Handsome_Devil
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Posts posted by Handsome_Devil
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As much as you'd never voluntarily lose any individual young player who might be the next big thing, the broad practice that we'll now inevitably lose some before they play in the XI isn't nearly as bad as made out. Essentially we've pocketed huge amounts of cash for a bunch of guys who didn't make it...
Would they have made it if they'd stayed? Maybe, who knows. But think of it as balancing risk - yes, if we can keep that brilliant 16-year-old till he's 20, we might make millions. But junior football is full of one-time brilliant 16-year-olds who turned out to be worth hee haw. Banking a bit of cash early is fine.
The Rangers stat re Rice is mental...I can understand the temptation to go to England at that age or even the OF a bit older...but jumping ship to them at that age, to them, nah.
No doubt the club will be milking it royally in public and behind the scenes.
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38 minutes ago, MurrayWell said:
My thoughts too, as much as Robinson was a decent manager for us, the Turnbull/ Hastie (I know) breakthroughs were by (happy) accident and not design imo. Worked out well, particularly in the case of Turnbull, but I don't think Robbo intended to chuck either in for extended periods that season.
You might be right but we've seen various youngsters thrown into the team, become regulars, burn out and drift away. Robinson brought DT in gradually, he became great and we sold him for a fortune... picking over it as luck is a very harsh call imho rather than just saying well done. Hastie was such a one season wonder I think making any judgement is difficult.
We'll never know on Miller under a different manager but I suspect he'd have had roughly the same treatment he's had under SK - not only is he a tremendous talent but he appeared at 16 with a physicality and mentality (we're all assuming ingrained from his dad) I've never seen with any other Motherwell youth. He was simply ready in every aspect much earlier (this is also why I'd be happy to sell him this summer rather than next, unless he fancies extending to 2027, but that's a different argument!).
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8 hours ago, joewarkfanclub said:
Enough to stop things we think are clearly not in the interests of the club.
Sure but how do you define that? Is someone there day to day overseeing each decision? Are these paid roles - which opens a can of worms - or unpaid - which brings another set of issues?
At some point you need to leave the experts to get on with it and trust the folk hired to do their jobs.
"Fan owned, not fan run" has been mocked a bit recently because it's all gone to hell but the theory behind it is probably still sound.
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3 hours ago, capt_oats said:
AFAIK the rumours came from here and it wasn't even a rumour. The bold @Handsome_Devil mentioned they'd heard we'd signed a player from the Rovers on a PCA last week and there was a subsequent bout of speculation around which players of theirs are OOC.
Just shows you shouldn't believe what you read on the internet.
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2 minutes ago, joewarkfanclub said:
I hadnt actually thought about this before. But you are 100% right.
We own the club right now, but what actual control can we exert?
That needs to be rectified
What kind of control do you want to exert?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against a society majority on the board but I think the model where the executive are basically the heads of department, accountable to the Society, is a much more solid basis to run things.
The fans through the Society should set the very strategic, long-term vision but relying on them to actually implement it on an executive level... different gravy.
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40 minutes ago, MurrayWell said:
Staggered it's even got to the consideration stage if that's true.
Without sounding like a broken record, this whole saga hasn't been handled particularly well, the whole "it's not about selling the club" to "hmmm, would you maybe sell the club?" moving of the goalposts from the departing heeds hasn't helped. I worry they've completely undervalued the club here.
I should stress I'm not the source of the rumour, just reposting what it was.
And yes, that valuation very curious. McMahon and Weir know more about business than me (and I'd respectfully venture most on here) and presumably have workings to show how that figure was a basis for negotiation. But having looked at our financials and the recent Hibs investment, I'm buggered if I can come close to reverse engineering the logic.
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46 minutes ago, StAndrew7 said:
What is the "rumoured" bid? I've legit forgotten what is/was being banded about.
£1.5m over five years for a stake building to around 50%.
