Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[Archie McSquackle]

Johnson and Moult were successful acquisitions and we more than made our money back on them. We probably saw it as a promising business model but it hasn't really worked out that way since.

[Handsome_Devil]

7 hours ago, Archie McSquackle said:

Johnson and Moult were successful acquisitions and we more than made our money back on them. We probably saw it as a promising business model but it hasn't really worked out that way since.

Those of us of a certain vintage may remember a 1980s GLF interview with Tommy McLean when he said he'd have no trouble spending 500k (an absurd sum for us at the time, the Scottish record would only have been a couple million) on a player because that would guarantee you get quality. The implication being obvious.

Essentially that still applies today. When we pay more, be it wages or fees, our risk goes up substantially but our place on the food chain means it's only marginally more likely we're getting a good player than a guy we like the look of on a free/cheap wages.

Edited September 14, 2023 by Handsome_Devil

[well again]

2 hours ago, Handsome_Devil said:

Those of us of a certain vintage may remember a 1980s GLF interview with Tommy McLean when he said he'd have no trouble spending 500k (an absurd sum for us at the time, the Scottish record would only have been a couple million) on a player because that would guarantee you get quality. The implication being obvious.

Essentially that still applies today. When we pay more, be it wages or fees, our risk goes up substantially but our place on the food chain means it's only marginally more likely we're getting a good player than a guy we like the look of on a free/cheap wages.

Wee Tommy left the half million for McLeish to squander on mcskimming and Hendry. Mind you wee Tommy wasn't always so good with transfers , but when he got it right he signed some fantastic players.

[Handsome_Devil]

4 minutes ago, well again said:

Wee Tommy left the half million for McLeish to squander on mcskimming and Hendry. Mind you wee Tommy wasn't always so good with transfers , but when he got it right he signed some fantastic players.

Always felt McSkimming was reviewed harshly actually.

But aye, there always have and always will be hits and misses.

[Casagolda]

Link

Frightening to hear that Efford was apparently a ‘top earner’ according to Kettlewell. Also says we won’t we dipping into the free agent market. 

[well fan for life]

9 minutes ago, Casagolda said:

Link

Frightening to hear that Efford was apparently a ‘top earner’ according to Kettlewell. Also says we won’t we dipping into the free agent market. 

Fair play to his agent getting that contract. 

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

I remember Daws raving about how well we had done expanding our scouting network into new markets.

It brought us Efford, Ojala and Solholm. We needn't have bothered.

[MurrayWell]

This proves that the recruitment decision makers at our club over the last few years shouldn't have even been trusted with the uppercrust order cash. 

Mind we gave that guy who wasn't even a footballer a deal because he had the same agent as Alexander? Parker I think? 

Edited September 14, 2023 by MurrayWell

[well fan for life]

1 minute ago, MurrayWell said:

This proves that the recruitment decision makers at our club in the last few years should not be trusted with the uppercrust order cash. 

Mind we gave that guy who wasn't even a footballer a deal because he had the same agent as Alexander? Parker I think? 

Last seen at Gosport Borough according to Transfermarkt. 

There's also Sherwin Seedorf who we signed because of his name and, as far as I can tell, isn't playing football anymore. 

 

[eliphas]

11 minutes ago, MurrayWell said:

This proves that the recruitment decision makers at our club over the last few years shouldn't have even been trusted with the uppercrust order cash. 

Mind we gave that guy who wasn't even a footballer a deal because he had the same agent as Alexander? Parker I think? 

It's probably fair to say the free reign, that Alexander and Hammell essentially got under Alan Burrows (and board) is being closer managed now given they got their fingers burnt with the latter two. Worked with Robinson and Alan working hand in glove essentially but the appointment and ways of working with Alexander and Hammell really were pretty brutal on the club finances.

SK has really done some job of clearing the decks. 

Edited September 14, 2023 by eliphas

[well fan for life]

Just now, eliphas said:

It's probably fair to say the free reign, that Alexander and Hammell essentially got under Alan Burrows (and board) is being closer managed now given they got their fingers burnt with the latter two. Worked with Robinson and Alan working hand in glove essentially but the appointment and ways of working with Alexander and Hammell really were pretty brutal on the club finances.

Alexander was full on jobs for the boys stuff. Hammell just threw some shite at a wall and not a bit of it stuck. 

[eliphas]

Just now, well fan for life said:

Alexander was full on jobs for the boys stuff. Hammell just threw some shite at a wall and not a bit of it stuck. 

Different scenarios, agreed, and Alexander definitely wins the race. The pursuit and expense of Danzaki probably Hammell's outlier really that will likely undergo a lot more scrutiny in the future with Weir at the helm for now.

[capt_oats]

1 hour ago, Casagolda said:

Link

Frightening to hear that Efford was apparently a ‘top earner’ according to Kettlewell. Also says we won’t we dipping into the free agent market. 

That's an interesting bit of spiel from Kettlewell.

I mean, stepping aside from the headline 'WTF' of Joe being 'a top earner' (which in a way I'm not surprised about) I guess the positive is that we've managed to get to a position that the board are happy with in the space of a single window.

What does stand out is the amount of fat that we've had to trim to get there: I think it was @crazylegsjoe_mfc who posted the other day pointing out that even with the level of turnover of playing staff we're still sitting on 23 first team players but haven't recruited to replace Lamie, Efford, Crankshaw, Danzaki, McKinstry, Morris, Tierney and Goss.

Although Miller is clearly the Goss replacement that's still 7 players and on top of that we've binned the Reserves and a whole raft of backroom staff that Alexander put in place.

