capt_oats

See, I'm not a Brophy fan I've just never really liked him as a player but I can totally see why he'd be on a list of someone we'd consider. Essentially echoing @Handsome_Devil above... For the most part the January market is clubs trying to horse trade players they don't actually want so the available pool is pretty much folk who are either frozen out or are on the fringes of their respective squads for various reasons. That's just the nature of a mid-season window. Ciftci is probably a good example of that type of player. If it was just the case that Derek Adams is an absolute fucking maniac and doesn't like Brophy's face then it'd be fair enough but quite how we'd manage to square Kettlewell having a moan about how we've had no luck with injuries this season with signing someone whose injury record is the reddest of red flags is quite the conundrum.

Tbh, I completely get why he chose Celtic and I don't really blame him. At the time of the original move he'd played fewer than 40 first team games for us and the options that were on the table seemed to be Celtic or Norwich (with the caveat they were going to start him off in their u23s). I don't know David Turnbull but from the outside looking in it seems like the value judgement he made was that he'd get first team football quicker at Celtic than he would at Norwich add that to the whole not having to relocate and it makes sense. The fact that he finished that season as Celtic's POTY and YPOTY along with the PFA YPOTY kind of validates that decision. I'd guess that he had a plan in his head along the lines that he'd progress at Celtic for a couple of seasons then follow the same sort of path as Armstrong and/or Christie. It feels like the sliding doors moment was Celtic - not to put too fine a point on it - fucking The 10. All of a sudden there's a new manager in place whose philosophy is pretty much the opposite of Turnbull's skillset, he picks up another injury and that's that. He's out of the picture and I dunno, maybe I'm wrong, but it also feels like he kind of made his decision that he wasn't planning on sticking around at Parkhead a while ago and rightly or wrongly that along with the fact that he kb'd Celtic's "magnificent" offer right back at the start has meant that the vibes have been off with him and the sort of Celtic support who actually care about that sort of thing. I had a swatch at Kerrydale Street earlier and he doesn't exactly seem popular. I hadn't revisited this in a while. It's still very funny.

Definitely this. Also, you can call it naivety on our part if you want but if we've taken the Biereth situation as good faith that he wasn't being recalled then it presumably becomes a much more problematic situation if you're having to replace both Biereth and Wilkinson than just Wilkinson himself. Getting a Biereth replacement through the door at a fortnight's notice if going to be pretty fucking hard or at the very least it will take a bit of time.

I think it was @MurrayWell who suggested it but it he's been away for scans then there's probably going to be dialogue between us and Celtic as to how it's handled moving forward eg: is the loan just getting scrapped and he goes back to Celtic for his rehab in the same way Shaw went back to Barnsley. I wouldn't expect us to make any announcements until it's established what the extent of the damage is.

I think I'm somewhere in between tbh. I'm hopeful that we sort the rest of the squad out in a pretty straightforward way and in fairness between Halliday, Elliot and Nicholson the signings we've made have been entirely pragmatic and sensible. It feels like that's been the profile we've gone into the window targeting. That's all fine... The worry is, of course, the striker positions as it feels everything hinges on that however the "blue chip" options seem a bit fanciful and while it's it's nice we're looking it's not helpful if they don't get done however equally it's hard to see how the more 'functional' options that might be available replace what we've lost. It's interesting to see that's Burns indicate that ideally we'd like a left back as well. I mean, I suspected to be the case as soon as the Montgomery news broke. It's a question of how far on with deals we are and whether we've left ourselves a bit too much to do in the remaining 2.5 days before the window *slams* shut.

I read that article earlier and tbh I think it's one of those that just translates badly. There's nothing there that isn't true - we're towards the bottom of the league, Sturm...aren't, from the POV of the progression of his career I'm sure it was a fairly straightforward decision etc.

Aye. I’m maybe being unfair but I always thought he looked like a centre half playing out of position on account of his size. A big daft laddie barrelling up and down the wing, Cafu he is not. He makes total sense for us though assuming we’ve decided SOD is no longer a RWB and are viewing Elliot as an extended trial/cover. He’s local, has been in and out the Fleetwood side, he’s OOC at the end of the season, he was a Scott Brown signing and Fleetwood are now onto their 3rd manager of the season. Besides being bottom of the league I see there’s stories of a lot of player unrest and folk wanting out the club after the owner was put away for fraud - it seems the vibes are not good so if he just wants back up the road then we need a serviceable RWB.

Entirely random Twitter shout...tis the season and all that. It seems Fleetwood are having a clear out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We spent a fair amount in fees during the Alexander season it was just never clarified publicly how much they were and the accounts just showed the £542k figure rather than anything itemised. Agree it goes slightly against the messaging we've heard this season about wanting to get the budget under control but I don't think it's that unrealistic to think we'd invest if it was the right deal/player.

Fwiw, when I was perusing SO looking for that Oxborough post I noticed the suggestion that reports about us having interest in some of those targets were wide of the mark. Either way, regardless of whether we were or weren''t, I guess it's a question of value. We already know that Dundee were prepared to chuck daft money at Lamie when they tried to get him on a pre-contract but they ended up relegated and the deal fell to bits. By all accounts it sounds like they've done the same with Main (I think Robinson referenced it - saying they'd offered him a very good contract but Dundee offered a deal that they weren't prepared to match - or words to that effect). And that's the point really, it's presumably a judgement call in so much as do we think Curtis Main is worth that money or do we want to chuck a 2.5 year deal at James Scott (which is effectively what St Mirren have done) when he has barely kicked a baw since 2020?

Yeah, it depends on what he’s looking to get out the move but given that his career to date has been Central/Eastern European leagues (he was briefly in the same TSV Hartberg side as Christian Ilic) and Israel I’m not sure the process of relocating to Lanarkshire is likely to appeal? Maybe I’m wrong and he’d be bang up for it but I don’t fancy our chances in an auction (although interesting that we were prepared to chuck a wedge at getting him).

I mean, that'll be that then I guess. I find it a bit weird that Scott Burns hasn't been all over this tbh.

This was the first mention of his wage on SO (based on a quick 'Oxborough' search). I mean, who knows maybe we did absolutely f**k it and make a goalkeeper from Norwich u23s whose previous clubs were loans at Barnet and Wealdstone our 2nd top earner but it feels like one of those stories that people would be willing to believe based on him being an Alexander/Daws signing.

That’s a story that’s been floated before. I think I remember having read it on SO ages ago. The idea was he’d been brought in to replace Kelly or something. Tbh, given we’ve seen Kettlewell emptying folk left right and centre on account of budget you’d have thought if it was the case then he’d have been moved on one way or another.

See, I'd say that Turnbull was more a rich man's Sean Goss for us than anything. Just out there pinging passes about the place and running the show from the middle of the park. Polworth is probably the closest Spittal comparison IMO.

This was actually my thought as well when I saw it mentioned. Like, Spittal's been smashing for us and it wouldn't be a surprise if Robinson chucked money at him based on the last couple of seasons but he's not very Robinson-y.

Pretty sure Kettlewell said the other day that we'd been speaking to a bunch of the OOC players I can't remember if he mentioned Spittal by name but you'd imagine he'd be one of them along with Kelly (who he has previously mentioned) et al. As @Handsome_Devil says, Spittal would be absolutely fucking mental to commit to anyone at a St Mirren/Motherwell level just now. Here you go, the context was Slattery being OOC and broken: "We've had talks with a lot of players, several players who are out of contract about their future." (I've timestamped it in the video below so no one has to sit through the full 17 mins.)

Massively agree with this and tbh, while I get that it's come late in the day and we probably weren't anticipating having to be in the market for that area of the park, if it turns out that Montgomery is indeed broken then I kind of hope we make an effort to replace him so we're able to use Gent further up the park. Clearly the forwards are the priority but whether it a case of asking Hull about Furlong again or going back to Matt Penney or whatever it would be good if we could.

Kind of touched on it in terms of recent form in my earlier post but it occurred to me that we began starting Gent and Zdravkovski after the 3-0 shambles against County in Dingwall. I guess there are other factors but these are our results since that point:

Much like last week I thought we were broadly fine yesterday. At times we were even quite good in so much as we controlled the game in a way we just weren't earlier in the season. Given the circumstances; we've been blindsided by Biereth being recalled and Montgomery being injured along with us going to a venue where we rarely ever play well then the minimum was not losing. Especially as we were chucking in a guy from the start who prior to signing had played less than 30 mins of football this season (fwiw, I thought Halliday had a solid enough game). Ultimately not winning these games is probably the difference between having a relatively comfortable second half to the season and one that's a bit more stressful. That said, if you view the 3-0 in Dingwall as the nadir (so far) our record is 1 loss (to Rangers) in 7 across all competitions since then. So while objectively the 1 win in 17 lin the league sounds bad (and don't get me wrong it's not great) we've still only lost 3 games in all comps since the last time we were in Perth on 7th November (12 games). @Casagolda has just said it but it's really about what happens through the week. As it stands, we're competitive enough with our peer group to be drawing these games which is very much a fine margins situation. If we're able to bring in what we need (and everyone stays fit) then there's a platform of sorts to build on.