Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[The kid]

16 hours ago, Bob Mahelp said:

As I said.

I suppose the obscurity of a relegation battle in the English Championship with some Lancashire non-entities is mildly better than the obscurity of a relegation battle in the Scottish Premiership with some Lanarkshire non-entities.

do you know the history of Preston North End? are you aware of our positon in the league and who we have turned over this year..... ignorance is no excuse for writing untruths.

Edited December 19, 2017 by The kid

[capt_oats]

As I mentioned on the Dundee match thread the AGM seems to have thrown up some positive stuff last night (lifting this from Andy_P's post on Steelmen, if he reads this apologies for the C&P job below):

Quote

"It was reaffirmed that 40% of transfer incomings goes to the club with 60% to creditors but what was further explained was that any costs involved with the transfer are deducted before anything goes to the club or creditor.  For example if we got £100,000 for a player and £10,000 of that went to the player it would then be 100% between club and creditor of the remaining £90,000.

Debt has been reduced on the previous accounting year with Well Society funding contributing largely to that.  The topic of future finance came up a couple of times with Jim McMahon giving an assurance that we would be in the coming year, with a later remark (curiously from the manager actually) suggesting we may well be "cash positive" was the term used over the next three years.

On the recent injury worries he was positive that most if not all will be in a position to return if not on Saturday then shortly after.

Work is ongoing to try to secure Peter Hartley on a permanent deal.  Discussions are ongoing about adding to the squad with at least one striker and a central defender on the wanted list.  The club are aware however that with the perception of being flush sums discussed have rocketed. Robinson insists the club will continue to trade within its means. He acknowledged that signing players from Scottish sides was particularly difficult in this regards. 

Negotiations are ongoing with some current players about extensions also.  Some deals he pointed out were not as clear cut as simply offering and accepting terms with, to use one example, the location of a players family having a bearing on whether they might accept an offer.

Longer term he hopes to build a core of first team players that is perhaps added to each in each window and further supplemented by those graduating from within the club. He remarked that Allan Campbell was one who had made the progression but cautioned that he still had to be managed carefully to avoid burnout.

Lessons have been learned about handling a schedule such as the three successive Celtic games in six days and the mental and physical repercussions of such a run of games."

Obviously with the fall out from Dempster's years of budgeting and with the move to the whole fan-ownership thing the "cash positive" news is a.good.thing.

I think the operating loss posted this year was £104k (per FirparkCorner) down from £404k the year before and it was something like £1.15m the year prior so it'd seem we're headed in the right direction in that respect. With player trading and the LC run then assuming our budgets roughly stay the same everything points to next year being profitable (finally).

If we're looking at another centre back in addition to Hartley then I think that's in line with what most of us would have been expecting. Given the number we have on our books it's interesting to read that we're looking at "at least one striker".  Curious to know who the players are that we've been talking to about extensions are as well.

Edited December 19, 2017 by capt_oats

[Swello]

Obviously AGM's tend to have the best possible spin put on things - but even so, I'm happy to read a lot of the above (I should be hearing it first hand next year after I bought some shares recently). 

The transfer fees situation has been well known - but you'd have to hope that we should now be making good inroads into the Boyle loan, if not the Hutchinson one after a good year on transfer fees. In any case, the move to "cash positive" (which I take to mean "in the black" rather than profitable per se) is critical for a fan owned club - and the fact that it is 'Well society subs that are reducing the debt (deficit?) underlines the importance of everyone chipping in if they are able and willing.

The "core of players" idea sounds good - but I'm not sure how that chimes with buying people to sell on.

The other one I saw on Steelmen was the idea of moving the singing section along to the other end of the East. Sounds like a shite idea to me as having home and away fans in close proximity helps build a bit of atmosphere and if the police can't handle some teenagers sticking the fingers up at each other - or a couple of thrown chewitts a season - then it's a bit fucking desperate. My impression is that the bois toe the line pretty well as it is - and they are more likely to offend parents in the Cooper family stand than they are the away support or other East Stand punters (like me).

 

 

[capt_oats]

15 minutes ago, Swello said:

Obviously AGM's tend to have the best possible spin put on things - but even so, I'm happy to read a lot of the above (I should be hearing it first hand next year after I bought some shares recently). 

