Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[capt_oats]

2 hours ago, Marinello said:

Whilst not at the front of the queue to defend Lamie I think it's fair to say that he wasn't signed as a ' starter' but more as a ' back up'.

The bigger question is why Mc Ginley seems behind Lamie and Mugabi when it's patently clear he is miles better than either of them.

Oh to be a fly on the wall!

Aye, I totally get that about Lamie. In an ideal world Carroll comes back on schedule and McGinley doesn't get knacked so shifts in one and everything's peachy.

The thing is, as @well fan for life points out, Hartley was done - IIRC he didn't start (or play) in any of the games in the 2nd half of 18/19 after the Ross County debacle.

From then on in it was Aldred and Dunne. The impression seemed to be that we were setting up to go with Gallagher and Charlie Taxi until the latter picked up his injury. He was on the bench against QotS, Morton, didn't start either of the opening two league games an and wasn't in the squad for the Hearts LC game.

From the look of things Dunne disappeared from the scene after the Hibs game on 31st August and after that Hartley was a fixture in the side. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/peter-hartley/leistungsdaten/spieler/41132/plus/0?saison=2019

None of that is a pop at Hartley - his leaving has clearly left us with a massive fucking hole in the squad in terms of intangibles - it's just that, like WFFL, I get the impression that for this season we'd have been talking to both him and Tait as being back-ups or cover which co-incidentally is what Lamie seems to have been brought in as and by f**k has it been a downgrade on every conceivable metric.

During his entire tenure at the club Robinson talked about prioritising bringing in the "right characters" and he consistently did with folk like Carson, Kipré, Hartley, Aldred etc even Gallagher seemed to have the right sort of attitude last season. Ultimately it looks like getting that wildly wrong is what's fucked him this summer.

Edited January 3, 2021 by capt_oats

[Alert Mongoose]

44 minutes ago, Ron Aldo said:

I'm bored and absolutely fuming at yesterday's result so I've decided to do a mid-season analysis on our current squad and who I feel is worth keeping.

Trevor Carson - one of the few to get pass marks this season but, unfortunately, keeps breaking. Keep.

Liam Grimshaw - limited ability but wears his heart on his sleeve and gives 100%. Wouldn't be a starter for me but is a decent squad player. Keep.

Jake Carroll - coming back from injury has had him thrown in at the deep end but overall he's one of our better players, particularly compared to the rest of the defence. Keep.

Ricki Lamie - one of the worst players I've seen in a 'Well shirt which is some going. Fire him right into the sun.

Nathan McGinley - yet to be convinced but certainly not the worst defender at the club (albeit the bar isn't very high). Still no idea if he's a left back or centre half. Keep.

Allan Campbell - been below par this season but undoubtedly is one of our better players. Would keep him but he'll be away in the summer so it's irrelevant really.

Mark O'Hara - flatters to deceive in my view. Calls himself a midfielder but is better in defence which sort of sums him up. Bin.

Robbie Crawford - Livi bench warmer. Bin.

Jordan White - Alex Fisher MK2 and nowhere near good enough for this level. Bin.

Jake Hastie - had 6 or 7 good games when no one knew who he was. Now people do know him and it's quite clear he's complete dug shite. Bin.

Barry Maguire - Stuart Carswell MK2. Not necessarily a bad player but I don't see what he brings to the team. I'd probably keep him around as a squad player.

Bevis Mugabi - his tea should have been oot after the St Mirren cup debacle last season but somehow he's become a regular. Lamie has probably taken some of the heat off him but there's no doubt he's rotten. Bin.

Sherwin Seedorf - runs quite fast and, ehhh, that's it. Hard to believe that there's rumours of Championship teams paying actual money for him. If we can scam someone then ideal but, if not, get him in the bin.

Liam Polworth - plays the occasional nice pass but little else. Seems clear that he disappears when the going gets tough which it most definitely is right now. Bin.

Liam Donnelly - missed him much more than I thought we would. Keep.

Declan Gallagher - see Allan Campbell.

Tony Watt - one of the few that tries hard but doesn't score enough. He's also extremely annoying on social media but, despite that, he does bring something to the team. Keep.

Stephen O'Donnell - an average Scottish full back who seems to have ended up with us as he couldn't get anywhere else. Has done nothing to back up his status as an international player. Bin.