It kind of feels like we had money to spend after the various profits from the likes of Jimmy Scott and Turnbull moving so we spent some of it. Burrows definitely seemed to buy into the idea of expanding the football department and backroom staff. Ironically that's the kind of ambition fans are all for until it doesn't work, then they're furious.

As an aside he doesn't really give much away about Joe going forward he also doesn't explicitly say that we've not had to pay him off (as he did in the case of Danzaki) but he also implies that it's had a positive effect on our budget position: “In that, Joe gets an opportunity to move on in his career and potentially get out of it what he wants.”, “But a possible option came up for the likes of Joe, and that just gives us a wee bit of a chance to balance things off."

55 minutes ago, MurrayWell said:

This proves that the recruitment decision makers at our club over the last few years shouldn't have even been trusted with the uppercrust order cash. 

Mind we gave that guy who wasn't even a footballer a deal because he had the same agent as Alexander? Parker I think? 

I kind of disagree with this tbh. Not massively but I'm not sure the recruitment over the past couple of years has been bad.

I think it's fair to say that we've maybe lost the run of ourselves a bit but equally our league finishes post-Robinson have been 8th (on same points as St Mirren in 7th), 5th and 7th.

Some signings haven't worked out sure but that happens. I'd argue that the Bad Decision last season was giving Hammell the job to replace Alexander - the upturn under Kettlewell with the majority of the same players at his disposal suggests to me that it wasn't the players who were the problem.

I don't think we've necessarily improved or seen value added vs the money spent but equally I don't think we've regressed either.

The likes of Parker, Amaluzor (IMO) were no different to Robinson taking a punt on Manzinga or whatever. There's every chance that the bold Mich'el was a favour to an agent but either way it was pretty clear that Alexander's early signings in that window were effectively ringers to literally fill jerseys through the league cup games until we got the likes of Slattery, Ojala and Johansen through the door.

I've mentioned this before but I think Alexander's signings were broadly fine but he didn't have the sort of stand out successes Robinson did (Carson, Kipré etc).

37 minutes ago, eliphas said:

Different scenarios, agreed, and Alexander definitely wins the race. The pursuit and expense of Danzaki probably Hammell's outlier really that will likely undergo a lot more scrutiny in the future with Weir at the helm for now.

The thing that mitigates Hammell IMO is that regardless of whether they only played 5 mins or whatever combined the bulk of his signings were either loans or short term deals so Danzaki aside I guess our exposure was limited for the most part - McKinstry (loan), Penney (loan), Moult (loan), Aarons (loan), Furlong (loan), Obika (loan), Mandron (end of season), Aitchison (end of season), Casey (end of season).

[Marinello]

Also fair to say on Hammell's behalf that it was him who brought in Butcher and Casey. 

Sadly for SH his time ran out before we saw the benefits of these 2 signings.

[capt_oats]

2 minutes ago, Marinello said:

Also fair to say on Hammell's behalf that it was him who brought in Butcher and Casey. 

Sadly for SH his time ran out before we saw the benefits of these 2 signings.

If nothing else I admire your optimism that we'd actually have seen any benefits of those signings if Hammell had stuck around. They both started against Raith Rovers after all.

I mean, we absolutely saw the benefits of the two signings once he was out the door so kudos to him or whoever it was on the recruitment team who identified them and got them in the building.

1 hour ago, eliphas said:

Different scenarios, agreed, and Alexander definitely wins the race. The pursuit and expense of Danzaki probably Hammell's outlier really that will likely undergo a lot more scrutiny in the future with Weir at the helm for now.

Tbh, I'd kind of forgotten that we're still in a position where we have an 'interim' CEO and I guess Kettlewell covering the budget stuff in the way he has opens up the question of how much scope Weir has at the moment to audit the processes we've had in place over the past few years.

I mean, it feels like there's a lot to unpack post-Burrows but you'd have thought the 'interim'-ness of it all would limit any remit to action changes in a meaningful way.

[ropy]

I don’t know how the wage structure at Motherwell works, whether it is all individual deals or if there are ‘levels’ of pay, it could be that there are 10 players all on the same wage and therefore Efford being one of them would make him a top earner.

There wasn’t enough noise around his signing for me to think he was coming in at a salary level above the core team.

[YassinMoutaouakil]

Did we ever figure out what happened with Efford's extension in the summer?

[Guest]

Alexanders spell reads like me trying to play football manager tbh.

 

[MurrayWell]

36 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

 I kind of disagree with this tbh. Not massively but I'm not sure the recruitment over the past couple of years has been bad...

...The likes of Parker, Amaluzor (IMO) were no different to Robinson taking a punt on Manzinga or whatever. There's every chance that the bold Mich'el was a favour to an agent but either way it was pretty clear that Alexander's early signings in that window were effectively ringers to literally fill jerseys through the league cup games until we got the likes of Slattery, Ojala and Johansen through the door.

That's fair enough mate, tongue was in my cheek with the uppercrust and Parker comments, get he wouldn't have been on much at all. I suppose my main issue is more around the reported high amounts of money we're paying for folk who don't bring anything to the squad, Efford being the most recent example. Ojala and Johansen were also two I'd have in that category of being on a fair wedge but just not proving to be a good return on investment, see also Riku Danzaki and some of the new contracts we've dished out. 

Completely get that every signing at our level is a risk and not everything will work out, but we do seem to have been pretty consistent at giving healthy contracts to absolute duds of late. Of course there have been some decent signings in that time too though. Hopefully with the recent gutting, which I would argue shows recruitment hasn't been good, we've cleared the decks and are in a much better place. 

[ropy]

1 hour ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:

Did we ever figure out what happened with Efford's extension in the summer?

I just assumed these things were triggered by appearances, Joe’s threshold must have been low, some need a gun to the head.