capt_oats

Get him on the

Not to flog this dead horse again but in a way this is why the general messaging of McMahon's video seemed ill judged given we're a fan owned club with The John Boyle Experience still in relatively recent memory. Kieran Maguire broke down the Wrexham accounts the other day and while I've no doubt that Van Wilder and Mac are good for the money presenting a scenario where there's £9m owed to the owners who are charging £8k p/w in interest as aspirational (as McMahon did - even if it was in a quirky or tongue in cheek way) definitely jars (IMO).

Aye, I mean as I said I find it interesting in that there seems to be a scramble to assign blame and I'm not posting this to be sceptical about us appointing him. It's more that it's quite a pivot from the positive noises that were coming from Shrewsbury fans when he stepped down (McGarry was talking about how beloved Caldwell seemed to be in his Herald mailout yesterday). From my POV I'm quite curious to hear from him and get a handle on how he approaches the role compared with Burrows and Weir. There's a lot of "how did this happen" Helen Lovejoy-ing in this thread on the Shrewsbury forum. https://blueandamber.proboards.com/thread/107032/accounts-due £800k increase in wages, £500k increase in "administrative costs". Again, that's interesting compared to the approach we've seen this season with Weir in the role as interim. The main gist of the rumour, innuendo and slander seems to be directed towards their former manager Steve Cotterill and Caldwell. Cotterill for running up the costs and Caldwell for signing off on it. It looks like it's been this statement from Shrewsbury's owner following Cotterill's exit that's lead their fans to jump to the conclusion that something was amiss:

I know folk are pretty much over the whole CEO/Investment chat but while admittedly very much looking at this from a distance it's been mildly interesting to see Shrewsbury fans scapegoating Ewan McVicar's Da after the £3.02m loss they've just posted for the year end when he left the club. Quite timely given he officially starts with us next week. Lots of finger pointing, rumour and blame being dished out by a support who don't seem to have worked out that lower league English football is just deeply, deeply fucked given their loss isn't anywhere close to being an outlier for their league (Oxford just posted a £6m loss) or the league below *waves at Van Wilder and Mac* and Stockport lost £4.5m. Either way it seems Shrewsbury's cash balance has gone from £1.6m to £80k. Turnover was £6.2m (which is roughly the same as our £6.4m over the same period).

I had the dubious pleasure of watching Blyth playing for the 20s ages ago against Thistle and he was, genuinely, hopeless. Despite being a "senior" player he looked completely lost. Even the goal he scores looks like it's a mistake.

Aye. This is pretty much where I am with Wilkinson. He wasn't here very long, his calf exploded but IMO he had enough about him that you could see why we brought him in. He chipped in with some well taken, important goals and ended up being played totally out of position at the point when Kettlewell lost the run of himself before moving him on for a nominal fee. Like I say, fine. I'd have though that had he stuck around he'd probably have ended up being a Chrissy Long equivalent (a fellow #99). He's very much a no harm, no foul signing in my book.