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1 minute ago, Swello said:
Was thinking about this recently - how would the Exec Board go about driving anything through even if they were that daft? I presume they can't issue new shares without the say so of the majority owner.
I could easily imagine a situation where they would want to disregard the wishes of the 'Well Society - but I'm not sure how they could practically do that.
They couldn't, no, but what they could do is recommend the bid be accepted knowing the Society board will have no choice* but to put it to a vote and lobby members to accept it regardless of what the Society board thinks.
That's clearly a horrible scenario but at the same time it's far from implausible.
For a club in such a strong financial position, we have got ourselves into some muddle over this.
And yes, you can blame the Society for not doing more previously but, like it or not, right or wrong, there were reasons and logic for it.
What the Executive board - in practice a couple of individuals - seem** to be doing now is much more worthy of a raised eyebrow imho.
* In reality - I'm not checking the by-laws to see whether the Society board have the power to dismiss bids they deem derisory without a vote.
** from the outside etc, if you believe the rumoured bid yada yada
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9 minutes ago, Busta Nut said:
Seems like a heavily edited way of saying "Raise massive concerns". I'm not surprised.I know not much can be said about valuations and amounts of shares involved but if what ye hear is anywhere near, get it in the sea
I thought the same when I read it and then promptly forgot about it. Agree totally about reading between the lines on it and it's hardly a surprise given the previous tone of statements.
Does EB take it on board and come back with a revised offer or does he - presumably with the encouragement of McMahon - try to drive it through anyway?
As mentioned the other day, intrigues abound...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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35 minutes ago, capt_oats said:
... it'll probably me more normal than last summer when he was being asked to cut all the excess from the squad and bring our playing budget back to what our more risk-averse board were comfortable with after the seasons of bloat in the respective Robinson, Alexander and Hammell eras.
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.
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7 minutes ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:
I'm putting myself forward for a seat on Ketts' I Told You So parade.
I mean, fair play, but "I'd rather have him as fourth choice than a guy with no legs (Obika at least)" being one of the most positive comments about him in July says it all really!
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1 hour ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:
I do think the Bair thing is definitely the biggest unqualified success of our season and he's one of my favourite players in years but I find some of the hubris from our fans on twitter a bit odd. If he was firing us to 3rd and St Johnstone were going down I'd understand a "let's all laugh at St Johnstone" vibe but we'll probably end up finishing 9th and 10th together.
It's also worth pointing out that even at Xmas, half our fans thought Bair was utter shite and the other half thought he was shite but at least worked hard.
The level of seeth at his signing was off the charts, matched only by the total bemusement that it was a two-year deal on top.
I'm absolutely delighted for him and us at how it's gone but if history isn't being rewritten, the July-Christmas part of his spell with us is fair being ignored.
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3 minutes ago, ropy said:
What do Aberdeen take out of that today? Is it the confidence that they are capable of competing further up the table or is it the mental sapping devastation of defeat. Anyway, they will get a 1-0 head start before we begin to play.
I'd rather they'd won...for the giggles mainly but if you're in the final literally everything is focussed on that, the games till then are just kickabouts.
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Just now, Swello said:
Bair is probably in a different position from our young players who we usually have the stay/go debate about. He's not a teenager - he's in the middle part of his career and any interest this summer may be seen by him (and especially his agent) as an unmissable chance.
There's certainly no argument if is desperate to bank the first cheque he sees.
Where he differs slightly to the 18-20-year-old in this position, they know if they have a bad movie they've time to get their development back on track.
He's 24, finally playing and scoring regularly, if he doesn't get regular time and wastes (in sporting, if not financial terms) 2-3 years, will he ever get this improvement window again? Probably not.
Given that would probably also kill whatever chance he has of playing for Canada at a home World Cup, there's a strong argument that having sporting security to 2026 is no bad thing for him. Continue to improve like this and we sell him anyway; improve a little more and plateau and he'll get his freebie move a year later; worst case he's doubling his money and will fancy his chances of a home World Cup.
