Luke92

I think myself and many others hadn't thought Ariyibi staying was a possibility. Sounds like this could actually happen. As others have alluded to he's a 'get you out of your seat' player, I think one of his main strengths is half the time he doesn't know what he's going to do. So unpredictable but great to watch. Touch is often very poor but in terms of raw ability a couple of years with us could be great for him. I see him in a similar mould to other wingers we have had that have pushed on down south. On the Cadden topic, I think he's finding himself in a bit of a crap situation. I'm pretty sure noone will take a punt on him for 600k so I think he will end up signing on for a year or two in the summer once he receives no offers. Another year actually playing as a winger could see Cadden back in demand so I think it's win win.

Aye clearly these are all hypotheticals but IMO Hastie and Turnbull would have signed a year contract extension last summer. I think suggesting otherwise is pretty unrealistic. They were nowhere near first team players at that point, a similar or slightly improved wage would likely have been accepted. I don't think anyone is suggesting giving a 4 year deal for a youth player. What I am suggesting is if a guy is one of our top youth prospects we should have then on more than a six month contract and not rely on compensation thus maxmising our profits in the situation they come good. To me, this would a basic approach to our top 3/4 youth prospects.

Turnbull could have left at the end of the season, we were very fortunate with him. Maiguire/Scott were also in their last 6 months so could have gone elsewhere. What I am proposing is to have more than a few months left on the contracts of players we have as the main prospects from our youth academy. As I have said I don't think it would have required much more money to get these guys tied down last summer. Having someone out on loan normally suggests you are trying to develop them I would have thought. I agree with you, 750k is a decent return (if we actually get that) but I believe we could have got more for Hastie. This is our main revenue stream so we need to ensure we are making as much dollar as possible. Despite what Burrows said in the media I would like to think the board are looking at this.

Glad to see an end to the Hastie saga this morning. The more I think about Alan Burrows statement the other week the more i disagree with it. I can see this compensation figure getting lower and lower as the summer goes on, regardless of what you think of Hastie I think its hard to argue that 250-300k is great money given his potential. Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle of the 'purple patch/one trick pony' and 'next gareth bale' camps. Being honest here, I feel like there has been a lot of spin from our fans to pretend Hastie is worse than he actually is solely because it's most likely he will go to Sevco. I think he has the potential to be a good player if not anything really special. I don't really think the money we will get in compensation sounds like it is going to justify our strategy of 'protecting our investment' through these development arrangements. If youth development is our main income driver I am really of the opinion we need to review our strategy to maximise our investment in the youth academy. My suggestion would be we should have atleast a handful of the top prospects tied down to longer term contracts where possible. I don't agree that this is unaffordable, these boys will be willing to accept low wages when on the fringes of the first team. The duds that fall by the way side would be well offset by the fees we would receive for the players who make the grade. Just my opinion though and I know some will point out this is all easy to point out with hindsight. The last few years we seem to have spent a lot of money on small wage fringe players, Newall and Donnelly two examples. This money adds up. I would rather this money was spent on renewing guys who are highly thought of from the youth academy. With all of the above being said, I genuinely hope Hastie amounts to **** all. I hope he doesn't play another game for us. Let's not waste time on him and give some of the younger boys an opportunity. There is a lot of fans that are able to emotionally detach from the situation and wish him good luck on making more money but I don't buy into this at all. Bitter? Aye probably but football is an emotive sport. Overall, I just find the whole thing a slap in the face after we have developed him since he was a wee boy.

On the transfer front.. Not really seen a lot of Polworth but statistically he looks a very good creative get for us. I've often bemoaned our lack of activity in the Scottish market so it is good to see us picking a couple of good acquisations (on paper) Robinson recently alluded to the fact that wages even at the bottom tier of English football are becoming hard to compete with so it wouldn't surprise me if we shift focus slightly in terms of recruitment. Another factor is perhaps previously our playing style fit better with the Conf/League 2 rectruitment type. Players often lacking in technical ability but with good physical attributes. Now that we are playing better football it wouldn't surprise me if we start to rectruit more domestically and from abroad (in the mould of Rodriguez) Obviously we aren't playing 'total football' but a lot of the boys who done a job in the past e.g Bowman, Johnson maybe don't fit into our playing style as much as they once did. We are in the business of offering players 2 years max at the moment due to financial reasons so I would suggest that Championship teams are going to be offering even less than that. Hopefully this gives us the opportunity to exploit this strategy in a similar manner to other clubs (with us) I'm not entirely on board with Burrows explanation, I think we should always have exceptions to the rule. Taking Hastie for example if we had offered him the same terms at the start of the season I would suggest he would have accepted. Shelling out another year of £300p seems worthwhile for the security it would offer. Obviously we can't do this with everyone but to me if we have an academy we should have atleast our 2/3 top prospects tied down to longer terms deal so that we are maximising profits from our investment Taking Turnbull for example, had he not chosen to stay I would suggest we would be losing out on a potential record transfer fee down the road.