Aaron Chapman - holy f**k. Makes Craig Samson look like Manuel Neuer. No idea how he's still masquerading as a professional goalkeeper at 30. Strap him to the same rocket as Lamie.

Devante Cole - doesn't look sharp but is undoubtedly a good player when he's 100%. Keep.

Chris Long - didn't like him last season when he was playing reasonably well and I like him even less this season given he blatantly doesn't want to be here and clearly can't be arsed. Get him to f**k.

I haven't included injured players who haven't played (Fox, Dunne) or youth players who are in the first team squad but also haven't played. I've also omitted Archer and Lang as they're already away.

But to sum up - we're pish.

Can you drop Polworth off at Tannadice please?

[ropy]

25 minutes ago, wellinwigan said:

100% this 

I am scared to count the Keeps, do we have a team?

[Jim64]

Anyone able to list a complete history of Robinsons signings, as far as I’m aware the big money sales eg Turnbull and Scott were already at the club. Kipre as someone else pointed out was a punt on someone as the guy we wanted( Dembele) I believe turned us down. I’ll go with some of the poor ones I remember Ndjoli Hylton Mazinga Sloth Illic Seedorf Chapman Lamie Johnson McCormick Mugabi I’m sure there’s others

Edited January 3, 2021 by Jim64
Missed something out

[capt_oats]

22 minutes ago, Jim64 said:

Anyone able to list a complete history of Robinsons signings, as far as I’m aware the big money sales eg Turnbull and Scott were already at the club. Kipre as someone else pointed out was a punt on someone as the guy we wanted( Dembele) I believe turned us down. I’ll go with some of the poor ones I remember Ndjoli Hylton Mazinga Sloth Illic Seedorf Chapman Lamie Johnson McCormick I’m sure there’s others

Yep. I did that a while back. It's a long list.

Apologies for quoting myself.

On 07/12/2020 at 00:19, capt_oats said:

I'll take a stab at this and say that it's more nuanced than a simple good/bad question.

For me you're looking at it and asking why were they signed? Were they signed for the first team? Or were they simply brought in as squad filler or a punt who might come good?

I think an element of it is just the nature of the beast. Every 2nd year we seem to have a large turnover of players so you see an intake of players on 1 or 2 year deals who ultimately might come good but there's a fair chance they won't.

A friendly reminder that Christian Ilic currently has 15 appearances for Lokomotiv Plovdiv sitting 2nd in the Bulgarian top tier and was playing in their Europa League tie against Spurs earlier this season (maybe we shouldn't have spent a season trying to make him a right winger). ATS seems to be getting on fine at Livi.

Here's Robinson's signings to date (it's a long list - I've ommitted guys like Broque Watson and Neil McLaughlin we were Craigan signings for the Reserves, it'd debatable whether Harry Robinson should be in there either but he made a couple of first team appearances so let's keep him in):

17/18
Alex Fisher, Gael Bigirimana, Craig Tanner, Trevor Carson, Andy Rose, Russell Griffiths, Charles Dunne, Cedric Kipre, George Newell, Ellis Plummer, Rohan Ferguson, Deimantas Petravičius, Liam Grimshaw, Gennadios Xenodochof, Curtis Main, Peter Hartley (loan)/(permanent), Nadir Ciftci (loan), Tom Aldred (loan) x 2, Stephen Hendrie (loan)

Total = 19

18/19
Mark Gillespie, Liam Donnelly, Danny Johnson, Aaron Taylor-Sinclair, Alex Rodriguez-Gorrin, Christian Mbulu, Conor Sammon (loan), Ross McCormack (loan), Gboly Ariyibi (loan)

Total = 9

19/20
Declan Gallagher, Liam Polworth, Jake Carroll, Casper Sloth, Jermaine Hylton, Christopher Long, Sherwin Seedorf, Christian Ilic, Christy Manzinga, Ross MacIver, Bevis Mugabi, Tony Watt, Harry Robinson, Devante Cole (loan)/permanent, Mark O'Hara (loan/permanent), Mikael Ndjoli (loan), Rolando Aarons (loan) 

Total = 17

20/21
Ricki Lamie, Jordan White, Nathan McGinley, Scott Fox, Stephen O'Donnell, Aaron Chapman, Jordan Archer, Jake Hastie (loan), Callum Lang (loan), Robbie Crawford (loan)

Total = 10

So all in we've signed 55 different players over 3.5 seasons.

