Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[capt_oats]

Magloire still has another year on his deal with Blackburn so unless they plan on cutting him loose I can't see it. I'm genuinely not sure that there was ever the intention for him to play as much as he has.

He came in and did a job. Cheers very much Tyler.

[well fan for life]

10 minutes ago, welldaft said:

One wonders if Magloire could be one of the loanees Being referred too. There might be a player there a bit like Kipre. But on the evidence I saw not sure I would be overly keen for him returning. 

Who would you take from the Killie team that (for the moment anyway) look like they are doomed ? Lafferty the obvious one but not sure his character would measure up with GA stringent expectations. 

No to Magloire. For f**k sake please no Magloire.

Also no to anyone in this Killie team. Big Weird Kyle is the kind of last resort player you roll the dice on but I would absolutely not want to put any hopes on him. The rest are total donkeys.

[welldaft]

Yet re Magloire GA played him over a Scottish Internationalist. Granted Dec had sh*t the bed but.....

FWIW I was just surmising. I like most would be a firm no re Magloire. 

I keep reading the released list.  Random Guy better get started on the ins / out thread. It could take him all evening. 

Edited May 24, 2021 by welldaft

[djchapsticks]

You've lost your New Year's Derby pals. 

We're about to lose ours. 

How's about it?

[well fan for life]

3 minutes ago, djchapsticks said:

You've lost your New Year's Derby pals. 

We're about to lose ours. 

How's about it?

Will there be pie & beans?

[YassinMoutaouakil]

39 minutes ago, djchapsticks said:

You've lost your New Year's Derby pals. 

We're about to lose ours. 

How's about it?

I think our fans on here get along too well for there to be any sort of animosity.

I certainly don't have a bad word to say about the P&B Buddies.

[thisGRAEME]

2 hours ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

To be fair, I’ve seen him the grand total of zero times since he left. Just thought the championship team of the year and being linked with Aberdeen and St Johnstone might have been someone we put our hat in the ring for.

Aye, is fair enough, I just don't want his da to come and argue with us again.

He showed up well at the start of the season when he kept bulleting Dom Thomas crosses for goals, but... nah. He's no better than what we have, imo.

[ZX1886]

You've lost your New Year's Derby pals. 
We're about to lose ours. 
How's about it? [emoji8]

Lanarkshire’s biggest club vs Renfrewshire’s biggest club has always been the real Derby, has it not?!?

I mean if we’re waiting for Airdrie, we might as well not bother with derbies.

[Busta Nut]

1 hour ago, djchapsticks said:

You've lost your New Year's Derby pals. 

We're about to lose ours. 

How's about it?

It's on...

[YassinMoutaouakil]

I've seen enough folk hinting at a move away from the youth system under Alexander to assume there's no smoke without fire, but surely it's being spun out of proportion?

I just can't really envisage a scenario where Alexander either takes the job without knowing the club's priorities in the area or, once he's in the door, is able to start systematically dismantling it without any pushback.

 

['WellDel]

4 hours ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:

I've seen enough folk hinting at a move away from the youth system under Alexander to assume there's no smoke without fire, but surely it's being spun out of proportion?

I just can't really envisage a scenario where Alexander either takes the job without knowing the club's priorities in the area or, once he's in the door, is able to start systematically dismantling it without any pushback.

 

Burrows' Tweet that I posted here last night has him saying that there will be an announcement on additions to the squad soon, as well as 'the biggest Academy intake in years' . 

I'm guessing that might mean that the youth system is alive and well, and that the current crop maybe just didn't fulfil expectations? 

It's been a nightmare year for the young guys with the stop/start nature of it all and lack of competitive action so you have to feel for them. But I can't help think the rumours and guess work around the setup and pathway is just the panty wetting element of our support getting ahead of themselves again 

[Onthefringes]

For the avoidance of doubt, a definite shift in player pathway isn’t rumour, guess work or panty wetting. Most departures are a natural wasteage - that’s just the nature of the business.

Bang on about it often enough, it’s about finding the right balance given the amount of variables. Development though is an additional funding stream that’s not transfer fees - Rangers & Celtic offered more game time to academy graduates than we did. That’s unsustainable at ours.

As much as recruitment will be pivotal, development must change also. I’m just not sure there’s the required joined up thinking. Time will tell...

[18May1991]

I think that we can all now agree that we should definitely have gone for Tommy Wright instead of Alexander. 

[capt_oats]

24 minutes ago, 18May1991 said:

I think that we can all now agree that we should definitely have gone for Tommy Wright instead of Alexander. 

Fair play to Eric Nicolson he's still out there doubling down on that puff piece about Wright. It seems Motherwell fans have clearly kept receipts.