He will be sitting behind atleast 3 current wingers, they are also bringing Jones in. Regardless of how highly I think of Hastie he has no chance getting in front of the boys there. Even look at Middleton, the guy is very talented. I would imagine he would be behind him in the pecking order given he has shown in the Europa League that he can play.

At this point we don't actually know for sure what's happening but let's be honest it doesn't look very good. I think if Hastie was going to stay he would have signed up before now. Hopefully Robinson's presser will shed more light on the situation but I am guessing we will get the usual vagueness until later in the season. Robinson will want to keep it unconfirmed until the end of the season. In terms of the club, I know it is somewhat easy in hindsight to say 'we should have had him signed up' but if our model is to bring young guys through and sell them on then that's exactly what we should have done. I am sure there are some valid reasons for not tying guys up longer term but we knew by atleast the summer that Turnbull, Maguire and Hastie were the main prospects from the youth academy. Any club worth their salt forward plans, if you don't think they are going to make it they shouldn't be there. We are lucky that Turnbull decided to stay having taken the same risk. Maguire we have given a one year deal, so if he does come in next year and does great we are in the same boat again. I don't believe the theory that young players do not want to take longer contracts, at that age anyone in the game wants security especially when they weren't breaking through last year. I appreciate the philosophical attitude from some fans but for me personally seeing one of our best young players in some time leave to them is sickening. You can talk about the 600k but if we had him signed up we could have got a lot more. In all honesty I don't really understand how a transfer fee softens the below from a fan perspective. As the normal punter going every week it has very little impact on match day. We aren't going to reinvest it in the squad; it's going to clear debt, that it. We have spent about 10 (?) years developing this boy for him to leave on compensation money after half a year in the first team would be horrific.

Don't want to get too carried away but I think we could have serious players on our hands in Turnbull and Hastie. Both seem to have very good strength to match their technical ability, something that is much sought after in the game today. The Scottish Youth Cup winning side appears to be really bearing fruit. Exciting times ahead, it is wild how much football can change in a few weeks. On Gallagher, it's encouraging to see that we are looking forward to the summer with so many guys out of contract. Livingston have a few boys out of contract and a lot of them represent very good value for money given they are reportedly on buttons. From what I have seen of Gallagher he looks decent and has a decent pedigree starting at Celtic. Potentially could be a replacement for Hartley, I am still hopeful we will tie down Aldred to a permanent deal. Craig Halkett is another who has really stood out for me but I would be surprised if there is not bigger clubs in for him. One thing the last few months has taught us however is that we have a very talented crop of young boys at the club and should never under estimate the boys coming through from the youth team. Hopefully the likes of Maguire, Scott and Livingston can emerge in the next year or so as well. There's something special about having young Scottish especially local boys coming through, really enjoyable to see just now.

With ATS going I was hoping for a left back in. Also, I was hoping we could get shot of Sammon and bring someone else in but no such luck. From Burrows tweet this morning it sounds like this wasn't for the lack of trying. We do lack a proven striker but if McCormack can get fit he can obviously fill that void. Generally though, I'm fairly pleased with our business this window. It looks like we have went for quality over quantity which is something we failed to do in recent years. In McCormack and Ariyibi we appear to have a couple of guys that genuinely improve the quality of the first team. You could rarely say this in past windows. Financially too we appear to have done pretty well, small fee for Bowman, and high end wages of the wage bill for Bigi and Rose.

Yas! This is amazing news. Hopefully this means we will be bringing in another forward with some sort of goal threat. Sammon - great traps, crap striker.

