us even going at half of that is probably more than I'd have expected tbqh. It's also absolutely no surprise we walked away. That's all speculative but I take it if that is actually the case then we'd have stepped away very quickly rather than investing time and effort into it.

That is genuinely wild assuming the rumoured amounts the big man is on are even vaguely true. Also, fair play to Groningen for getting someone to actually take that deal.

There's Monty's replacement (until Nixon makes his Twitter private again). *Quiet voice* This is kind of where I am as well.

Magic. Thanks Craig.

Seeing as @craigkillie is cutting about the thread this seems like the sort of question he might know the answer to. Is there a limit on the number of clubs from the same division that account for players being loaned in at Premiership level? I've had it in my head that it's one player from a single club and a maximum of 2 clubs so as it stands we have Halliday on loan from Hearts and Montgomery from Celtic which would mean we're maxed.

Aye, as @Busta Nut says it's already been pointed out that comment was addressed by our interim CEO and put into context during his 40 min interview. It was discussed in here ages ago when the Tweet went out. Also, your accounts that will be published soon will tell you precisely f**k all about this season as they're last season's accounts.

Clarity on Montgomery.

Fwiw, Jamie Borthwick spoke to Frail. and here's the man himself...

Aye. I thought it was interesting because, vague comms aside (it implies the loan has been ended but doesn't explicitly say it), as @Al B said it tracks with the info @wellboy1991 posted the other day. I suppose it's curious since if there's a cap on the number of loans we can have from clubs in the same division (I'm assuming it's the case there is) then having one who can't play potentially rules us out of a loan from another club - unless of course we know exactly who we're getting in and that's not a consideration so it's a moot point.

Here is the Tweet.

Hmmmmm…. This doesn’t say that his loan has been cancelled.

In a purely numbers sense the First Team squad currently sits at 22 (including injuries: Montgomery and Slattery along with Obika). Another 3 in takes us to 25 and if Barry Maguire is indeed away to LOI it’d land us on 24 which is pretty much the number Kettlewell spoke of before the window opened. It’d make it 8 in during this window with roughly the following movement: Spencer (recalled) - ? Souaré (contract ended) - Montgomery (in) Wilkinson (sold) - ? Slattery (injured) - Nicholson (in) Biereth (recalled) - ? Shaw (injured/recalled) - Vale (in) + Halliday (in), Elliot (in)

Fwiw, I had a look at the Lincoln forum since they were his most recent club and one of the first comments when the announcement that he'd been recalled went out was "Vale been a bit unlucky being asked to play in a role he wasn't really suited to." What that role actually was I obvs don't know but it's mildly interesting that his FM24 profile has him tagged as being best suited to Advanced Forward, Ramdeuter and Inverted Winger roles rather than a Target Man or whatever. If he's been brought in to replace Shaw (or to a lesser extent Wilkinson) then that's probably a lower bar for him to clear than if he's been earmarked as a replacement for Biereth.

The Vale signing kind of feels like the position Kettlewell alluded to the other week of get the first striker in and then see where things stand in terms of what we're able to do. Annoyingly there's also a YouTuber also called Jack Vale so those videos show up in any search - probably a WyScout job to get any idea of what he's actually like. Like everyone else my expectations aren't exactly high but from the looks of things he's been decent at the same level as Gent so I guess that's a baseline of sorts.

It's Jack Vale.

That sell on...

Agree with that but I'd say there's a variation of the Biereth situation in so much as there may be a PL club with an Academy player who's playing at a high level for their 23s who hasn't yet had a loan out. For example (not a striker fwiw):

The Record posted this earlier.

Definitely. The other thing is that it seems to be the default mindset of the 'modern fitba' fan' to just fire up Wiki and make a judgement based on games/goals without framing it or giving any context. 18 of those 25 appearances have been at Championship level - if he's scoring regularly in that league then either a) Blackburn aren't going to be loaning him out or b) we can't afford to buy him. Which brings us back to the point that any striker that we sign in a January window is unlikely to be in a rich vein of form however there may be something underlying which might make them a fit for us. Which, tbf, is a point Kettlewell was making in a press conference the other week.

The point about not being clinical I can kind of see if your man is judging him on playing for Blackburn's first team. Looking at his numbers he's made 25 appearances for their first team but only scored twice. That said, he has 24 goals and 12 assists in 53 for their u21s. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/jack-vale/leistungsdatenverein/spieler/496660

Looking forward to the collective aneurysms on Motherwell Twitter when we announce two wing-backs. I was away to say that we generally don't tend to make fan pleasing signings these days then remembered that we signed Moult last season which was as much of a "give them what they want" direction as we could go tbh. Other than KVV I'm not really sure who's kicking about and attainable that would get a decent sort of approval rating.