Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[nsr]

I must confess I'm not familiar with Well Fans II. Was there a Well Fans I?

[well fan for life]

54 minutes ago, nsr said:

I must confess I'm not familiar with Well Fans II. Was there a Well Fans I?

Well Fans II: Seethe Harder.

[Fuctifano]

Norwich obviously scouting quite a lot up here for their u23s, they also signed Fitzpatrick from us and a goalie from Aberdeen. Similar situation in that the player made it clear he wanted to go albeit Fitzpatrick had 2 years left on his contract rather than one. 

[rambunctious]

I must confess I'm not familiar with Well Fans II. Was there a Well Fans I?

I dread to think how awful that page must have been to get deleted.

[Ludo*1]

2 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

They paid a "high five figure fee" for Shaun Byrne of Livingston already this Summer.

We paid a five figure fee, you've added the 'high' to that.

We've signed Johnson on a free with a 'couple of incentives' which I'd imagine would be a sell on fee.

[Desp]

54 minutes ago, Fuctifano said:

Norwich obviously scouting quite a lot up here for their u23s, they also signed Fitzpatrick from us and a goalie from Aberdeen. Similar situation in that the player made it clear he wanted to go albeit Fitzpatrick had 2 years left on his contract rather than one. 

With the financial incentives put in front of these young lads, it's not difficult to work out why they are keen to push for the move.

[well fan for life]

1 hour ago, Ludo*1 said:

We paid a five figure fee, you've added the 'high' to that.

We've signed Johnson on a free with a 'couple of incentives' which I'd imagine would be a sell on fee.

Tell you what, lads. The day we cash in the Dom Thomas and Danny Johnson sell-ons we'll be rolling in money. 

[thisGRAEME]

5 minutes ago, well fan for life said:

Tell you what, lads. The day we cash in the Dom Thomas and Danny Johnson sell-ons we'll be rolling in money. 

Danny Johnson top scorer, before United pay a 7 figure fee to finally get the final piece to get out of the Championship, IMO.

[Busta Nut]

I didn't mind Danny Johnson, he was never fitting in to our team but the amount of love he is getting on twitter baffles me a bit.

It's also frustrating to see the youngsters leave before we have a chance to see them. That's the game these days though, no longer will you be able to buy a Zlatan type player from Malmo for £150k on FM and by the time the players are 15 there are scouts from all around the world with eyes on them.

[AndyRoss]

Probably harsh as I've seen so little of the lad, but the McAlear  deal is one of those ones where it's nearly impossible to envisage him every actually making it at the club he's going to. 

He'll be playing U18s, maybe will work his way into the U23s, but what's the best case scenario? A move to a team further down the leagues down south?

I totally understand the attraction of the move, but I struggle to see how it really helps his development - he wasn't exactly closing in on our first team.

After seeing it happening with McKinstry earlier in the year, it feels like this might be a reoccurring theme.  

[capt_oats]

1 hour ago, AndyRoss said:

Probably harsh as I've seen so little of the lad, but the McAlear  deal is one of those ones where it's nearly impossible to envisage him every actually making it at the club he's going to. 

He'll be playing U18s, maybe will work his way into the U23s, but what's the best case scenario? A move to a team further down the leagues down south?

I totally understand the attraction of the move, but I struggle to see how it really helps his development - he wasn't exactly closing in on our first team.

After seeing it happening with McKinstry earlier in the year, it feels like this might be a reoccurring theme.  

Surely his best case scenario is that he breaks into their first team and makes a go of it? 

I've not seen much of McAlear but by all accounts he's a decent size for his age (6ft odd) and he's genuinely a good player, AFAIK he's been a regular through the international age groups as well. I'm not sure it's easy to gauge whether or not he was closing in on our first team or not, last season he'd have been 16 and with the best will in the world I wouldn't have seen us chucking him in.

The other thing is that if we were aware that he was a player of interest to 'elite' clubs (he'd been linked to West Ham and Leicester before Norwich) and that chances are he's gone by the time he's 18 is there not a chance we'd focus our efforts on getting players who may be more likely to stay on into the first team (eg: Semple, Cornelius, Devine etc). It seemed notable that we had a highly-rated Scotland Youth international at the club but Mo Ross didn't mention him when you did that interview with him last season. I could be miles out but it felt like there was a fair chance we knew he might be away over the summer.

In going to Norwich he's going to a club that to all intents and purposes have a very similar business model to Motherwell. They've patched he high budget spending and have pivoted to developing youth via their Academy for their first team and picking up signings they see value in that others may have missed Pukki being the obvious example.

I'm pretty sure I linked to this article when the whole Turnbull saga was ongoing but the YouTube interview with Webber is great and a genuine insight into their strategy. The extent to which their model seems to focus on their Academy means that while he'd 100% have a better chance of getting into Motherwell's first team (and quicker too) it's perhaps not the career ender that it may appear simply because they're at an 'elite' level.:

Quote

"You can have the best processes, the best facilities and the best players in your Academy, but if the head coach doesn’t pick them, it’s an absolute waste of time."

Then again it could just as easily go all Tom Leighton for him and he finds himself back up the road in a couple of years. Though it's probably open to argument whether he'll be that much worse off (development wise).

It's definitely shite that we're not getting the chance to see the likes of McAlear and McKinstry but I guess the trade off is that we are getting to see players like Turnbull, Semple, Scott and hopefully Cornelius, Devine et al. If a couple end up leaving for fees but three or four stick around and break into the first team then that's the trade-off I guess.

Absolutely agree though, it's something we're definitely going to see more of.

As @Fuctifano says Norwich have already chucked a bit of money Thistle's way for Fitzpatrick and they also picked up Charlie Gilmour from Arsenal. I'd guess the only real solution is getting these players as close to the first team as possible, as early as possible so there's not the feeling that they're simply swapping Academy for Academy.

Even then, you can probably only realistically fast-track a handful in each cycle.

Edited July 26, 2019 by capt_oats

[welldaft]

I think McInstry was further away from a 1st team start than McAlear. 

I saw McAlear when over at Linfield and I was surprised how tall he was and well built for a teenager. 

If he is not going to sign an extension as was the gist of the clubs press release then there is not much we can do. Like most of us I feel it could quite possibly hamper his career in the short term v staying with us. But I have to suspect he has gone from £500 a week if he is lucky to £2000 or similar which would be more than most of our 1st team players. 

In many ways it is a huge compliment that we seem to have a conveyor belt of talent coming through at youth level. The combined fees for Hastie, McKinstry and Hastie will be circa £750k and we may even get a few pennies for Cadden if the yanks stop  being wanks. 

 

[YassinMoutaouakil]

I've just never really taken to Johnson tbh. Fair enough we got a decent half season out of him shipped him off relatively painlessly, so not a bad outcome in the end.

[boozyBJ]

He scored goals against rangers and celtic, but apart from that I don’t really recall any of his other goals. Not a big loss in my opinion. Having read a few tweets, you’d think we’d just sold Louis Moult again

[AndyRoss]

3 hours ago, capt_oats said:

Surely his best case scenario is that he breaks into their first team and makes a go of it? 

 

Destroyed within the first sentence right there 

Obviously that is the best case scenario but it just seems so unrealistic. 

It's all well and good having lots of excellent young players on your books, they might even win things at youth level, I'm not sure that transcends into senior football though. 

 

[nsr]

My worry is that (relatively) big clubs appear to be hoovering up all the promising youngsters they can get their hands on at a VERY early age, but how many of them will actually make the grade? And how many more of them woud have made the grade if they'd stayed at their original club a little longer?

[AndyRoss]

7 minutes ago, nsr said:

My worry is that (relatively) big clubs appear to be hoovering up all the promising youngsters they can get their hands on at a VERY early age, but how many of them will actually make the grade? And how many more of them woud have made the grade if they'd stayed at their original club a little longer?

You've made my point in a much better way than I could there. 

[supermarv]

48 minutes ago, welldaft said:

I think McInstry was further away from a 1st team start than McAlear. 

I saw McAlear when over at Linfield and I was surprised how tall he was and well built for a teenager. 

If he is not going to sign an extension as was the gist of the clubs press release then there is not much we can do. Like most of us I feel it could quite possibly hamper his career in the short term v staying with us. But I have to suspect he has gone from £500 a week if he is lucky to £2000 or similar which would be more than most of our 1st team players. 

In many ways it is a huge compliment that we seem to have a conveyor belt of talent coming through at youth level. The combined fees for Hastie, McKinstry and Hastie will be circa £750k and we may even get a few pennies for Cadden if the yanks stop  being wanks. 

 

500 a week try 150 mate.

[21maxwell]

I don't have an issue with McAlear leaving.  Unfortunately it's just the way football is going.

Whilst Ajax have a good few youngsters coming through, you have to remember quite a few get picked up at 15, 16 before they even get close to their Jong team so it's happening to clubs far bigger than us. Bigger clubs are always going to be sniffing about at all levels and stockpiling youngsters. 

[crispy]

While we’d all rather have the good, young players in the team I can see the sense in selling them relatively cheap (if they aren’t going to re-sign) simply to get sell-on %s in contracts vs. letting the go for free. The fees from their first moves often so small that they might’ve as well be shipped down south for [massively inflated transfer fees]. I’d say what Motherwell are doing is potentially pretty exciting for the national team - where did this come from? E.g. Was there a big investment in youth 5 years ago..?

Edited July 26, 2019 by crispy