The transfer fees situation has been well known - but you'd have to hope that we should now be making good inroads into the Boyle loan, if not the Hutchinson one after a good year on transfer fees. In any case, the move to "cash positive" (which I take to mean "in the black" rather than profitable per se) is critical for a fan owned club - and the fact that it is 'Well society subs that are reducing the debt (deficit?) underlines the importance of everyone chipping in if they are able and willing.

The "core of players" idea sounds good - but I'm not sure how that chimes with buying people to sell on.

The other one I saw on Steelmen was the idea of moving the singing section along to the other end of the East. Sounds like a shite idea to me as having home and away fans in close proximity helps build a bit of atmosphere and if the police can't handle some teenagers sticking the fingers up at each other - or a couple of thrown chewitts a season - then it's a bit fucking desperate. My impression is that the bois toe the line pretty well as it is - and they are more likely to offend parents in the Cooper family stand than they are the away support or other East Stand punters (like me).

Flow's actually addressed the point about the Bois on Twitter just there. Seems it's been misrepresented somewhat (and appears he thinks it's a shite idea too).

 

Edited December 19, 2017 by capt_oats

[Swello]

My issue was more with the Police than the club (as I understood that they, not the club, want to push this). *Wherever* you put a group of young guys/girls in the ground is where behaviour is going to be relatively worse and so moving them won't change that and will just move the "problem" - but there needs to be a sense of perspective from the police (I'm remembering what it was like when I first went to games during the Casuals days).  

Where they are at the moment is as far away as possible from the family section and the travel-rug wearing, daily express reading section in the main stand where the AGM question probably originated from - and that seems sensible to me. The fact that we have a good singing section has been one of the better things about the club over the past 6 or 7 years - it would be short- sighted to f**k it up.

 

 

[YassinMoutaouakil]

A few of my favourite( selectively quoted) excerpts from this Mark McGhee Times interview.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-mark-mcghee-ended-up-at-barnet-txnhmmf6b

  Does he still feel a lack of fulfilment? “Totally. Absolutely. I imagined that I’d spend my whole life working in the Premier League,” he says. “And I’ve spent half a season working in the Premier League, the rest Championship, first division, and now this is my second spell in the second division. It’s not what I set out to do. 

"But trust me, I’d still rather be doing it with the national team, or with a team in the Premier League, than here."

"It’s what I do. I’m a football manager. I’d much rather be doing this, even at the bottom of the second division, than sitting at home, or dropping Archie at school, and then going for a cappuccino.”

I honestly don't understand the seethe he provoked in our fanbase. How can you hate a man so beautifully lacking in self awareness  that almost everything he says is a gift to the patter gods? I've always found him hilarious tbh.

[capt_oats]

That's Scott Leitch left the Academy Director role. http://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/2017/12/22/scott-leitch-leaves-motherwell/

 

[humbleheart]

That's Scott Leitch left the Academy Director role. http://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/2017/12/22/scott-leitch-leaves-motherwell/
 

As a County fan, I have a good amount of petty hatred in me for most teams in the league but I would never wish him on any team, not even the dump dwellers.

[nsr]

What's the story there?

[Phillips455]

First time ijave been in fir park aince the xeltic game last month.

 

For a pic of the damage done by them to the seats of the South stand.

 

 

They had to shift the Dundee fans to the right so that they would avoid this area.

[MJC]

42 minutes ago, Phillips455 said:

First time ijave been in fir park aince the xeltic game last month.

 

For a pic of the damage done by them to the seats of the South stand.

 

 

They had to shift the Dundee fans to the right so that they would avoid this area.

No surprises given their previous and no surprise that this wasn't reported anywhere by any media outlet, Celtic's PR team will have made sure this was kept quiet. Motherwell FC however should have highlighted this at the time and there was no excuse for them not to.

[ropy]

Which they did

[Busta Nut]

On 12/22/2017 at 18:57, nsr said:

What's the story there?

No doubt a few things but he was recently done for battering a taxi driver or something

[Casagolda]

Sounds like tea’s oot for a few boys when the January transfer window opens. 

“I’ve given people chances, now it’s time to change things”.

Says he needs to do more businesses than he initially thought and is being quoted elsewhere to say he’s now looking for 2 strikers...

[Gianfranco]

Even his body language looked pissed off.

