Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

Apologies, my comment about St. Johnstone being raging re Bair was meant to be flippant and jovial, I didn't mean to open such a conversation up to this extent

I've been fairly vocal in my support of Kettlewell on here despite many times I've despaired of him but there's a cynic in me that thinks Bair's success has been a bit of a fortunate accident.

I think he signed seemingly as 4th choice in a squad built for 3-5-2, then the other three get injured and we are forced to play 3-4-2-1 with him up top, then the other three get fit again and push him back down the pecking order, before he gets back in the team just as Wilkinson agrees his move away and scores twice. Then our talisman in Mika gets recalled and we struggle in our pursuit of a striker in January and all of a sudden we are full circle with 3-4-2-1 with Bair our option up top himself. I mean, I'm not going to worry too much about how we got here now that we have, but I seriously do wonder if him starting every week was ever the plan.

To answer @RandomGuy.'s question, the support definitely has been a big part of Bair's success. I think it's been a bit of a chain reaction. Since he has been firing, Ketts has brought Gent and Davor in and largely started putting round pegs in round holes. This has meant Spittal hasn't needed to play as a wing-back, or deeper in midfield. Losing Wilkinson and Mika and struggling to replace them has meant there are less attacking combinations for Ketts to tie himself in knots with. All of this has led to consistency in selection (a key factor in any success, IMO) which has seen not only Bair, but Spittal's season properly take off.

Edited April 21 by crazylegsjoe_mfc

[well fan for life]

1 hour ago, Handsome_Devil said:

Definitely. We're back to level, which is all the realistic among us could hope for.

As a hypothetical....Season 1 goes wrong but is salvaged by spending in January and sacking the manager.

There's optimism for season 2 but probably misplaced as the budget is cut by paying off the previous season. Yes, you could over perform the pounds spent but realistically you continue to struggle. You either repeat season 1 or you get to season 3 still in the top-flight and having paid off previous errors.

We don't quite fit into that classic pattern because of when we sacked Alexander but essentially - assuming we don't collapse at least - we're close enough. Basically we've moved past the original sin - neither backing or sacking Alexander in May 22 at the cost of X hundred thousand and missing a chance to fight for Europe when Hibs and Aberdeen fucked it so badly we'll have Killie plus either St M or Dundee making it.

Summer will now determine whether we start an upward swing of the cycle or enter another survival series...

I would never confidently predict glory to come before a summer rebuild but having returned to stage zero, finally sorted a CEO, working on the strategic direction etc I think we can be cautiously hopeful the bottom has been reached and we're on the way up again.

 

Even just a season of not lurching between crises would be pretty sound to start with.

[fat_tony]

14 hours ago, Vietnam91 said:

I can't recall the last player we bought we sold for money, everyone arrived for free or were promoted from the Academy. Maybe Marvin Johnson?

I think we bought and then sold Sol didn't we?

[well fan for life]

Just now, fat_tony said:

I think we bought and then sold Sol didn't we?

Yes. Which is honestly staggering to think about. 

[MurrayWell]

Moult left after Johnson too, we paid a small amount for him and sold him on. 

[eliphas]

Did we get a small fee for Bazooka Joe?  I seem to remember some sort of small fee being involved. But maybe that was bringing him in. 

[MurrayWell]

6 minutes ago, eliphas said:

Did we get a small fee for Bazooka Joe?  I seem to remember some sort of small fee being involved. But maybe that was bringing him in. 

Think you're right but I'm sure someone suggested it was basically that team buying out his contract, rather than a profit. 

[well fan for life]

7 minutes ago, eliphas said:

Did we get a small fee for Bazooka Joe?  I seem to remember some sort of small fee being involved. But maybe that was bringing him in. 

Just looked him up and they emptied him 6 months into a 3 year deal. 

Also, weirdly, there's a whole load of PAS Giannina stickers have appeared all over lampposts near my house. Maybe Bazooka Joe's moving his crypto empire back to the west of Scotland. 

[capt_oats]

1 hour ago, fat_tony said:

I think we bought and then sold Sol didn't we?

I got the impression that the OP was meaning more in the spirit of the 'player trading' model that Les introduced where we invest a modest amount in signing the player and sell for profit. With the best will in the world I'd guess any income we got from the likes of Efford etc would be minimal while shifting Sol on probably meant the deal washed its face with maybe a bit extra (the accounts have it as having been the only 'significant fee' last season and our gains on player registration were posted as £194,246 vs £974,168 the previous year).