For me it's a case of when we've got them right they've generally been very right (far too many to say we're bad at recruitment): Carson, Rose, Kipré, Hartley, Aldred, Ciftci, Gillespie, Donnelly, Gorrin, Ariyibi, Gallagher, Polworth, Carroll, Watt, Cole, O'Donnell and Lang have all (IMO) been on a sliding scale of excellent to decent first team players that we've got our money's worth from.

Recency bias probably stops him from getting any credit but we got a more than decent turn out of Chris Long last season. Main would fall into that bracket too.

Beyond that you've got guys like McGinley and O'Hara who may still come good and Aarons whose time at the club was curtailed so you can't really judge either way.

Then you've got players like Chapman, Archer, Xenodchof and Crawford who are/were here entirely out of circumstance because of injuries to others. Going the other way you've got guys who were good signings whose Motherwell careers were cut short by injury eg: Tanner, Dunne, Plummer and Fox.

The major disappointments eg: Bigi, Sloth, McCormack, Hastie you can understand why we signed them.

The problem (IMO) is where you get to that tier of players who have been brought in as cover that we find ourselves having to lean on (as we have this season) or guys we've brought in as a punt who it turns out are nowhere near it. That's where it becomes an issue (again, IMO).

I'd say maybe 20 of the names on that list fall into that category to varying degrees - I'll not name them but they're pretty easy to guess.

I don't think there's anyone can reasonably argue that there's not been an amount of wastage but equally the number in each season has generally been roughly equal to the number out. The argument would be that we're perpetuating a lot of that churn ourselves I suppose.

I still have no answer for Conor Sammon though.

I still stand by that post FWIW (well apart from one poorly phrased sentence now I've read it back).

Edited January 3, 2021 by capt_oats

[Desp]

We need at least three in during this month I'd say. The issue is we'll need them all to be 'hits', which will be a tough ask. 

We need a central defender to play alongside Gallagher. Mugabi and Lamie aren't good enough and no idea what's going on with McGinley. Didn't he say recently he'd been finding it difficult with the move up here and being stuck on his own due to all of this? Maybe he just hasn't settled and wants to return closer to home.

Two wide players as well. If the Aarons chat is true, I'd be fairly pleased with that. I don't think we saw the best of him in the limited time he was here last season, but he's certainly better than what we've got. Someone to play on the other side as well and I'd have one of Watt or Cole through the middle. 

If possible, we need to get shot of Lamie, Mugabi, Hastie, Chapman & Long. That's just for starters. I'm also not arsed about O'Donnell staying on because it don't really think he's given us much. He certainly doesn't make us better defensively, and I don't recall him chipping in with many assists (other than the one at Ibrox). 

Carson/Morrison

Grimshaw Gallagher *new player* Carroll. 

Campbell O'Hara/Donnelly Polworth

*new player* Cole/Watt *new player*

That should be enough to get us out of trouble. 

 

[ATLIS]

14 hours ago, 'WellDel said:

It's a strange one. After the initial couple of games to get used to the tempo and style of play up here he's looked at least decent, unlike Lamie and Mugabi who are way out of their depth yet continue to get game time in front of him. I just don't get it. 

We need to fix it from back to front. Somehow we need to become tough at the back and stop leaking soft goals then work from there. Big Dec is a class defender, but he's not a leader. No shouting and no marshalling his defence. The difference when Carson was in goals the other night barking orders was noticeable. When things are going tits up we need someone to drag the rest on. How much would we give for an Aldred or a Hartley just now? 

 

To be fair, he was a great leader for us. Didn’t do a lot of shouting but micromanaged a lot of stuff on the park.

I remember when he did do his shouting and ended up getting sent off in the diddy leagues for swearing (and more) at a linesman - so maybe best he keeps it quiet for now  

[capt_oats]

54 minutes ago, Desp said:

We need at least three in during this month I'd say. The issue is we'll need them all to be 'hits', which will be a tough ask. 

We need a central defender to play alongside Gallagher. Mugabi and Lamie aren't good enough and no idea what's going on with McGinley. Didn't he say recently he'd been finding it difficult with the move up here and being stuck on his own due to all of this? Maybe he just hasn't settled and wants to return closer to home.