Rossiter is a total non-starter. Robinson has already said that if he is to bring anyone in it will be a striker or a left back. This is likely just Rangers fed speculation to stoke up SPFL interest to take him on loan. I've been unimpressed by him any time I have seen him and his injury record is appalling. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a Championship team like Dundee Utd or someone take him. The news regarding Turnbull is unexpected and a massive boast. I genuinely think we could have a top player on our hands. Wednesday was the first time I have seen Jake Hastie for a prolonger period too and I was really impressed, his ability to beat a man is great to watch. How refreshing is it to have young boys from the Motherwell area playing for the jersey? Honestly give me that over Vanarama non-entities any day of the week. Wednesday reinforced to me the point that in terms of techincal ability our Academy is producing some very good players. In terms of technique I think they are often better than the standard of player we have been rectruiting in the last year or so. There are some hidden gems for sure but I think the majority of the time the boys from L1, L2, Conference usually have better physical attributes more than anything else. My point is I think we should be trying to introduce the young guys earlier than we have been and supplementing these players with the natural attributes some of the boys elsewhere have. There is obviously some exceptions to this rule but generally speaking I think our youth are more techincally gifted than the level of player we are able to bring in. Robinson can obviously point to the success of the young boys, Campbell and Turnbull but I genuinely think the likes of Turnbull would have made an impact last season. There has obviously been rumours about his relationship with Robinson, not sure how true these are to be fair. Interesting to hear Carson on the Si Ferry Podcast saying that him and some others had actually stressed to the manager last season that Turnbull should be in the team. I know there is a fine line managing young players but I would just like us to push these guys into the team a wee bit sooner.

It sounds like Robinson is going to be making changes in shape and hopefully playing style for the next 6 months. It's going to be really interesting to see what the style of play is. I think we are all keen to see a bit more football played. It seems obvious to me that we can't continue to boot balls up the park when we have someone of the talent of Ross McCormack. In hindsight the summer was a bit of a step back in terms of personnel. I think most of us were hoping to refine the squad with some quality but we failed to do that and brought in more of the same type of players. This looks to be what Robinson is trying to rectify now. It still seems strange to me that we took strides forward in that regard on paper with Cifci last January only to recruit Sammon in the summer. Anyway it looks like he has got the message now, it's going to be really interesting to see how this goes. Robinson IMO is fairly strong tactically and defensively. His weakness seems to be producing any real creative or attacking threat. Even last year when we were doing okay the plan appeared to 'get as many balls in the box as possible' or 'play direct early'. Clearly this worked a treat in some cup games but it is a fairly basic approach. I am of the belief that football is often over complicated by some but I think we need to be a bit more cute going forward. I remain hopeful but so far as a manager this seems to be his blindspot. The Accies result and McCormack signing has certainly bought Robinson some time. In terms of other recruits I'm hopeful we will see another defensive and quality attacking option added. I'm honestly still not convinced about ATS defensively and wouldn't mind us bringing another left back in. I am also hoping that we can get another attacking player of a decent calibre. In terms of options we have currently I would go for something like: Gillespie Tait Aldred Dunne ATS Ariyibi Campbell McHugh Frear Turnbull McCormack Or Gillespie Tait Aldred Dunne ATS Ariyibi Campbell Turnbull Frear McCormack Johnson Or we even have the option to go with a 3 up front. The whole 352 debate kind of went away last year after Robinson changed to the diamond and picked up a couple of results. We seemed to revert back but it wasn't really highlighed again. I still don't think it's the best way to set the team up, especially now with the addition of these new attacking options

Probably one of my favourite players in the last few years. On his day unstoppable, on a lot of days he could't be bothered. Well worth it for some of the moments he gave us IMO. Be a bit gutted if he goes elsewhere in Scotland.. can we not hijack this move and get him linking up with McCormack

Gutted to see Craigan go but it seems a fairly natural move for him. I'd be keen to see him get a senior job somewhere. I honestly think he would do as good a job as any, if you were a player in the dressing room he is sort of guy you would want to play for. Still think we will see him as our first team manager at some point in the future. Interesting comments from him on the Reserve league. It's funny. Everyone in the media and former players appeared to be pushing for the league a few years back but from what Craigan said it still has the same pitfalls which seen the league disbanded a while back. History repeating itself essentially.

Aye, it's quite clear to see that our attacking options need to be 'reviewed'. Hopefully the recent noise coming from Robinson suggests that he will be looking to make as many changes as he possibly can in January. The problem is that a lot of the guys that we brought in and (are pretty useless) were signed this summer, that makes moving them on even more difficult. Totally agree with the list above, on the top of the above I'd like to get shot of the following ASAP: ATS - unfit and injury prone (not that we wouldn't have known this when we signed him) Bigi - for all the ability and goodwill fans give him he has contributed very little, he also probably takes up a decent wage. Obviously we aren't going to be able to get shot of everyone but I think there is a fair bit of fat that can be trimmed here. If we can move a few of these guys on it hopefully means we can look at other options. As I've said before I am sick of us bringing squad guys in who aren't as good as the boys in the youth team. We need quality players not bench fillers. I'd be looking to bring either Maclean or Hastie back from loan in January who can be new options from the bench. In terms of wish list I would suggest we need atleast one striker of note. A quality wide player and a creative force. With our limited resources I'd be focusing attention upfront for the most part. Our defence isn't great but I think Robinson is reasonable at drilling the players well. To me, his main flaw appears to be going forward and making us a real creative force. Our league rivals appear to have recruited far better in this regard.