Having said that, does it actually matter as long as we're getting some sort of value out of the player? Like, Carson is probably one of the best £10k fees we'll ever spend does it really matter that we didn't flip him for cash given we sold Kipré for £750k from the same intake of players?

I guess it's similar with Slattery there's absolutely zero doubt that he was brought in on the pitch we'd give him a platform and look to cash in which doesn't look like it'll happen but then again between the money we've got in for Kev along with the more modest amount for Sol that puts us in profit for the £500k+ we 'invested' in the Alexander purchases.

I noticed a few posts over on SO and a handful of people are still bumping against the 'player sales model' (as @JayMFC put it in a reply) - in essence you're getting people struggling to get over the fact that we have been profitable under fan ownership and countering with "Yes, but only because we sold David Turnbull" despite player sales and player trading literally being part of our business plan.

Quoting Jay's post from that thread and also Steelboy's which I found myself nodding along with:

On 20/04/2024 at 08:11, Jay said:

The player sales model debate is an interesting one. For me, it's not a precarious model by any means. And I'd suggest that it demonstrably works.

We're in a situation where the club doesn't urgently need outside investment - it would just be preferable. Our model ensures that it's unlikely that the hypothetical gap outlined in the Well Society's consultation earlier in the year, and the hypothetical gap that is the very reason for courting external investment in the first place, will, based on the experience of fan-ownership to date, materialise. It never has under fan-ownership and, even if it did, the Well Society has enough funding to cover that gap as a one-off. The issue would be if something that has yet to happen didn't just happen one year, but two in quick succession.

Of course, nothing is impossible in football. Over the same time period that fan-owned Motherwell has remained in the division, reached cup finals, and made Europe, clubs with bigger resources such as Hearts, Hibernian and Dundee United have all been relegated. So it's a duty of the club to at least recognise that hypothetical gap and see if there's a more productive way to eradicate it, other than relying on the Well Society to plug it if it happens once, and then to probably slash our playing budget if it happens again in quick succession (before the Society has built up the safety net again).

But in terms of our model, David Turnbull always gets picked out as a seeming "anomaly" but in reality, he's the result of an effective player sales model. Since fan-ownership came into being, we have - purely off the top of my head, so there'll probably be others I miss - sold, for cash, guys like Louis Moult, Cedric Kipre, Kevin van Keen, Sondre Solholm Johansen, James Scott & Ben Heneghan.

We could have, had we tied them down on contracts, added Chris Cadden, Allan Campbell, Jake Hastie, Dean Cornelius & Max Johnston to that list. However, the compensation for each still numbers in the hundreds of thousands meaning that, collectively, that's still well over £1m.

We will probably sell Theo Bair on for a relatively decent fee in the summer, January, or next summer, while at the same time, Lennon Miller will almost certainly go for a price that you could perhaps list alongside the Turnbull fee.

In terms of any investment meaning a change from that model and the ability to keep our best players, I would argue that is incredibly unlikely, if not impossible. The player sales model is only partly because of a financial need, it's also largely because of the club's stature in world football. As has been mentioned elsewhere, it was confirmed at the AGM by the club that no investment offer is transformational, meaning that there would be no change to the model. In fact, you could argue that, if any investor was keen on getting a return on their investment, the player sales model could become even more important in that situation.

The only way in which our model ceases to be our model that I can see is if we ended up with an incredibly unlikely Colin & Christine Weir scenario where a diehard Motherwell fan wins the Euromillions and wants to just chuck cash at the club. But even in that situation, where you don't necessarily need to sell players, players would still be sold - because the best guys will always want to move on to play at perceived bigger clubs or in better leagues, regardless of how much cash you're able to throw at them.

The player sales model at Fir Park has been in place, and worked successfully, before fan-ownership, has worked under fan-ownership, and will continue to work regardless of whether the club is owned by the fans, an external investor, or a hybrid of the two. Personally, I think it's both a successful model that we should be positive about, because we're good at it, and a model that will be integral to the club whether we like it or not anyway.

On 20/04/2024 at 16:33, steelboy said:

Safety certificates meant we had to level the pitch? Further SPFL sanctions when we haven't been sanctioned for the pitch since 2010? Are you sure about that?

