capt_oats

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:

Fwiw: the £50k (£45k suspended) we were fined in 2009 comes in at £76,835.40 when adjusted for inflation.

I went for Bair's dink because it's clearly the best goal there. Also, when did we start getting stuff sponsored by Volvo?

Turner is on loan from Ross County. James Brown is on loan from St Johnstone. Rudden, Byrne and Ashcroft are on loan from Dundee although Byrne is also OOC at Dens the other two are contracted to 2025. I mentioned the other day that Ketts signed Keith Watson for County. Vaguely related, I lifted this from Narey's Toepoker (it's already been pointed out that Wells extended his contract recently) pretty slim pickings if we're being honest:

Assuming the Livingston rumour came from a couple of random Tweets from Livi fans saying the player was "apparently at Fir Park" to sign a PCA then until proven otherwise I'm filing it firmly with the oddball rumours that seem to pop up from Dundee that apparently we've *definitely* signed one of their players on a PCA.

It'll come as a surprise to absolutely no one that we have, by a distance, the worst clean sheet record in the league - 9 (NINE) % It's actually quite remarkable that we've gone from entirely functional and solid during his initial spell saving us from the massive hole Hammell dug for us to whatever this is... If he can't coach us to clean sheets with the players he has then you'd hope that he sees this as...well, something we should probably look at. I think in the context of this discussion we're having at the moment we're trying to get a handle on what type of centre back Kettlewell likes. It's a curious quirk that he's now 55 games into his Motherwell managerial career yet hasn't actually signe a centre half and has just stuck with those that he inherited. I think we've all got an idea of what we think we need but it'd be interesting to get a handle on whether or not Ketts is seeing the same things as us. With a 9% clean sheet rate you'd hope he does.

Kettlewell hasn’t actually signed a centre back since he’s been at the club. Casey was a Hammell signing - he just extended his contract. Mugabi, McGinn, Blaney, Butcher, Casey, O’Donnell (and Lamie I guess) have all been used at CB and all inherited from previous managers. I’m quite curious to look at his signing history at County and see what his centre back signings looked like. Turns out I did a list of Kettlewell's signings in an old post in the thread copied and pasted below: Callum Morris, Keith Watson, Kenny van der Weg, Callum Semple, Coll Donaldson, Alex Iacovitti... On the non-defender side, despite having posted that list a year ago, I didn't realise he'd signed Danny Armstrong and Stephen Kelly for County.

Not officially. From what I can tell Hearts just briefed their client journalists and put the info out there but they’ve never confirmed it themselves.

Can only really echo the other replies in saying he's broadly...fine. I think @MP_MFC's framing of him in comparison with Ricki Lamie is a sensible way to view it. Is there much of a drop off between the two? Not really. Is there probably a favourable disparity in terms of what we were paying the Bathgate Maldini...probably aye. I don't necessarily think he's been at the same level as Casey was last season in the 3 alongside McGinn and Butcher but equally I don't think he's really been afforded a run to allow him to bed in to a unit and tbh, It'd be interesting to see what would happen if we were able to drop a defender into the centre of the back 3 who'd elevate the likes of Blaney and Casey.

IIRC he actually joined the club as a midfielder but was converted to a defender by the time he was turning out for the Dev team. I think the St Johnstone 1-5 game @well fan for life mentions above was the point at which Robinson bailed on him as a viable centre back which is when they decided to repurpose him as the ML1 Busquets. I mean, who did it better:

I think this is kind of it with Maguire. You can see why we kept him around to see how it played out. He's a good size, is technically good, two footed (of course) and is fucking brilliant at bleep tests. He has enough tools that you could buy into but as @crazylegsjoe_mfc says he just seems to lack that something that would let him put a stamp on games that others of his cohort (Turnbull, Campbell, Cadden et al) seemed to have. People got bent out of shape when we were signing jobbers from the lower leagues in England, I can't really criticise for giving an academy player a run as he's probably one of the fairly rare instances of graduate whose ceiling could simply have been our first team.

I mean, aye. Also, if the results against County and Livi are different then the whole timeline of the season changes - butterfly effect and all that. It is what it is I guess.

