Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[RandomGuy.]

7 hours ago, Vietnam91 said:

Until we see the reality of it it's hard to judge.

If you look at City Group, its geared so that the clubs filter players up and down the pyramid ultimately to help the most lucrative markets but also haul everyone up. They don't really deny it goal mostly solidifying Man City as a European powerhouse while building quite a spiders web worldwide scouting network. I wonder if they envisaged the success of Girona so soon?

 

Troyes is a better reflection of the "City Group" than Girona, and I believe NAC Breda have a similar experience as Troyes. Their 2 record signings have never played for the club and one left within days. They've gone for a club building up to become a sustainable Ligue 1 side to bottom feeders in Ligue 2 who have a huge turnover every Summer as FFP rules are circumvented, and they were stuck with a horrendous manager for ages because he's a "City Group" prodigy. 

Worth remembering the "City Group" is what others are trying to emulate.

https://www.removepaywall.com/article/current

Hibs are in for a shitey shock if they really are part of a feeder network with Bournemouth. Things are fine until they're not, then it becomes clear you were never cared about at all.

Edited March 20 by RandomGuy.

[thisGRAEME]

2 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

Troyes is a better reflection of the "City Group" than Girona, and I believe NAC Breda have a similar experience as Troyes. Their 2 record signings have never played for the club and one left within days. They've gone for a club building up to become a sustainable Ligue 1 side to bottom feeders in Ligue 2 who have a huge turnover every Summer as FFP rules are circumvented, and they were stuck with a horrendous manager for ages because he's a "City Group" prodigy. 

Worth remembering the "City Group" is what others are trying to emulate.

https://www.removepaywall.com/article/current

Hibs are in for a shitey shock if they really are part of a feeder network with Bournemouth. Things are fine until they're not, then it becomes clear you were never cared about at all.

That link doesny work but I'd be v interested to read, could you ping in the real one?

[RandomGuy.]

2 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

That link doesny work but I'd be v interested to read, could you ping in the real one?

You need to subscribe, or find another way to bypass it.

https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/troyes-man-city-multi-club-model-2908815

[well fan for life]

7 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

That link doesny work but I'd be v interested to read, could you ping in the real one?

3 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

You need to subscribe, or find another way to bypass it.

https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/troyes-man-city-multi-club-model-2908815

If you're using Safari you can hit the reader mode button and it tends to bypass it. 

Alternatively 

Troyes fans left feeling used by Man City’s multi-club model

Magic Troyes 1997 are fed up with the French club being used as a testing ground for the City Football Group at the expense of promotion

Daniel Storey

Manchester City’s parent company City Football Group own a majority stake in ES Troyes (Photos: Getty)

The good news is that the Magic Troyes 1997 fan group has returned to the Stade de l’Aube after their boycott over the running of the club and the retention of a deeply unpopular manager. That was always where they called home and, for the Ligue 2 fixture against SC Amiens, back they were. 

A funny thing happened: ES Troyes won with two first-half goals. It was only the club’s third home win since August 2022. Afterwards, Magic Troyes 1997 made a public plea: “These players will need our support”. Troyes have won both of their home games since, their best run in two-and-a-half years. Maybe having your fans onside matters after all. 

The bad news is almost everything else. 

In September 2020, Troyes were taken over by the City Football Group (CFG). Ferran Soriano, its chief executive, delighted in the nexus of football clubs growing to 10 with their first in France. “This demonstrates how our model continues to adapt and grow in a relatively short space of time,” Soriano said. Nobody doubts that the model is growing. That is not the issue here. 

Things started promisingly. Troyes had finished third and fourth in their previous two Ligue 2 seasons and, under popular coach Laurent Batlles, won the title by five points. The average age of the squad in the promotion season was 26.2. That will become salient information soon. 

In December 2021, Batlles was sacked with Troyes in 15th in Ligue 1. RMC reported that on-pitch performance told only half the story, claiming that there had been tensions with the club’s ownership over the enforced signings of CFG players. Their most expensive pre-season signing was Brazilian Metinho, an 18-year-old who had not played a single minute for the club (and never did). 

Batlles’ replacement was Bruno Irles, who did an excellent job in steadying the ship. In November 2022, Irles had Troyes 13th in Ligue 1. They were enduring a difficult patch having not won in six league games, but Troyes had only lost to Paris Saint-Germain and Nice during that run and were unbeaten at home in three months. Irles was sacked and immediately made claims to the French media. 