To be honest I thought Robinson's comments were a bit OTT. Livingstone literally got flung in, he hasn't really featured for us to any great extent and it's a bit harsh to go through the boy publicly for his fitness. I understand the intent but it's important to point out that he played 45 minutes for the u20s on Monday... Not exactly the best preparation. He didn't have the best time of it but I'm reluctant to make a judgement in a game like that.

To be honest I was more annoyed about the money I spent attending the game on Saturday than anything else. Aye, it was a terrible performance and I hoped we had turned a corner but unfortunately not. Let's be honest it wasn't out of the ordinary, I think a few of us have become accustomed to this now. I think that the expectations going into the game from our support was that we could get a positive result but in reality this doesn't have much basis. Livingston's home form is class and they have defeated far better teams than us. The park is a huge factor aye but I need to give them credit for the way they make the most of their limited resources. Their style of play isn't football but it is very effective. I think probably us beating them in the cup blurred our vision a bit but clearly Livi were a different side under Kenny Miller. Interesting points regarding the similarity in Robinson's comments to this time last year. A lot of the time it seems like empty threats with Robinson, sometimes he seems to single folk out using a veiled comment and then the next week they are in the side. Managers seem to have a handful of ways they react to a bad performance and this is one of Robinson's default reactions. I'm not entirely convinced he is going to conduct a full scale clear out in January. To be honest other than Bigi I struggle to think of who he is referring to? Everyone else doesn't really fall into the category he mentioned. I would like us to get rid of a few in January but even if we do I'm not convinced we are going to see the 'type' of player a lot of the fans would like to see. Bit concerned by the Turnbull comments: https://www.motherwelltimes.co.uk/sport/football/motherwell-fc/motherwell-boss-stephen-robinson-says-david-turnbull-wants-to-sign-new-contract-1-4838895 “He wants to sign for the football club but whether his representatives believe that’s the right thing to do, I’m not so sure." Would be madness for Turnbull to go elsewhere at this point in career, he needs atleast another season at first team level. Hopefully he makes the right call and cements himself as a top player for us. He's already shown more technical ability than the majority of the first team. As for tomorrow I honestly don't know what to expect, it could go either way. To me though, the level of inconsistency in performance is beyond the realms of acceptability.

A wee bit off topic but relates to the overall recruitment piece. I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this but the P&B twitter account posted updated stats for the 18/19 season from http://globalsportssalaries.com/GSSS 2018.pdf Premiership 1st Team Avg Annual Salary 18-19 Celtic £865,614 Rangers £466,556 Aberdeen £138,667 Hearts £111,600 Hibs £103,376 Dundee £62,833 Kilmarnock £62,816 St.Johnstone £48,630 Hamilton £47,879 Motherwell £47,342 St.Mirren £46,169 Livingston £34,882 There was similar stats posted last year but I was curious where St Mirren and Livingston factored in to things. There's two ways of looking at this, either we are being very prudent in our spending and we are overachieving. Or like me you are concerned about us offering similar wages to the likes of Hamilton Accies and St Johnstone who have a home gate of hee-haw. Clearly there is a number of factors to take into account here, probably most importantly sugar daddy v fan owned but regardless of these I don't think it is outwith the realms to expect us to spend more than we are currently. Football isn't played on paper and all that but if you look at spend/wage figures they normally directly reflect the league position of a team. Livingston being the main exception to the rule here. To be clear I'm not in favour of us splurging loads of money on wages but I just question if we should continue to be this restricted with our wage expenditure. It's a fair argument to suggest that we could have spent money more wisely in the summer namely on the mediocre squad players we picked up but as some have pointed out our restrictive budget has probably seen us lose out on better quality players even to the likes of St Johnstone which is pretty eye opening. Again, I understand the whole single benefactor v fan owned point. The likes of Accies have someone who can dip into his pocket if there is a player they really feel they need. I am not against the fan ownership model (far from it) I think its a good idea but in practice I am of the opinion we should be striving to offer closer to the level of wage that Dundee and Kilmarnock offer rather than the rest who let's be honest aren't established top league clubs like we are. Main point here is we can't continue to expect to overachieve year after year when we have the 10th highest wage in the league.