[happyaccie]

21 minutes ago, Gianfranco said:

Even his body language looked pissed off.

What's happened to all the early season optimism, the early season claims that this was not only a good starting eleven but a strong bench, which when called upon had the ability to affect the games.

In my opinion Motherwell are going through a rough time due to Moult's injury and with him leaving next week it is essential you replace him adequately, Ross county have suffered greatly by failing to cope with the loss of Liam Boyce and unless Motherwell find a suitable replacement for Moult the rest of this season may become tense.

I hate teams being labelled as 1 men teams, but having looked at County and more recently Motherwell it's obvious that the loss of those talisman has meant the removal of each teams focal point and has resulted in massive downturns in both clubs fortunes.

I think the upcoming window may be crucial in Robinsons long term development as a manager.

[capt_oats]

9 hours ago, happyaccie said:

What's happened to all the early season optimism, the early season claims that this was not only a good starting eleven but a strong bench, which when called upon had the ability to affect the games.

In my opinion Motherwell are going through a rough time due to Moult's injury and with him leaving next week it is essential you replace him adequately, Ross county have suffered greatly by failing to cope with the loss of Liam Boyce and unless Motherwell find a suitable replacement for Moult the rest of this season may become tense.

I hate teams being labelled as 1 men teams, but having looked at County and more recently Motherwell it's obvious that the loss of those talisman has meant the removal of each teams focal point and has resulted in massive downturns in both clubs fortunes.

I think the upcoming window may be crucial in Robinsons long term development as a manager.

As others have said, Moult is only part of the story. He's our top scorer and he's obviously going to be a miss however there's a bigger picture.

If you look at the numbers here you see Cadden and Frear are prominent. So, not only have we lost our top scorer and best striker through injury we've also lost the 2 players who create the majority of our chances. All at the same time. There is depth there but it's a big ask for us to replace our best players like for like en masse, which is essentially what's happened since the start of December with Carson, Hartley, Cadden, Moult along with Frear all having been out injured with Cadden and Frear having been broken further after we tried to rush them back.

Add to that, 7 of our last 10 league games have been away from home and all in all it's been a pretty shite time tbqh. In comparison, of our 9 home games so far we've only lost 3 (to Rangers, Aberdeen & Hibs). 

Robinson, not unreasonably, seems irked that the players who he's given a chance to haven't stepped up. Regardless of the injuries we should have had enough about us not to lose to Thistle and take something from Killie. The Dundee game was an absolute shitshow as we panicked and threw all those who had been out injured bar Moult back into the side and left us effectively playing the entire 2nd half with 10 men.

It wouldn't be the first time it's happened to a side after reaching the LC final but it feels like there's a bit of complacency about the squad just now. We've peaked early with the wins against Aberdeen and Rangers to get to the final, the final itself and the ensuing circus around the triple-header with Celtic.

Right now, (remarkably given our form) we're only 2 points off 6th and regardless of what happens against Accies we'll go into the winter break in 8th with a game in hand on the bottom 3. With that all in mind it feels like the feeling about the squad is "we'll be fine" which is a worry.

It seems Robinson's patience has worn thin if his post-match interview is anything to go by and it'll be interesting to see who he's looking to bring in and in which areas with him saying that he's looking to do more business than he had originally intended.

Edited December 28, 2017 by capt_oats

[deky]

Obviously we've hit a rough patch but all teams of our size do, we're never going to be consistent.

Robinson is making all the right noises as far as I'm concerned.

Hopefully we pump Accies, then with a bit of luck in the transfer window we can put a few good results together, starting with pumping Accies in the cup.

 

[happyaccie]

36 minutes ago, deky said:

Obviously we've hit a rough patch but all teams of our size do, we're never going to be consistent.

Robinson is making all the right noises as far as I'm concerned.

Hopefully we pump Accies, then with a bit of luck in the transfer window we can put a few good results together, starting with pumping Accies in the cup.

 

Think any prospect of any one of us winning comprehensively in either the league or cup tie are slim, even when you were supposedly flying it was a tight match at NDP earlier this season.

[deky]

21 minutes ago, happyaccie said:

Think any prospect of any one of us winning comprehensively in either the league or cup tie are slim, even when you were supposedly flying it was a tight match at NDP earlier this season.

I did say hopefully.

 

Always hopeful.