capt_oats

There he is...they cut the interview at the Ferrie chat before he goes on to the Efford stuff that @Casagolda quoted earlier.

I mean, that may be true for a section of our support who don't really pay attention. However, his name had popped up on here as someone we were looking at bringing in about a week or so before he was actually announced. It was pretty clear even from a cursory 5-10 minutes checking out the fairly extensive footage that's available of him or for some in the Thread who have access to WyScout he would be being brought in as our first choice #9 to play alongside one of Wilkinson/Bair/Obika. Even doing a basic bit of research flagged him up as exactly the type of player we were/are missing. If anything the sub appearance he put in against Hibs really only confirmed what a few of us thought (hoped) we were getting.

I see folk on Motherwell Twitter are still bumping their heads on the "one in, one out" line and having difficulty over the fact that we've seen a ton of players leave and only signed a handful. I mean, it seems clear to me that it's a numbers thing rather than a finance thing. Although the 2 are probably linked - just not in the way they think. As it stands we have a First Team squad of 23 + Ferrie = 24 bodies.

This is interesting. There's a clip of Kettlewell's press conference here where he's saying he wants to run with 4 strikers minimum: Fair enough but I can't help but pick up on his comment "that puts us down to 2 senior strikers in Theo [Bair] and Conor [Wilkinson]." So...Joe Efford then?

Aye. You'd think (hope) that the logical takeaway from this is that we'll be in for another striker at the very least.

Aye, I saw that Tweet anaw. It's just false equivalence and it's really fucking boring (and thick).

Thoughts and prayers with the Dons lads having to go through this.

Hard agree that we're not changing things tactically. Tbh, there's no real reason to. It didn't happen on Saturday but there are at least reason as to why that was the case - rejigging the defence and Big Mika not being ready to start are probably the obvious ones. Either way, the fact that we brought in Biereth at the very least shows that we knew that he (or a player like him) was/is what was/is needed to pair with one of Wilkinson/Obika/Bair - so that's fine. He was brought in as our first pick #9 as there's not a chance Arsenal were sending him up here to get 15 mins off the bench or whatever so like it or not we're now down a first choice starter. I guess the problem is that given a deal like that probably took a while to sort out and was presumably viewed as the final jigsaw piece for our forward options - I can't imagine we'd have been expecting to need to find an alternative with a week or so of the window to go. I mean, I'm sure they exist and there are probably iterations of Mika kicking about the various EPL academies but it's a pain in the arse that we probably hadn't planned for. The wing-back stuff makes sense purely from a numbers POV. Assuming McGinn is now viewed as a fixture in the back 3 after Saturday (if he's not, he should be) it leaves us with only Soaré and SOD as our WB options given Kettlewell didn't seem up for fucking around and finding out with either McGinley or Wilson dropped in to big Pape's role (which is understandable). I'd say it's a case of it's not *not* worked. It's fine but it's missing the parts that make it work as well as it did. Biereth was clearly one of those things and I'd imagine that the WBs were what we were planning on addressing in the next week.

Each to their own and all that but having seen both a SC win and 39 consecutive seasons in the top flight - we've never been out the top flight since I started going to Fir Park - I'm another who'd take the top flight status tbh. I mean, ideally we win a cup AND maintain our place in the top league but not a fucking chance would I take relegation for a cup win.

In fairness, it's worth pointing out that the Scott Burns piece (which is where I'm presuming the BBC Gossip column lifted it) is still at the speculative stage. It's saying he *could* be out for months and we're waiting for him to go for a scan to see if it's as bad as first feared. The fact that he's not had the scan yet means we can't really say one way or another. Given we had load management guidance from Arsenal for his first couple of weeks at the club you'd think they'd would want him to rehab with them? Either way, after being non-committal about whether we'd be looking at a replacement for Obika I'd guess this kind of forces our hand a bit.

Tbf the clip that's been posted by partizan accounts like BAWArmy and "Pie and Bovril" has been slowed down. In real time it looks worse - he just goes straight through him. It's not a surprise though, it's exactly the sort of hammer throwing approach we know Robinson encourages his teams to take against better quality teams.

Is it a red card? Probably not. Having said that I've seen folk giving it "he wins the ball" and all that. He gets the ball because he goes through the player and whether he slips or not both feet are off the ground. There's an argument that at the very least it's reckless. I didn't hear Kettlewell's comments and I get why St Mirren fans are probably touchy about it - it seems to be the default setting for many of them (especially on here) - but all things told a booking is probably fair enough but from our POV it's not difficult to see why Kettlewell would be getting bent out of shape over it.

I mean "is reluctant to let depart" is definitely giving...

So...

We're not bringing in Shaun Hutchison for whatever we're paying Bevis. In terms of what he's doing? He's currently captaining Millwall in the EFL Championship. Without wanting to white knight Bevis the point is surely that he's currently in the team until Butcher is back fit. He is, to all intents and purposes, a back-up. With that in mind, it's unlikely that we're going to be signing some flawless CB to come in on whatever wage we allocate to that particular squad role. In fact, there's precisely zero guarantee that anyone we'd sign for that specific profile would be better.

This was actually my main takeaway from Saturday tbh. I mean, when I saw the line-up my assumption was that Blaney would just get a shot at LWB rather than McGinn being shuffled out there. To completely rejig the defence was...instructive. There's a lot to parse from that particular choice IMO.

