capt_oats

Sligo finished 8th (in a 10 team league) last season so unless you're just wanting to visit I'd hold off.

Aye, from what I can tell when it comes to loaning out their good players (as opposed to the dross that fills the Academy system) the clubs take a holistic approach as to where they place them. Which is kind of my point. Qualifying for Europe isn't really going to level you up, it's not going to unlock 'access' to a *better* quality of player which a lot of fans assume to be the case because *Europe*. And again, that's not a dig - it's just that whether or not a club is playing a couple of European qualifiers in July/August isn't really going to factor into the thinking of that sort of club if they think that you're a good place to send their players to develop. Broadly speaking the "access" you'll have to players will be the same if you finish 6th and don't qualify for Europe as it would be if you finish 5th and get dropped into the qualifiers. If Liverpool like what you've done with Beck then they're going to be open to sending you similar players regardless of whether you're playing Sligo Rovers or whoever in mid-July or not. On the point about the success of your loans, Kettlewell has been exactly the same with us pointing to James Furlong, Brodie Spencer, Georgie Gent, Jack Vale and the most obvious of the lot Mika Biereth. It stands to reason if you have a track record of developing players (both your own and loans) rather than just parking them on the bench or freezing them out then your reputation will probably open doors for you.

I think this is probably one of the biggest misconceptions fans have about "qualifying for Europe" at this level. Which isn't a knock if you do end up qualifying but if you look at the various peer group clubs who have qualified for Europe in the time since Dundee last competed in European competition (us, St Johnstone, Killie, Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen, United etc) how many of them can you honestly say had access to any "high quality" loans as a direct result of qualifying for Europe that they wouldn't have had a decent chance of getting anyway. You've got your tie in with Burnley and you got Beck through the door when you were a newly promoted side. The prospect of playing a few qualifying rounds in the Conference league isn't really going to make much difference in a club like say, Liverpool, deciding on whether Dundee is a good destination for their player to develop.

Nah, you're right. https://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/2021/06/15/allan-campbell-signs-for-luton-town/

I mean, I don't know one way or another and it's pretty pointless re-litigating Hammell-ball, everyone is scarred enough by the experience the first time round, but I have a degree of sympathy to the extent that we're kind having to reappraise what a development 'pathway' actually looks like now. For years we were probably looking at integrating Academy players into the first team when they hit 18-ish whereas given how the landscape has changed with PL academies hoovering up talent we're having to find a way to get 16-17 year olds in and around the first team in a meaningful way. To all intents and purposes it was while he was in that bracket that we were bouncing Johnston around on loan (and of course there was Covid hitting). I mentioned it at the time but rather than find a way to involve Johnston in the first team alongside SOD and McGinn (as Kettlewell did successfully) he opted to just loan him out (again). Which, don't get me wrong, is his prerogative - but it also felt quite instructive. He was older by a margin but it was notable that Dean Cornelius' minutes dropped under Hammell compared to both Alexander and Kettlewell (he averaged 76.6 mins per game under Grezza, 64.1 mins pg under Ketts but dropped to only 41.8 mins pg under Hammell) It's entirely hypothetical but if Hammell was thinking that Johnston still needed regular football to develop and was risk averse to it being with us then that's kind of a luxury that unfortunately we don't seem to have now. I guess a parallel of sorts is Turnbull, who although he didn't go out on loan, Robinson purposely held back making him a first team regular because he felt he needed to learn the 'free stuff', same with Campbell who made his debut at 18 under McGhee. I can't remember who mentioned this whether it was McGhee, Robinson or Craigan but we apparently made a conscious decision to hold Campbell back after his first start where he ran the show against Accies rather than put pressure on him in a relegation scrap. Given how Robinson handled Turnbull, hypothetically, would we expect that we'd have seen Lennon Miller playing as much as he has if he were still the manager? I don't know but I kind of suspect not. Either way with Johnston you could say we fumbled things by not having a development pathway in place for him or you could also say that our being risk-averse cost us. In fact, both are probably true.

I think I've always had the suspicion that he didn't actually rate Johnston all that highly and just (wrongly) assumed that first team football with us would be the best offer he'd have on the table.