Anyway, taking a look at our points at the split in previous seasons, curiously we're on exactly the same as last season (37): After 33 games: 23/24 (Kettlewell): 37 pts 22/23 (Hammell/Kettlewell): 37 pts (finished - 7th) 21/22 (Alexander): 40 pts (finished - 5th) 20/21 (Robinson/Alexander): 35 pts (finished - 8th) 19/20 (Robinson) - 30 games: 46 pts (League curtailed - 3rd) 18/19 (Robinson): 43 pts (finished - 8th) 17/18 (Robinson): 38 pts (finished - 7th) 16/17 (McGhee/Robinson): 32 pts (finished - 9th) 15/16 (Baraclough/McGhee): 44 pts (finished - 5th) 14/15 (McCall/Baraclough): 31 pts (finished - 11th) 13/14 (McCall): 60 pts (finished - 2nd) 12/13 (McCall): 54 pts (finished - 2nd) 11/12 (McCall): 55 pts (finished - 3rd) 10/11 (Brown/McCall): 44 pts (finished - 6th) 09/10 (Gannon/Brown): 48 pts (finished 5th) I mean, it's cliche but it's true...it really is fine margins. In the end, it's been an entirely average season but it's hard not to look at it and think those losses against Livi and County have bit us on the arse a bit.

There was. Here it is. I know we announced him as having returned to Celtic but then had to quickly walk that back and clarify that although he was rehabbing with them his loan hadn't been cancelled but I notice he's not included in the injury updates we give through the week.

I for one look forward to Eric Nicolson's write up of that.

Aye, I mean, going by form we're 7th in the last 4, 4th in the last 6, 7th in the last 8, 5th in the last 10 and 5th in the last 12. It's annoying it's not 'mathematically' sorted but unless our plan is to actively try to lose all our remaining games in some Major League style hi-jinks we're in reasonable enough form and while it's possible we lose all 5 we've only lost 4 in our last 17 (vs Rangers (h), Hearts (a), Celtic (h) and Aberdeen (a)). The Hearts and Celtic games are our only b2b defeats since the start of November. Long story short; chances are we'll pick up a few points in order to land the plane. Even in the play-off season we took 5 points post-split (a win vs Killie and draws vs County and Thistle).

Let's be honest the only player who gets a harder time than Bevis & SOD is Kelly. I think that's probably about right. I don't think there's any doubt both SOD and McGinn will be offered another year, Bevis too probably although I'd imagine given he's 28 he might fancy a change of scene. Whether they choose to stick around is a different question but given the length of time Bevis has been here (outside of Maguire he must be our longest serving first team player?) I just don't see us telling any of the 3 to f**k off - I'd think we'll have a conversation and make an offer but it's a different question as to whether whatever we offer suits. Same with Kelly. I don't see us just packing his bags given he's a player who isn't only our captain but has been incredibly present, for better or worse. The only games he's missed were the LC games where SK rested him to give big Aston a run out. Kettlewell and Kelly were on record earlier in the season about having had discussions about a new deal and I'd imagine we'll offer him something as I think we've seen that he goes in cycles of being perfectly fine, good even and going off a cliff. https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/local-sport/motherwell-skipper-liam-kelly-parks-31287997 IMO, he's a player who'd probably benefit from a change of scenery but it's tough to see where he'd land that would give him the game time he gets here. He was third or fourth choice at QPR when we picked him up and despite the Scotland call ups I don't think his stock has risen any since then so it's hard to see him trading up or what his options would be likely to be if he's wanting to be guaranteed first choice.

This is a giggle. Our equalizing rate is almost 20% above league average. https://www.soccerstats.com/team.asp?league=scotland&stats=4-motherwell

Is Halliday doing his badges? IMO, given Kettlewell spoke about us being understaffed way back when he got the gig (and we haven't really added to that since) Halliday feels like an absolute stick on to get added to the coaching staff alongside Foster etc while we keep him around as a player.

Not to stick my oar in but I’d think that @PauloPerth’s scenario is probably more likely. You’re right in saying clubs are desperate for match winning GKs but I think because it’s such a specialised position there are more keepers available. Over the past 13 or 14 years we’ve probably had 3 of the best keepers in the league in Randolph, pre-DVT Carson and Gillespie and got precisely f**k all for them. The closest we came was the supposed £500k Celtic offered for Carson when Gordon was injured late in a January window. I think generally speaking there tends to be a surplus of good goalkeepers available on free transfers which drives down the necessity to pay big prices unless you’re talking elite levels.