Ironically I took a dip into the MK Dons forum through the week after noticing they'd started the season with a couple of wins (I didn't realise they'd lost to Crawley the night prior) and it was an eye opener to see that GA still seems to be...divisive. A lot of it feels pretty familiar tbh. One thread titled - Long Ball Rubbish includes posts about him apparently not playing the erm..."MK Dons way..." https://www.sitdownorwellstealyourclub.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9091 There's also a (currently) 6 page thread titled - Graham Alexander 2 league games in - which feels a bit more balanced. https://www.sitdownorwellstealyourclub.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9084

I think you've misread/misunderstood @elvis post. A full stop would probably have helped after "Motherwell haven't lost any of their last 12 games." Our (Motherwell) last defeat was against United at Fir Park on 15th April. Since then we've played 12 games in both league and league cup - our record is W 8 D 4 L 0. So as @elvis says we're undefeated in our last 12. Our last 5 results against St Mirren are: 15/02/23 - Motherwell 2 - 1 St Mirren 28/01/23 - St Mirren 1 - 0 Motherwell 31/07/22 - St Mirren 0 - 1 Motherwell 02/04/22 - Motherwell 4 - 2 St Mirren 01/02/22 - St Mirren 1 - 1 Motherwell So 3 wins for Motherwell, 1 draw and 1 win for St Mirren. I mean, I wouldn't worry I imagine it'll be a comfortable home win for Saints today but either way the stats @elvis posted are quite correct.

Aye, I read that earlier and I noticed that he says he signed a 3 year contract under Alexander. Again, similar to McGinn, that's not what was reported at the time: https://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/2021/04/13/stephen-odonnell-signs-new-deal/

It depends what you mean by that tbh. Do you mean are our budgets similar? Or do you mean the money we have available is similar? The background noise around the club has been that our budget has been cut this season although we obviously brought in 9 players around the January window to make a fist of getting out the hole we had managed to dig for ourselves after making Really Bad Decisions like appointing a club icon with (literally) no managerial experience as first team manager. Of those 9 signings in January 5 of them are on that list of players who have left (Aitchison, Mandron, Furlong, Crankshaw, Danzaki) of whom 4 were short term deals/loans to the end of the season anyway. What isn't clear is whether any budget cut is from where we were at the end of the season after our trolley dash to save our season or if it's a broader reappraisal of what we spend. Robinson had a tendency towards just padding out a squad by collecting various waifs and strays while Alexander had pushed to expand the backroom staff and it's been noticeable that most of those staff members have moved on without being replaced. Our last published accounts had our wage bill at £5.2m (which is a lot considering our revenue/turnover for the year was £5.5m) although that's across the entire Football Club and covers an average of 209 staff members per month - by comparison Saints financial statement showed the average number of employees during the year as 96. The ongoing messaging from Kettlewell over the summer has been that we had/have too many players at the Football Club so we need to move bodies out before we are able to bring players in and that seems fair enough. A number of Motherwell fans seem to have taken this as being we're "skint" but it feels more of the case that our budget has simply been tied up in contracted players as a consequence of the Alexander/Hammell eras. All of that is to say, I'd be surprised if our playing budget was materially different to Saints either way - I'd guess that we've just been a bit more successful at trimming the squad and finessing things this summer. @RandomGuy. made a comparison between Saints and us either here or on WAP basically pointing out that the squads are too big and are trying to streamline - which is entirely fair and it seems Kettlewell/our recruitment team have been very effective at the streamlining part. There's been a steady stream of players having been announced as finding other clubs either permanently or on loan. I can't speak to Saints position but a possible difference with us is that we actually had the bulk of the starting XI that had hit form under Kettlewell contracted and still in the building - which meant we were looking at replacing 4 key players (Johnston, Furlong, Goss and Van Veen) and at least one of those we've been able to replace from our Academy (Lennon Miller (16) for Sean Goss). Presumably that has allowed everyone in the various departments RG mentions above to be a lot more focussed on the job at hand rather than having to overhaul an entire team/squad - our summer has really been about trimming bodies and freeing up budget in order to to recruit a handful.

Aye. For clarity there's a number of those players who were/are in our Reserves group (Dunachie, Hunter, Spiers, Devine, O'Donnell, Gould, Mahon, Campbell, MacDonald) but even still, of those 9 there were a few who had at least made a first team appearance or been involved in first team match day squads. FWIW, Sam Campbell who's currently on loan at Annan is in our "highly rated" bracket he's on loan as he missed all of last season with a knee injury. He's one of our Academy prospects who's had EPL interest in the past: https://www.fourfourtwo.com/news/liverpool-leeds-and-brighton-fighting-to-sign-motherwell-teenager-sam-campbell-1600945328000 It probably comes in at around 15 players you'd class as First Team. Which is still a lot like. There are probably still another couple we’d expect to leave as well.

It's a loan until January. His wages won't change - he's still contracted to Motherwell.

Just to take a second and drink in how many players have moved out since the summer: Jake Carroll Logan Dunachie (signed for Clyde) Daniel Hunter (signed for Broomhill) Kian Spiers Jack Aitchison (signed for Exeter City) David Devine (signed for Alloa Athletic) Corey O'Donnell (signed for Broomhill) Max Johnston (signed for Sturm Graz - undisclosed) Sean Goss Mikael Mandron (signed for St Mirren) Stuart McKinstry James Furlong Oli Crankshaw Josh Morris Kevin Van Veen (signed for FC Groningen - undisclosed) Dean Cornelius (signed for Harrogate Town) Riku Danzaki (signed for Western United) Connor Shields (signed for Chennayin FC) Ali Gould (signed for Watford u21s) Robbie Mahon (loan - to Edinburgh City) Sam Campbell (loan - to Annan Athletic) Ross Tierney (loan - to Walsall) Adam MacDonald (loan - to Cowdenbeath) Barry Maguire (loan - to Kidderminster Harriers) Actual fucking LOL.

*complete the look*

Over 1k so far. Close to selling out apparently.