I don't understand where you are coming from at all with concerning the losses. We make a profit one season. The money is in our bank account and we spend it. It shows up as loss the next season. It's totally normal. You seem to be suggesting that we should never spend more than we earn in any 12 month accounting period regardless of the cash in the bank which is a fairly mental way to budget for anything.

The 12 month period is totally arbitrary, it's not the be all and end.

On 20/04/2024 at 17:09, steelboy said:

Levelling the pitch and adapting the East Stand to the new height were the expensive outlays.

We earned it. Then we spent it. The alternative would be sitting in a relegation battle with a pile of money in the bank and not touching it for no reason at all other than some people don't like seeing an annual loss.

Edited April 22 by capt_oats

[Swello]

Yep - I've always found the "that thing that you've done well for 10-15 years might suddenly stop working because reasons" argument a bit self defeating. We've consistently sold players for decent fees and/or development compensation, which has basically allowed us to be competitive with clubs that are able to generate more revenue from other stuff. We've done this both with players we've brought in and developed and via our academy - and we've done it as well/better than other clubs our size.

To flip it around, I'm not really sure what model (other than "rich man gives you free money") people would suggest for a club with limited support to make a profit if it's not based on player trading?

[StAndrew7]

1 hour ago, capt_oats said:

Quoting Jay's post from that thread and also Steelboy's which I found myself nodding along with:

It staggers me that so many people can't grasp how profit and loss accounting works, particularly when they're using it to try and justify a position. Screaming about a huge income from DT but then choosing to ignore the rest of it "because reasons" and that it justifies their position that fan ownership doesn't work is bonkers to me. We're a financially healthy, well run club™ who are now an attractive investment because of the model we have operated under and are continuing to. That includes player sales and the current fan ownership model.

1 hour ago, Swello said:

Yep - I've always found the "that thing that you've done well for 10-15 years might suddenly stop working because reasons" argument a bit self defeating. We've consistently sold players for decent fees and/or development compensation, which has basically allowed us to be competitive with clubs that are able to generate more revenue from other stuff. We've done this both with players we've brought in and developed and via our academy - and we've done it as well/better than other clubs our size.

To flip it around, I'm not really sure what model (other than "rich man gives you free money") people would suggest for a club with limited support to make a profit if it's not based on player trading?

I think you've partially answered your own question there; any model to provide a payback period on an external investment would need to include both player sales and actively pursuing and exploiting the "other stuff" which is why I'm intrigued by what Erik Barmack could propose in any potential investment plan.

The club is deservedly praised in terms of its accounts, strategic investments etc. but I think we'd all acknowledge that there are revenue streams and other areas where it can absolutely do better in attracting more income (see Grant Russell's Twitter rant etc.). Now, that's not a slight on the current staff or their abilities to do their jobs, it's more of an indication of just how thinly stretched the back office team appear to be. Hopefully Brian Caldwell can support them and the Well Society in exploiting some of those, with or without the help of EB/new investors.

It's definitely an intriguing and exciting (for me, anyway) time to be a 'Well fan; I'd just quite like to get safety guaranteed so we can relax a bit and see what's going to come over the next few months.

Edited April 22 by StAndrew7

[Handsome_Devil]

1 hour ago, StAndrew7 said:

It staggers me that so many people can't grasp how profit and loss accounting works, particularly when they're using it to try and justify a position. Screaming about a huge income from DT but then choosing to ignore the rest of it "because reasons" and that it justifies their position that fan ownership doesn't is bonkers to me. We're a financially healthy, well run club™ who are now an attractive investment because of the model we have operated under and are continuing to. That includes player sales and the current fan ownership model.

...

The club is deservedly praised in terms of its accounts, strategic investments etc. but I think we'd all acknowledge that there are revenue streams and other areas where it can absolutely do better in attracting more income (see Grant Russell's Twitter rant etc.). Now, that's not a slight on the current staff or their abilities to do their jobs, it's more of an indication of just how thinly stretched the back office team appear to be. Hopefully Brian Caldwell can support them and the Well Society in exploiting some of those, with or without the help of EB/new investors.

Include me on the bus that finds it bizarre so many folk are effectively saying 'our business model works; we need drastic change!".