It's this and the fact BT have chinned about spending a lot of their profits on obtaining football rights by OFCOM

So to review the EFL have been given 595m (albeit for more games and more clubs) and we have been given around 160m. Championship clubs down south are presumably kicking off that this isn't enough meanwhile we are to accept 160m and be so very grateful for it. We are essentially getting a similar deal to what we had with Setanta 10 years ago. Granted they were throwing about money but how can these figures be acceptable 10 years later. Generally speaking live sport is hugely in demand just now. The reason for this is that less people actually watch live television. This means that adverts during live sports are worth bigger money. Clearly we don't get the viewing figures that some other leagues get but even still the value of the deal should be much higher. This deal is dug meat and has less games meaning the majority of the games are now going to all feature one half of the Old Firm. This is all Sky actually care about, they are holding on to the majority of the general Sky market in Scotland with this deal and nothing more. They will put no effort into this whatsoever. Really the SPFL should have been making demands here at the very least if they were unable to drive up the price. For example, new format, new pundits, new kick off times, more investment. It's not rocket science really.

Aye he's defo been reading too much of 'The Secret' or something similar. Each to their own and that I suppose. Generally speaking I like guys that speak postively in the media rather than having the negative outlook we had with the likes of McGhee but Hartley has done an awful lot of talking and not a lot of playing this season. I wonder if he falls into the category of players who Robinson has repeatedly mentioned he has been 'very loyal' to? Hasn't kicked a ball this season.

Some really interesting points here. On the face of it, I agree 9th in November isn't that bad but I just think it's hard for fans going week in and week out to have that sort of pragmatic approach. Clubs similar to ourselves like Kilmarnock, Livingston and St Johnstone have kicked on in recent times and I think this has compounded things somewhat. Ordinarily these teams would be at a similar points tally and level to ourselves but they are massively overachieving and this leaves the majority of us questioning why we can't reach this level. My short term worry is who apart from Dundee and St Mirren do we look like we could actually get 3 points from? The run-in to the St Mirren game in December looks like it is going to be very tough and I am struggling to find more than a few draws from these fixtures. Other than Accies I don't really know who else I would be optimistic about beating just now. Being able to beat 2 teams in the division isn't good enough for this point in the season. Ultimately we could very easily lose our next 5/6 games and find ourselves right down in the relegation dog fight. We seem to have went backwards this season and everyone else has took decent strides forward. I think the majority of fans including myself were hopeful that we could build on the momentum of the cup runs last year and add some well needed quality to the team. Instead we seem to have recruited terribly and added cheap rubbish rather than investing in actual quality. I don't think there is an outstanding candidate to replace Robinson but there would be countless suitors willing to take the job. We need to be careful though and take lessons from similar clubs who have pulled the trigger and ended up in a worse predicament than before. If it was up to me I think I would make a decision nearer to Christmas. If things continue we either need to make a change or invest properly in the January window. I refuse to believe that the quality of player we have is good enough.

Does anyone know what the script is with interviews/pressers these days? I used to look forward to the press conferences the club distrbuted via it's media channels. For the last few months they appear to have stopped this and have opted for a more concise sit down in the stands with our media boy. With the pressers I had my own complaints about some of the rubbish Robinson would get asked i.e stuff about the old firm rather than any in-depth Motherwell related questions. To me though, with it all being internal it is very controlled and churns out whatever the club narrative is at that time. I presume that is their intention 'to control any story' but clearly the pressers are happening but aren't being recorded and distrbuted via our channels in the same manner as before. Aye a lot of the stuff Tabloid journalists ask will be rubbish but internal interviews always seem a bit flawed to me as there naturally is no critical questions. Ultimately any story is going to come out via the press anyway but I just wondered if anyone was privy to the change of tack. I think our media team is good for the most part but this and the lack of highlights in the last wee while seems like a backwards step to me.

I think the main thing here is that we are signing guys from the lower reaches of England who aren't any better than what we have in the youth team. Signings will always be hit and miss but we seem to consistently recruit squad guys who have very little proven qualities. Clearly money dictates this somewhat but I'd argue that the boys in the youth team are a better more reliable option in most cases. Clearly there are some exceptions to this rule (Kipre for example) but on the whole I think less should be spent on this level of player. Spend more on the first team and push through guys from the youth team quicker from the bench. We seem to have at least 4/5 guys always sitting about doing nothing picking up a senior wage. This summer was a prime example of this. James Scott looked decent from his limited sub appearances but instead we went and recruited Sammon. Aye, you can say Sammon scored some SPFL goals last season and has good experience but a blind man could tell you he was not what we required up front. Maclean, Hastie and Gordon are other examples of this. Maclean in particular has shown on multiple occasions that he has atleast as much quality as the likes of Demi (last year) and at times Frear/ATS this season. Maybe these guys aren't nailed on starters but I think you could have had Maclean and Scott atleast in the first team squad this year. Questions remain about whether the budget we have at the moment should be increased but to me the club could certainly be spending what they have a bit smarter.