Edited May 25, 2021 by capt_oats

[dezz]

I'm pretty content with the GTF list. No real surprises on there aside from maybe some of the younger guys who seemed to get a good write up prior to Covid - Hussain and Semple most notably - but I guess their development will have been wrecked with a year of barely any games. 

Certainly gives Alexander the scope to shape the squad how he wants, but if worst comes to worst and Kelly and Cole don't return he'll have some job essentially replacing the spine of the team with Kelly, Gallagher, Campbell and Cole all away. 

Unrelated, but with Accies down and Dundee up that's a minimum 9 point swing for us next season!  

[RostokMcSpoons]

Dundee were on our mantlepiece the season they went down... happy to have them back there!

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

It's a shame that Semple hasn't worked out despite being so highly rated when he was younger. I remember Mark McGhee once claiming, as only Mark McGhee would, that when he was 14 he would play him in the first team if it was allowed. I always thought he looked decent in the flashes I saw of him, not sure how much the injury he had last season has set him back. Wonder where someone like him ends up now, released at 20, having not set the heather alight on loan at Cove.

Pleased in the end with the list. As I said yesterday, my thoughts on keeping Long changed on an almost hourly basis, but now we have released him, I'm happy enough with it, on the back of an ineffectual first half of the season and a better, if unspectacular second half of the season. He had the potential to be so much better for us than he ended up being, but I'm happy for us to look elsewhere now. Also pleased that Foley departing gives us greater scope to bring a different type of midfielder in there.

I wonder if Fox being offered a new deal is a sign that we're looking to move Carson on if we can get Kelly in. It's a hard one with PJ Morrison, he's hardly going to step in and be our number one next season and he's not going to get any better on the bench so it would be good to get him loaned out again.

[Neil86]

Fairly happy with the released list, would have liked to have kept Chris Long but that's about it. 

With regards to the development squad, it looks as though many of them have just suffered due to the lack of any football, hopefully the league have something in place to get reserve football back on the go, especially having done everything to shoe horn Celtic and Rangers into the lowland league and allow them to develop players. Would have been nice to see some of this crop make it however it seems none of them were ever of the standard to make it, Jamie Semple who was probably one of the ones that was destined to struggled to make an impression at Cove in league two.

In fairness to Alexander I don't he had many chances to chuck in any youngsters either, Formartine and the two games at the end of the season maybe, but even then we had 7th in our sights so for the club's finances they weren't dead rubbers.

We also need to remember that we have been incredibly fortunate the last five years or so with that crop of youngsters, if we produced anything like that in the next 25 years i'd be amazed. Producing another Alan Campbell will be a massive success, never mind another David Turnbull.

 

['WellDel]

2 hours ago, Onthefringes said:

For the avoidance of doubt, a definite shift in player pathway isn’t rumour, guess work or panty wetting. Most departures are a natural wasteage - that’s just the nature of the business.

Bang on about it often enough, it’s about finding the right balance given the amount of variables. Development though is an additional funding stream that’s not transfer fees - Rangers & Celtic offered more game time to academy graduates than we did. That’s unsustainable at ours.

As much as recruitment will be pivotal, development must change also. I’m just not sure there’s the required joined up thinking. Time will tell...

You may well be party to information or knowledge that I and others aren't, but I just don't see the club deviating too far from 'the model' that our whole player development and recruitment policy is based on. Surely Alexander would have come in with that as part of his remit, rather than an option he could choose to put low in his priorities. If that had been any of the candidates take on things, I'd like to have thought their interview wouldn't have lasted long. 

What is this definite shift, and how badly is it going to affect young guys chances of breaking through to the first team squad? 

Outwith the usual revenue streams of season tickets, tv money etc, our main hope of substantial extra income is by unearthing a gem or developing one of our own to sell on or gain compensation for. It'd be a pretty big shift to alter that too much and risk lessening the chance of attracting the best youngsters to come to us in the first place. 

I don't think you can put too much weight behind the lack of playing opportunities for them in that cluster f**k of a season, when our safety was still in doubt up until the last couple of games. Not being argumentative, but just interested to see where people are seeing this definite shift coming from. 

[Swello]

I guess the function of the Academy is two things. Firstly (and arguably most importantly) we need to produce players that can play at our level so that we can run our squad at a reasonable cost (young boys are paid less basically). Secondly, we want to produce "some" players that are good enough to move up a level and generate some money for us in development and transfer fees. 

We've overachieved in the 2nd part in recent years (Turnbull, Hastie, Scott, Campbell, Cadden , Mckinstry, etc) and that probably shouldn't be seen as a guide to how we will do from now on - but as a minimum, we need to be moving players into the first team squad and getting them proper time in the team.