But aye... I suspect if that's the offer he'll be away and fair play to him.
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I certainly wouldn't bite at the first offer and my preference would also be to extend him if possible...but if a hypothetical 750k becomes the best concrete offer on the table, I think we'll take that if he's going to see out his deal in 2025 and leave for free. And it'd be hard to argue with.
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3 minutes ago, Vietnam91 said:
Just had a look at Dundee's, they got a B+, major difference is they took good points hauls off the rest of the clubs on similar revenues ......
Someone on Twitter pointed out the other day that Dundee were (by miles and miles) the best team in the league at set pieces. We'll ignore Hibs for the convenience of a good line but essentially they're in the top six and we're not because they score from free kicks and corners while we concede from them.
Which ties in with what you say given how we're always banging on about fine margins... Dundee ironically enough are the only peer we have a positive record against, when you look at it like that it's actually surprising we're as safe as we seem!
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8 minutes ago, Swello said:
Given the glacial speeds that deals can move at - and the fact that anything that is negotiated then needs to go through a cycle of scrutiny by the 'Well Society board and then members - and *then* all the legal formalities and due diligence - I'm not particularly fussed at this point and don't really care about a running commentary on it.
If it does happen, then it's going to be too late to affect our summer recruitment/budget and so at the very earliest, it would have an impact in January 2025 (but most likely the summer after). The club isn't in financial difficulty of any sort, so not losing any sleep on the fact that there hasn't been an update for 5 days.
Aye, now that we have Caldwell in place I'm quite happy they work away on details or negotiations till they can present something, it's just a notable contrast to now do it in silence. If we still hadn't got a CEO sorted I'd be annoyed drifting even further.
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13 minutes ago, WeeAlf said:
I'm confused, Mitchell van der Gaag, did score against Dunfermline. Is your point that he didn't hit the dead ball or it wasn't the winning goal?
There are witty pedants in our support who love pointing out he didn't score a free kick, he scored from a free kick.
It's become one of these repetitive points or jokes which is probably hilarious if you were in on it originally but to everyone else just looks odd.
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No idea if the columnist has a particular axe to grind but certainly a fair degree of scepticism to the US boys at Dundee there.
Regarding us, it's interesting that after EB positioning himself in the BBC before the weekend and the various leaks from the club/society side that there hasn't been a peep since.
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Some absolutely belters tbf...Spittal v Celtic for me.
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2 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:
That time we played United on the final day in 2007 when we'd stayed up (just) and had zip to play for. Bobby Martinez arrived as folk queued at the turnstile, some laddie said "Hey that's Roberto Martinez". I'd say he spoke pretty loudly, because Bobby heard him, turned around and gave a cheery wave to the queue who mainly nodded/smiled back.
The same laddie then followed this up with "He was fucking shite." at basically the same volume. Bobby was not happy.
Martinez probably wasn't shite at his peak but by us he was essentially past it and playing with crap.
The opening day we lined up with a midfield four of Townsley, Dow, Martinez and Twaddle will haunt me forever.
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3 minutes ago, dezz said:
Easton is class. Would definitely take a punt on him if he’s available. Presumably there are reasons for it, but no idea why he’s spent the bulk of his career jobbing about at the likes of Forfar and Kelty, he seems miles above that level.
It's entirely possible that like the stereotype footballer all his brains are in his feet and it took him years to settle down and deliver his best for whatever reason.
Ha! Timing skills from RG there.
was amazed to see he's 30 mind... absolute last chance for him to get a decent deal this summer really and would be perfectly happy if it's us taking that punt.
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Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons
in Scottish Premiership General Chatter
Posted
Aye, not bad at all although I do wish for a tiny bit of variation they'd change the most Scottish man in the world voiceover (does he have an exclusive contract with us?
and tone down the 'we got gubbed with the steelworks 20 years ago...' intro.