“For the management, the sporting project had to go more quickly towards the City project,” Irles said. “There was a difference in points of view. I was convinced that it was incompatible with this team in Ligue 1.”

Troyes decided to replace Irles with a manager who had no experience in French football. Instead, Patrick Kisnorbo had been coach of Melbourne City, an Australian A-League club that had become the second expansion club of CFG in 2014. If you want to align a sporting project with your own aims, what better strategy than appointing internally?

Kisnorbo started slowly and things deteriorated from there. He was accused in the French media of failing to even learn basic French. Supporters worried that Kisnorbo was sacrificing results in pursuit of the greater CFG project. 

Fans protested at matches with “Kisnorbo Out” banners and another sending a message to their owners in rudimentary English: “Did you understand now?”. 

Kisnorbo lasted longer than Irles despite performing far worse. The club were relegated from Ligue 1 in May with 24 points, the third lowest total in the club’s history, and started this season in the second tier terribly. Irles made his point: “I think that it would have been difficult for me to do worse.” 

Troyes sacked Patrick Kisnorbo after months of protest (Photo: Getty)

For a promoted club needing to punch above its weight to survive relegation, the ability to identify potential low-cost signings is your best hope (particularly if your manager doesn’t have experience in the league). The CFG influence is seen best in Troyes’ transfer activity. This is where the fun really stopped.

In summer 2022, Troyes spent €24m on new players and their net spend was higher than 16 of the other 19 clubs in Ligue 1. Their four most expensive signings included 18-year-old Amar Fatah, who played 19 league minutes before being loaned to Belgian club Lommel SK (another CFG club). And Jackson Porozo, an Ecuadorian who made 17 starts but was then loaned to Greek club Olympiakos and Turkish club Kasimpasa SK. And Ike Ugbo, who made nine starts and was loaned to Cardiff City and Sheffield Wednesday. And Ante Palaversa and Marlos Moreno, who joined from Manchester City on permanent deals and who played 40 minutes between them all season. 

But the most controversial was Savio, a club-record signing from Atletico Mineiro. 16 days after his signing, Savio was loaned to PSV Eindhoven, where he made a handful of substitute appearances. Last summer, after relegation, Savio was loaned to Girona (another CFG club) where he has starred in their unexpected La Liga title challenge. Reports now suggest that Savio will join Manchester City this summer from Troyes. The record signing will never play a minute for the club that bought him. It is seen as a damning indictment for a group of supporters who feel used.

“There were no real expectations around Savio,” says Tom Hunter of Le Classique Pod, a French football podcast. “But the bitterness arrived as it became crystal clear at that moment in time that Troyes was just a cog in the City Group’s trading system.

“In that sense, it was confirmation of Troyes’s fall in stature and lack of independence after decades as a proud underdog. There’s no real animosity towards Savio, but he did provoke the general sadness at being a subsidiary of an international group.”

Also last summer, Troyes signed eight different players aged 23 or under. Now they have the youngest team in Ligue 2 by a distance and that inexperience, supporters believe, left them ill-prepared for a second-tier campaign and is persuasive evidence that their club is being used as a testing ground for CFG talent at the expense of a serious attempt at re-promotion.

Kisnorbo was finally sacked in November – that is why Magic Troyes 1997 are back home on matchdays. His record was pretty remarkable: three wins in 40 competitive matches, 23 losses and a win percentage of 7.5 per cent over a tenure that somehow lasted for more than a year. His replacement, David Guion, a Frenchman with extensive experience in French football, has caused an upturn in form that may save Troyes from relegation to the third tier for the first time in 30 years. 

But this is about more than results; they are merely a symptom. Teams go up and down and Troyes bounced between the first and second tiers years before CFG’s arrival. In 2011, they finished 16th in the second tier, exactly where they sit now. 

Then, Troyes stood for something. It was a football club with an identity. It could not – and did not expect to – ignore its natural ceiling, but it tried to play attractive football, developed and sold players (Jerome Rothen, Bafetimbi Gomis, Djibril Sidibe, Blaise Matuidi, Bryan Mbeumo) and understood that the supporters needed to believe in a symbiotic relationship of loyalty and pride that goes beyond the scoreline at the weekend. 

Ownership is a multi-layered concept. At its most literal, it is a contractual technicality. CFG own Troyes, just as they own Manchester City, Melbourne City, Girona, Lommel et al. 

Troyes are thus part of a nexus of interdependent, interacting units. When asking who calls the shots, it is always tempting to look higher up the family food chain. If Girona are flying and Manchester City uber-dominant, the system is working. 