There's an element of "well, of course they'd say that" but at the last AGM (clearly not the one where Hammell told everyone he was confident Johnston would sign a new contract despite having bounced him out to Cove Rangers on loan because we ended up with SOD and McGinn on the books by mistake) they pretty much said that they made offers to keep him but it was made clear to them that Johnston wanted to try his luck abroad. Basically, the implication was "well, what can you do - if he doesn't want to sign the contract". I mean, everything up to the point where we actually started playing him with 6 months left on his deal and realising he was actually really good? Massive fumble.

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. Since then it seems to have been taken as being fact with mentions on Twitter and Steelmen.

This is something I was thinking about yesterday in so much as c***s are getting excited about what they *think* they're getting rather than the reality (which isn't a dig at Barmack - I don't know the guy and I don't know what the offer is but everything points to it being pretty low stakes, low risk). It's almost a worst of both worlds situation where the folk giving themselves a stroke about 50+1 will be raging because the WS shareholding will have been diluted and the Facebook/Twitter crowd will lose their mind when they realise that Barmack isn't a 'mogul', didn't own Netflix - he's just a relatively wealthy guy who quite possibly doesn't even want to own a Scottish Fitba' club and a low stakes, low risk offer like this won't actually move the dial in the way they want so we'll still be having to sell Theo Bair and Lennon Miller because it's literally our business model and we still wouldn't have chucked £6k p/w at KVV back in January because it would have been mental. IMO, if what's rumoured is actually the case, the offer on the table is...pretty much what should have been expected when you think of the limitations: We're not looking to sell the club We don't want to cede any meaningful control But we want "investment" "Taylor Swift, gies some dosh" Without wanting to kick the can of that video around again but to repeat one of my main issues with the messaging put out by McMahon what exactly would any "investor" be getting out of this?

Tbh, I think that the whole thing has been handled woefully and there's more than an eyebrow to be raised about how McMahon's gone about this (shock!). On the point of the offer though assuming it is the £1.5m over 5 years then to Devils Advocate; how much does the WS bring in annually? The last WS AGM update from 7th August 2023 had the following: At the moment the amount owed by the club to the WS sits at £868k for an interest free loan used for general working capital and repayable on demand. So based on that the WS have put £868k into the club with a cash reserve of £560k. So that's a total of £1,428,000 since what? 2016 or 17? (happy to be corrected on these points). If it's roughly accurate though it's pretty, pretty close to what has been rumoured to have been tabled by Barmack. Is £1.5m for majority ownership a good offer to "sell" given the assets at the Football Club and the fact that this whole shitshow wasn't even put into motion by the WS? Absolutely not. Should it be accepted? Probably not but equally if someone turns up at the table and says "I'll put in double annually what the majority owner is bringing in" then I'm not surprised there may be a question raised over what the split of shares looks like. Again, I'm not advocating for the offer and I think the whole thing has been incredibly unhelpful given the state of flux we were in at the time. I mean, my preference would be to put a pin in the whole thing, get McMahon tae f**k and allow Caldwell and the new Society board to find their feet and revisit the "investment" idea further down the line on the WS terms rather than whatever this is where we've been railroaded into a discussion by the chairman having gone rogue.

I got the impression that the OP was meaning more in the spirit of the 'player trading' model that Les introduced where we invest a modest amount in signing the player and sell for profit. With the best will in the world I'd guess any income we got from the likes of Efford etc would be minimal while shifting Sol on probably meant the deal washed its face with maybe a bit extra (the accounts have it as having been the only 'significant fee' last season and our gains on player registration were posted as £194,246 vs £974,168 the previous year). Having said that, does it actually matter as long as we're getting some sort of value out of the player? Like, Carson is probably one of the best £10k fees we'll ever spend does it really matter that we didn't flip him for cash given we sold Kipré for £750k from the same intake of players? I guess it's similar with Slattery there's absolutely zero doubt that he was brought in on the pitch we'd give him a platform and look to cash in which doesn't look like it'll happen but then again between the money we've got in for Kev along with the more modest amount for Sol that puts us in profit for the £500k+ we 'invested' in the Alexander purchases. I noticed a few posts over on SO and a handful of people are still bumping against the 'player sales model' (as @JayMFC put it in a reply) - in essence you're getting people struggling to get over the fact that we have been profitable under fan ownership and countering with "Yes, but only because we sold David Turnbull" despite player sales and player trading literally being part of our business plan. Quoting Jay's post from that thread and also Steelboy's which I found myself nodding along with:

This absolutely makes sense. If you look at the numbers Spittal has done and latterly the impact Vale has made then that's the exact area that we're getting players into.