Two wide players as well. If the Aarons chat is true, I'd be fairly pleased with that. I don't think we saw the best of him in the limited time he was here last season, but he's certainly better than what we've got. Someone to play on the other side as well and I'd have one of Watt or Cole through the middle. 

If possible, we need to get shot of Lamie, Mugabi, Hastie, Chapman & Long. That's just for starters. I'm also not arsed about O'Donnell staying on because it don't really think he's given us much. He certainly doesn't make us better defensively, and I don't recall him chipping in with many assists (other than the one at Ibrox). 

Carson/Morrison

Grimshaw Gallagher *new player* Carroll. 

Campbell O'Hara/Donnelly Polworth

*new player* Cole/Watt *new player*

That should be enough to get us out of trouble. 

Depends what the script is with Carson as well.

If he's broken then we definitely need a new keeper - for all Chapman is clearly mince I can kind of allow for the circumstances around him ending up here.

Similarly when Carson got his injury earlier in the season we went out and brought in another goalkeeper so I don't think that anyone is kidding themselves Chapman's someone who should be starting games (after yesterday that should be even more clear). 

Presumably we need the new manager in place before we start signing folk or are we just going to crack on and say to whoever gets the job "here's what you have to work with. Good luck with that."?

Edited January 3, 2021 by capt_oats

[Marinello]

I'm probably way out the loop but is there any official word that Archer has left the club?

[capt_oats]

Just now, Marinello said:

I'm probably way out the loop but is there any official word that Archer has left the club?

I've been swerving socials as a general rule recently (not Motherwell related it's just Twitter is an absolute hell pit riddled with morons) but he still exists on the official site but the fact he wasn't on the bench during the week or like...starting yesterday suggests he's away already.

Lang's still there as well tbf and Robinson confirmed he was away back to Wigan after the Killie game.

[Swello]

I think the club are swerving the socials since yesterday too apart from Lasley's interview - probably for the best.

[Gianfranco]

I’ve been thinking our socials would be better off saying nothing for quite a while now.

[Ludo*1]

Why did you punt Archer and keep Chapman?

[capt_oats]

12 minutes ago, Ludo*1 said:

Why did you punt Archer and keep Chapman?

Archer was only ever here as short term cover until Carson was fit again. His deal was/is only until January. Once Carson was back fit he'd be back in as #1 and tbf Archer's played at a more than high enough level to justify being a #1 in his own right. He's not signing with Motherwell if he's going to be parked on the bench.

Chapman was signed on a 1 year basically to cover Scott Fox's injury and let PJ Morrison go out on loan (he's now been recalled). Chapman's role is essentially to sit on the bench and hope we don't have to use him.

Edited January 3, 2021 by capt_oats

[RandomGuy.]

On 28/08/2020 at 19:40, capt_oats said:

There's also the ongoing Cadden dispute as well I guess.

Did this ever get resolved?

Hes apparently signed for Hibs (or Aberdeen, since thats a thing now).

Edited January 3, 2021 by RandomGuy.

[capt_oats]

1 hour ago, RandomGuy. said:

Did this ever get resolved?

Hes apparently signed for Hibs (or Aberdeen, since thats a thing now).

Not that's been reported AFAIK. It's academic anyway as the dispute is with Columbus Crew rather than the player himself. He can do what he wants.

I mean, everyone knows it was a pretty shady deal but when it's broken down it's even weirder.

He signed for them, they paid him a basic salary ($56,250) - which is helpfully detailed given US sports whole salary cap transparency deal, their highest earner is on $1.42m, they loaned him to Oxford until January, recalled him and he's barely played. Oxford apparently wanted to sign him permanently but they knocked that back.

Columbus won the MLS Cup but Cadden has played 369 mins in MLS - he's basically an unused sub for the best part of a year. Compare that with his spell at Oxford where he played 1843 mins.

Going by his IG he got some golf in though. So that's nice for him.

Edited January 3, 2021 by capt_oats

[ropy]

In recent months Nicky has been doing the better but a move to Aberdeen/Hibs could change that

[Busta Nut]

Cadden was complicit. the knob

[ropy]

2 minutes ago, Busta Nut said:

Cadden was complicit. the knob

Are you saying Cadden knew?

[YassinMoutaouakil]

I think Cadden's absolutely pish tbh. For someone that's supposedly an attacking fullback/ midfielder I don't recall him ever actually influencing a game in a positive sense with any regularity.