But Magic Troyes 1997, the club’s supporters and the local community are owners too. They were here long before CFG and will be here long after. They have invested – time, money, limitless effort and emotion – into their football club because it’s what they have always known. 

They are experiencing life not as part of a footballing family, but as a pawn in a multinational machine. A football club can make a community; here they worry it is slowly breaking it as easy as undone Troyes.

 

 

[Handsome_Devil]

There's various articles about the City Group in France:

https://onefootball.com/en/news/feature-estac-troyes-manchester-citys-french-affiliate-abandoned-by-fans-and-in-freefall-38579102

https://www.essentiallysports.com/viral-sports-moments-soccer-news-incompatible-with-this-team-magic-troyes-supporters-unhappy-with-promotional-activities-in-manchester-citys-multi-club-model/

While I'm unsure about the merits of this for us in general, if the offer was to become part of the Abu Dhabi promotion campaign I'd take kicking around the Championship and Challenge Cup every time.

[Vietnam91]

5 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

Troyes is a better reflection of the "City Group" than Girona, and I believe NAC Breda have a similar experience as Troyes. Their 2 record signings have never played for the club and one left within days. They've gone for a club building up to become a sustainable Ligue 1 side to bottom feeders in Ligue 2 who have a huge turnover every Summer as FFP rules are circumvented, and they were stuck with a horrendous manager for ages because he's a "City Group" prodigy. 

Worth remembering the "City Group" is what others are trying to emulate.

https://www.removepaywall.com/article/current

Hibs are in for a shitey shock if they really are part of a feeder network with Bournemouth. Things are fine until they're not, then it becomes clear you were never cared about at all.

I had read up on Troyes yesterday when researching, considering its one of the big 5 European money leagues its an eye opener what has happened there.

They have loaned in zero from six other CFG clubs but have loaned out 3 of 12 to them from their squad. It definitely feels like they were used as a "project" to groom Kisnorbo and shows he was given a lot more time he would have without their influence, much to the detriment of the team and alienation of the fans.

In this video at 10:39 it shows a particular problem, only need to watch for 2 mins.

 

The argument against will be with only two clubs in the stable (for now) there would be less of issues with a portfolio of a dozen clubs. Brighton's acumen in the transfer market is well recorded, why those responsible are commanding some of the highest behind the scenes wages in the game at present. Ironically, in the suggested videos and because they were also linked with Dundee United yesterday here's another. Brentford is an intriguing one too for how they run their academy, however their owner recently sold his interest in FC Midtjylland so maybe not. Another good analysis by the Athletic.

 

Edited March 20 by Vietnam91

[Cedrics Mighty Well Army]

https://12ft.io/

To beat Paywalls. (Couldn't post earlier due to site updating.)

[Cedrics Mighty Well Army]

And the suits down Souff get rather upset if one refers to the Premiership as the EPL.

So keep doing it.

[steelmen]

14 hours ago, Vietnam91 said:

Until we see the reality of it it's hard to judge.

If you look at City Group, its geared so that the clubs filter players up and down the pyramid ultimately to help the most lucrative markets but also haul everyone up. They don't really deny it goal mostly solidifying Man City as a European powerhouse while building quite a spiders web worldwide scouting network. I wonder if they envisaged the success of Girona so soon?

Let's say Brentford show an interest. Their academy is buoyant and the standard or fringe players is on par with or near Mika. To advance their development players, would there be a funnel to us or would they see more benefit in the guys they are really hopeful making their first team soon in the Championship or abroad rather than the Cinch? You would guess what happened to us in January with Mika being recalled would be less likely.

It would be in their interest that we finish as high up the table as we can for access to Europe, prize money and well sporting organisations like to be associated with success. Would their players be loaned to us, improving our base standard effectively for free reducing our costs? You'd think with the knowledge of Brentford involved with us we'd avoid any more silly bids because there would no longer be an assumption we're living hand to mouth.

As for control, well at present we have that to a degree but not fully, so much is out of our hands. We are beholden to whoever makes sensible offers and conversely what we can offer to bring players in. When it comes to purchases, its no secret that we've missed out on half a dozen these past two windows due to mixture of funds or perception of a better career move at another interested club. So while we may decide who to pursue not much good if we can't close the deal.