No' being wide but generally speaking how has Robinson been in terms of integrating your Academy players into the first team? It's something that he obviously always talked up when he was with us as he had the likes of Turnbull, Campbell, Hastie, Scott etc in our first team but, kind of to the exact point you're making, he held off playing Turnbull because he felt he wasn't equipped to do the "free stuff" (as he called it). Turnbull eventually made his debut when he was 18y 7 months whereas we've now seeing Hammell giving the likes of Lennon Miller his debut at 16y 6 days and we've had a bunch of legitimate school weans sat on our bench for almost the entire season. It's something we were talking about on our thread the other week with Dylan Wells having recently signed an extension despite Leeds and Brighton wanting to sign him. I think that exact gap around 16-17 is where clubs are having problems working out what to do as the one thing that teams at this level have in their favour is the opportunity of first team football vs u23s football in the Academy system down south. It requires having the baws to actually do it though. Again, absolutely no shade but I can't imagine Robinson having been prepared to chuck a 16 or 17 year old in and give him meaningful minutes when he was with us but it feels like it's increasingly a necessity if you want to keep hold of them but I'd I imagine it's a difficult needle to thread from Robinson's POV with Top 6 fixtures and expectations of European football.

Nope. Signed for an undisclosed fee. https://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/2015/06/30/steelmen-sign-dragons-moult/

Louis Moult for one.

Something that only really crossed my mind the other day when @Busta Nut was talking about this 523 is that without getting into the nuances of it it's broadly the shape that Davidson stuck with (although I'd call what we play more of a 3421). It's interesting in so much as we seem to be getting a decent offensive output from it and Bair is thriving. I think this summer will be another test for Kettlewell in so much as we have so many players out of contract although 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.

A pile on definitely wasn't the intention. As others have said there were plenty of less than flattering takes flying around. At least you and the other Saints fans chipping in were commenting from the position of having watched him (albeit seemingly playing for utterly dismal managers).

Just had a swatch back at The Thread to find all the Theo Bair discourse. From what I can see this was my first post on the matter: and the reactions to the announcement start here:

Oh aye, I 100% get that - in a way that's why it's quite funny from an outsider's POV.

Yeah, in fairness, the Nicholson stuff is just an enjoyable running bit now because it's quite weird...inexplicable even. His apparent fixation with Bair is just...odd though. Tie in Tommy Wright not exactly being a fan of ours along with him announcing the Gallagher signing in a fit of pique and the growing number of players we've picked up having largely done f**k all in Perth who turned out to be some of our better players eg: Watt, Goss, Bair etc the whole thing is just quite funny. It's definitely not something that anyone should be taking seriously or getting bent out of shape over. I agree with @YassinMoutaouakil that the hubris from some Motherwell fans on Twitter about Bair is strange. Then again large swathes of Motherwell fans on Twitter as fucking idiots. So I guess there's that.

This has honestly made my day.

This was 23 months, 12 days ago (feels longer, right?) Along with the manager and two assistants 9 of the starting XI and 6 of the 7 subs are either no longer at the club or are currently out on loan.

It's not if there's a single postponement - it's triggered if there's a single waterlogged postponement. The DFC statement is quite clear about that. If you fix your drainage then you're fine. You can postpone games for other reasons if you like. Genuine question, as I don't know the answer, how many other top flight clubs had a league postponements this season because of waterlogged pitches?

Clearly there's been a heavy lean from Rangers (and SKY probably) but I have a feeling that the way Nelms has carried himself and the "bullishness" from the club probably hasn't helped. If you look at the coverage around our situation in 2009 it was specifically pointed out that we took ownership and accountability: I'd imagine you'll appeal and it'll be reduced but I'd say that Nelms talking about how the pitch would probably have been fine if the kick off had been 3pm (entirely fucking useless for a 12 noon televised game), having to loan pitch covers from another club at the last minute or your man talking about climate change when every other club in the country has been dealing with pishing rain has probably meant everyone involved is taking a "honestly, f**k that guy" stance.

A couple of interesting posts from Narey's Toepoker: