Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[YassinMoutaouakil]

The future of Northern Ireland is in safe hands.

 

http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39822470

 

[ropy]

1 hour ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:

The future of Northern Ireland is in safe hands.

 

http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39822470

 

Did he stay on at Oldham after Robinson left?

[Ron Aldo]

Is Anthony Straker under 21 with Northern Irish grandparents?

[thisGRAEME]

On 2017-4-28 at 18:25, capt_oats said:

 

Sign him up.

 

 

I posted this on steelmen, but I'd be surprised if we end up other Donnelly, there are some distinctly NSFW rumours if you have a wee swatch on twitter...

[Desp]

I posted this on steelmen, but I'd be surprised if we end up other Donnelly, there are some distinctly NSFW rumours if you have a wee swatch on twitter...

Wow. [emoji38]

[Gianfranco]

Tom Fry of the development squad is away according to twitterland

[capt_oats]

3 minutes ago, Gianfranco said:

Tom Fry of the development squad is away according to twitterland

Craigan actually mentioned that after the Rangers game on Thursday. Said in his interview on the YouTube channel that it was his last game.

[Gianfranco]

I noticed that Aaron Taylor Sinclair that used to play for partick has been released from Doncaster. Was he not pretty decent?

 

Pretty much adding him to the 'could do a job' list. I'm just hoping for any left back better than Jules/Chalmers

 

[capt_oats]

7 minutes ago, Gianfranco said:

I noticed that Aaron Taylor Sinclair that used to play for partick has been released from Doncaster. Was he not pretty decent?

 

Pretty much adding him to the 'could do a job' list. I'm just hoping for any left back better than Jules/Chalmers

 

Just posted on Steelmen. He was out for about 9 months with his knee having fallen apart: http://www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/sport/football/doncaster-rovers/doncaster-rovers-injured-taylor-sinclair-facing-nine-months-out-1-7926738

Let's just say he wasn't exactly a fans favourite at Doncaster "An absolute travesty of a player" according to one poster.

http://www.drfc-vsc.co.uk/index.php?PHPSESSID=60a02d6ee8ed0a086dde901674ef6162&topic=262315.0

http://www.drfc-vsc.co.uk/index.php?topic=254083.msg570512#msg570512

Ooooft!

Edit to add: Doncaster fans seem like absolute wanks.

Edited May 9, 2017 by capt_oats

[Gianfranco]

Yeah I noticed your post on there. I never realised he'd had a bad injury so maybe a no thanks since I've had enough of broken Stevie Hammell.

 

Football fans in being roasters shocker [emoji16]

 

[wellinwigan]

Might have to learn Gaelic for watching us on telly next season 

[capt_oats]

Might have to learn Gaelic for watching us on telly next season [emoji20]

Pretty sure we've been on Alba more than Sky or BT this season as it is anyway.

[Casagolda]

To be fair I had a look and if we do go down(or not I suppose), this is who's under contract next season;

Stephen McManus 
Ben Heneghan
Steven Hammell
Jack McMillan
Richard Tait
Luke Watt
Carl McHugh
Craig Clay
Chris Cadden
Allan Campbell 
David Turnbull
Elliot Frear
Dom Thomas
Ross Maclean
Jake Hastie
Ryan Bowman
Jacob Blyth
Louis Moult

That's 18 players by my reckoning, only 2 of whom are over 30 and 8 of them are 21 or under. So the overall age of the squad should come down drastically.

It's not a bad starting point for the massive rebuilding job ahead though is it? Obviously Moult would be gone for whatever fee we can get and you'd hope we could move on some of the dead wood like Clay, Blyth etc. 

However there's plenty of decent young talent there, with a few decent senior players like McHugh,Tait and McManus to build round. 

Edited May 10, 2017 by Casagolda

[capt_oats]

1 hour ago, Casagolda said:

To be fair I had a look and if we go down(or not I suppose), this is who's under contract next season;

Stephen McManus 
Ben Heneghan
Steven Hammell
Jack McMillan
Richard Tait
Luke Watt
Carl McHugh
Craig Clay
Chris Cadden
Allan Campbell 
David Turnbull
Elliot Frear
Dom Thomas
Ross Maclean
Jake Hastie
Ryan Bowman
Jacob Blyth
Louis Moult

That's 18 players by my reckoning, only 2 of whom are over 30 and 8 of them are 21 or under. So the overall age of the squad should come down drastically.

It's not a bad starting point for the massive rebuilding job ahead though is it? Obviously Moult would be gone for whatever fee we can get and you'd hope we could move on some of the dead wood like Clay, Blyth etc. 

However there's plenty of decent young talent there, with a few decent senior players like McHugh,Tait and McManus to build round. 

I'd be inclined to agree with that. There are a lot of talented young players in there and with McHugh, Tait and McManus there's at least something to build around. Whether or not Robinson's the guy to improve the young players and get the best out the squad I'm not so sure (actually I honestly don't think he is). Ultimately though we'll need an entirely new spine of a side. Goalkeeper, centre half, midfielder and (you'd think) 2 strikers.

The problem, of course, is how we replace Moult and McDonald. Moult's been responsible for 35% of our league goals this season, McDonald 22.5% so between them that's 57.5% of our league goals have been from 2 players. That's a lot of goals to replace, I'm not sure how many of our overall total McDonald's created either I'd imagine it'd be a pretty high %. I doubt very much that Blyth and Bowman will be the answer, the fact we were variously looking at Ryan Christie, Michael O'Halloran & Nadir Citci to replace McDonald suggests that at the very least the club agree on that score as well.

For all the chat about how poor our recruitment has been (ie: Blyth, Clay etc) the biggest mistake in recruitment (IMO) was retaining Samson and making him first choice. I'm pretty firmly of the belief that had we gone out and recruited a good goalkeeper then even with the outfield 10 we've been running with we'd be at least 5 or 6 points better off and effectively safe. It's surely no coincidence that the last time we were brushing with relegation we started the season with a poor goalkeeper in Dan Twardzik, though obviously he wasn't the sole reason for our broad pishness he didn't exactly help our case. I actually feel for Samson, he's a barely average goalkeeper who's been asked to go out and play week in, week out with no respite as the back-up option we recruited in Brill was overweight, out of shape and nowhere near good enough and he's been playing with a porous back 4 and lightweight midfield in front of him that lacked our best midfielder for almost the entire first half of the season.

I've said it before on here but as a club there seems to have been a reticence to actually address the problems with the squad. We've been poor defensively all season, apparently we've given up more shots on goal than any other side in the league (523 according to Dougie Wright's preview of the Lanarkshire derby) yet we've run with the same goalkeeper (until Saturday there) and the same back 4, (until McManus and Tait were broken). Hibs absolutely reamed us 4-1 in pre-season and it was clear even then that we were suspect defensively yet we just seemed to let it slide. Even when we finished 2nd under McCall we had the most goals against in the Top 6 with 60, 9 more than Hibs who were relegated and more than St Mirren who finished 8th.

It's a discussion that's been ongoing over on Steelmen with regards the 'recruitment strategy' and while I'm of the opinion that we've seen some successes this season in McHugh, Tait and to an extent Frear there should almost certainly be questions being asked of who's actually been identifying and signing off on guys like Blyth. In the case of Clay it honestly seems like he signed because he's Tait's pal, he'd been released and we happened to be looking for a midfielder. Even Grimsby fans were perplexed that we signed him. Robinson seemed to indicate in a post-match interview that it was actually him that recommended McHugh to the club before he left. While I believe Moult and Johnson were identified by the former head of recruitment Gary Owers. With that in mind it does beg the question as to who has been responsible for the recruitment that could be deemed "successful" over the past few seasons and who's been responsible for the dross and more pertinently what we're going to do about it?

Either way, if nothing else I hope that this season has been a stark reminder to the management and the club that there are positions on the park that you simply can't afford to f**k around with.

Edited May 10, 2017 by capt_oats

[rambunctious]

We should never have let Lee Hollis go.

[The Saintee]

If you do sign Mannus then you'll need a dominant center half as well. He a very good keeper but rarely comes off his line. 

[YassinMoutaouakil]

I like big Heneghan but he's far from the finished article, if this is remotely true then take the money and run http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/rangers-boss-pedro-linked-move-10396204?service=responsive

[mjw]

Is it not the **** who will take the player and run?

[Desp]

I'd genuinely give them him for f**k all.

He's shite.

[capt_oats]

15 minutes ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:

I like big Heneghan but he's far from the finished article, if this is remotely true then take the money and run http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/rangers-boss-pedro-linked-move-10396204?service=responsive

Hahahaha! Even they're not that stupid are they? If there's any sort of offer for him we should be packing his bags for him and driving him there ourselves.