Would Max have signed an extension if he was part of an organisation knowing he could have a path to the EPL if he carried on his trajectory? Would a £2m fee for Lennon be a £5m fee if he was sent to Brentford first and the cache of the EPL naturally bumps up his value. Would we realise all of that or would Brentford insist how every penny was spent?

Negatives may include them for accounting/tax purposes running us in such a way to be the most efficient, that may be at a loss, or a dumping ground. Would there be demands on the amount of game time for their loanee's? Would their be EPL ego's at play thinking they could send up 6 starters freeing up wages to double our top earners from 3-4k per week to 6k to then compete with Hearts for 3rd or the OF?

Would they accept a 50-50 model? Unlikely unless they had the controlling vote and at the very minimum. Would they accept a 50-50 with a fan group, almost definitely not so perhaps a moot debate.

With the WS holding 71% at present, would they look for a 21% stake for 1% of their EPL TV deal for everything we could bring ..... I dunno, but I'd be surprised if it didn't get a shoulder shrug or two in boardrooms.

Come on we all know that £5m fees come after a loan to Newcastle!

[Swello]

Given the high-handed way that Arsenal dealt with us over Biereth - I can't say I fancy us actually formally signing on for multiple years of that.

Obviously I know where we are in the food chain but the idea of prostrating ourselves in front of an EPL club and hitching ourselves to that fucking horror show doesn't appeal in the slightest.

[capt_oats]

7 hours ago, Handsome_Devil said:

There's various articles about the City Group in France:

https://onefootball.com/en/news/feature-estac-troyes-manchester-citys-french-affiliate-abandoned-by-fans-and-in-freefall-38579102

https://www.essentiallysports.com/viral-sports-moments-soccer-news-incompatible-with-this-team-magic-troyes-supporters-unhappy-with-promotional-activities-in-manchester-citys-multi-club-model/

While I'm unsure about the merits of this for us in general, if the offer was to become part of the Abu Dhabi promotion campaign I'd take kicking around the Championship and Challenge Cup every time.

I mean, absolutely +1 on this but I suppose it's testament to the effectiveness of Sportswashing from various States that it's not a stretch to suggest that there's probably a fairly sizeable section of our support who'd actually see that sort of alignment as something aspirational.

Which is entirely depressing on multitudes of levels.

Edited March 20 by capt_oats

[Jim McLean's Ghost]

Lennon Miller went off with a hamstring injury today in the Scotland vs Italy u19s.

[ropy]

18 minutes ago, Jim McLean's Ghost said:

Lennon Miller went off with a hamstring injury today in the Scotland vs Italy u19s.

Just to lose Davor, Bair and Bevis now.

[Handsome_Devil]

47 minutes ago, Jim McLean's Ghost said:

Lennon Miller went off with a hamstring injury today in the Scotland vs Italy u19s.

Of course he did because this season. FFS.

[Handsome_Devil]

Meanwhile:

https://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/2024/03/20/statement-on-var-decision-against-aberdeen/

Pew! Pew! Goes the sound of our toy gun.

[MP_MFC]

Interesting decision to comment on their uncertainty if any fans would vote to keep VAR. As I recall, most fans were pretty vocal in their certainty that they did not want it in the first place before the club joined others in railroading it through. 

[Swello]

19 minutes ago, Handsome_Devil said:

Meanwhile:

https://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/2024/03/20/statement-on-var-decision-against-aberdeen/

Pew! Pew! Goes the sound of our toy gun.

Reads like it was dictated directly by Kettlewell.

It's the type of statement that I laugh about when other teams put them out - and it's really weird timing but I at least nodded along to this part

Quote

The feedback we receive from our own fans on VAR is almost entirely negative and, if given a choice, we believe most would vote to no longer have it in use. It’s actually not easy to find anyone who either participates in football or watches it who is happy with the current position.

 

[camer0n_mcd]

21 minutes ago, MP_MFC said:

Interesting decision to comment on their uncertainty if any fans would vote to keep VAR. As I recall, most fans were pretty vocal in their certainty that they did not want it in the first place before the club joined others in railroading it through. 

Was it not voted on by the Society members or am I getting myself mixed up?

[Swello]

3 minutes ago, camer0n_mcd said:

Was it not voted on by the Society members or am I getting myself mixed up?

Not voted on - members consulted by email 3 days before the clubs voted and with no information 

[capt_oats]

3 minutes ago, camer0n_mcd said:

Was it not voted on by the Society members or am I getting myself mixed up?

You're sort of right. Society members received "consultation" (at very short notice) but the club just went ahead and waved it through regardless.