As for the income, there's no doubt we can be a bit bolder here and depending on the where/what/how you can debate how necessary external investment/expertise is to facilitate it.

Like the old phrase, it takes money to make money, literally anything we invest in like improving hospitality, media, catering, community initiatives, is cash which could have been spent on a new striker. And while the outlay goes straight on the heavy side of the p&l, it takes a while for the return to show up - if it does at all.

I think that's why I liked the Burrows/Russell era, despite some large annoyances - it was a spell where we really seemed committed to the medium/long-term future and not just scrambling from window to window determined to stay 10th.

[StAndrew7]

15 minutes ago, Handsome_Devil said:

I think that's why I liked the Burrows/Russell era, despite some large annoyances - it was a spell where we really seemed committed to the medium/long-term future and not just scrambling from window to window determined to stay 10th.

Yeah, agreed. It certainly felt like that and there was at least a form of security there with a steady ship for the most part, which hopefully will be built up again with Caldwell in place and a rejuvenated WS Board taking the reigns, too. It does feel like we have regressed into a bit of a malaise over the last few (four? five?) years.

There's change(s) on the way; potential investment, a new Executive Board structure and the WS looking to take more leadership in the running of the club, I'm definitely beginning to feel more positive about things (not that I wasn't before, but I just felt, like you've said, we were just scrambling about to try and not get relegated).

I'm intrigued to see how long the exclusivity period will last, and if it ultimately leads to something; although I'd probably be more surprised if it doesn't lead to something. An example of 6 weeks was given at the AGM but the club statement doesn't provide a time frame, understandably, I guess. That's more to see what the timescales for any investment are and if there could be any impact on what sort of planning we can be doing for next season in terms of transfers, contract offers and the like.

One of the investors was keen to be involved in transfer planning for next season, although given the two proposals/models that were discussed I'd have guessed that was the Australian/Middle Eatern/Asian group, who have since pulled out (which I assume was due to us appointing Caldwell, as they wanted to appoint their own CEO as part of their proposal). Given EB's perceived lack of footballing knowledge, I imagine he won't want to be directly involved in it, other than to sign off on some of his cash being used to sign X/Y/Z or be spent on A/B/C.

Edited April 22 by StAndrew7

[Phillips455]

For those who want to get the Aberdeen tickets delivered (I.e. can't pick them up before the match) then postage is only avilable for today and tomorrow. After that pick up will be the only option.

 

Not sure if they will have a rep with yhe tickets come up to the away stand which they did last time (I think?).

[Vietnam91]

It has always surprised me the disconnect between employing a couple of reps on a generous commission structure was often overlooked over giving a gig to a £1k p/w jobber.

Giving someone a job where they are incentivised to bring in a multiple of their salary really isn’t a big ask.

[Handsome_Devil]

1 hour ago, StAndrew7 said:

I'm intrigued to see how long the exclusivity period will last, and if it ultimately leads to something; although I'd probably be more surprised if it doesn't lead to something. An example of 6 weeks was given at the AGM but the club statement doesn't provide a time frame, understandably, I guess. That's more to see what the timescales for any investment are and if there could be any impact on what sort of planning we can be doing for next season in terms of transfers, contract offers and the like.

Yeah, intrigued is very much the right word. From the very start there have been all kinds of contradictions - not just quirks, massive irreconcilable differences - running through this.

A lot of it comes from whether you believe the rumoured broad terms of the bid of course but as I've no desire to reopen the debate on the merits of that, let's just say if someone can tick all the boxes to keep everyone happy here, they can probably turn their hand to the Middle East next.

[standupforthemotherwell]

I was just casually scrolling through tiktok (don't judge) and up popped an advert featuring Jacob Blyth flogging an ear wax removal tool.

Glad to see he has found his level

[Squonk]

4 minutes ago, standupforthemotherwell said:

I was just casually scrolling through tiktok (don't judge) and up popped an advert featuring Jacob Blyth flogging an ear wax removal tool.

I've never heard of them.

[MurrayWell]

7 minutes ago, standupforthemotherwell said:

I was just casually scrolling through tiktok (don't judge) and up popped an advert featuring Jacob Blyth flogging an ear wax removal tool.

Glad to see he has found his level

Are you sure it wasn't ear wax flogging a Jacob Blyth removal tool? 

[StAndrew7]

38 minutes ago, Squonk said:

I've never heard of them.