@Casagolda's post above has me thinking about the big 'what ifs' of the season, eg: what if Robinson's hammer throwers didn't break Mika, what if Kettlewell had introduced Gent and Dave to the starting line-up before he ended up having to hail mary them in post County. I don't think it's wide of the mark to say that Biereth was, legitimately, one of the best strikers in the league. I know there's been chat along the lines of he must have ended up with us by mistake but there's a fair amount of credit due for getting him in even if it was a deal that ultimately booted us squarely in the baws. On the recruitment in general here's a very long listicle of our signings since 21/22 when Daws got the gig = 51 in total (I've listed Obika twice for his loan spell which IMO was fine and his permanent which is very much not). I've separated out that initial intake who were signed on the classic Robinson style short term deal and were basically here to fill a jersey vs folk we clearly signed with a serious intention of them contributing to the first team but ended up falling pretty far short. I could be wrong but I'd suggest that a chunk of those Hammell signings were more down to his 'contacts' than our recruitment team. Maybe it's recency bias but I'd say that Kettlewell's actually got more right than wrong regardless of the whole no wins in 15 or whatever it was. It's been a dead horse that I'm inclined to keep flogging but I honestly don't see that list being markedly worse than the signings we were making with Foyle and Robinson...especially if you draw up the incomings during Foyle's final window which included Eddie Nolan, Lawleff, Tyler Magloire, Big Weird Harry Smith (who may actually be a shout for our Theo Bair award given he went on to score 15 in 45 for Leyton Orient the season after his brief loan with us) and Sam Foley. Either way 51 bodies in is a wild number but then you remember all the injuries and loan recalls...and it's still a wild number even allowing for an amount of context: Graham Alexander (7th Jan 21 - 29th July 2022): Connor Shields - bust Justin Amaluzor - ringer Kaiyne Woolery - fine Kevin Van Veen - Liam Kelly - fine Darragh O'Connor - ringer Mich'el Parker - ringer Callum Slattery - fine Juhani Ojala - bust Sean Goss - Sondre Johansen - fine Ross Tierney - I still believe Jordan Roberts - fine Victor Nirennold - ringer but the east stand remembers Joseph Efford - him reportedly being on daft money makes him a bust Robbie Mahon - signed for the unders Liam Shaw (loan) - might have been fine if Alexander hadn't decided he didn't like his face Blair Spittal - Paul McGinn - Josh Morris - LOL - bust Aston Oxborough - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ hard to have an opinion, he was brought in as back-up to Kelly and has sat on the bench. Steven Hammell (29th July 2022 - 11th February 2023): Shane Blaney - fine Mikael Mandron - fine Riku Danzaki - bust Jack Aitchison - meh Dan Casey - up to his injury - fine Callum Butcher - up to his injury - fine Stuart McKinstry (loan) - fine until Kettlewell binned him Matt Penney (loan) - fine Rolando Aarons (loan) - bust Louis Moult (loan) - bust Ollie Crankshaw (loan) - bust James Furlong (loan) - Jonathan Obika (loan) - fine Stuart Kettlewell (11th February - present): Harry Paton - fine Jonathan Obika - bust Conor Wilkinson - fine Pape Souaré - bust Davor Zdravkovski - Thelonius Bair - Callan Elliot - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sam Nicholson - fine Moses Ebiye - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Mika Biereth (loan) - Brodie Spencer (loan) - Oli Shaw (loan) - LOL - bust Georgie Gent (loan) - Adam Montgomery (loan) - could have been Andy Halliday (loan) - fine Jack Vale (loan) - Adam Devine (loan) - [redacted] (loan) - bust

Fair point. A poor choice of phrasing on my part. I think I had it in my head that a part of his relatively few appearances for Celtic was down to him not actually being at the club having been bounced out on loan. I mean, he signed in 17/18 and as has been pointed out to me he was immediately loaned back to St Mirren til the end of the season. He was loaned out for the 2nd half of his first full season and then sold to Inter Miami the January of his next season (19/20). Happy to have been corrected though.

I know Stevie Hammell's cursed amulet is a running bit but in terms of the very specific profile of wing back that we seem to like then between Furlong, Gent, Spencer, Devine, Montgomery (for the very short time we saw him) along with Johnston I guess, we've been doing all right. Again, not to labour the point but it feels like a lot of the grief our recruitment has got is more tied to some folks perception of the HoR and results rather than whether the players are actually any good or not.

It's been discussed to death on our thread and I've no real interest in spamming a St Mirren thread about a former Motherwell player who's never kicked a baw for them. I mean they have enough of our former players, managers and coaches on their books as it is but of the options Turnbull had on the table Celtic made the most sense given that the other option was Norwich u23s. As far as Ferguson goes, he seems to have kicked on in Serie A so fair fucks to him but it's worth mentioning that he made that move when he was 23. Turnbull was 21 when he moved to Celtic (19 when the original deal was agreed) his time at Celtic was the equivalent to Ferguson's time at Pittodrie and at the respective points in their career when Ferguson moved to Bologna and Turnbull was at Celtic I'd still have had Turnbull as the better player - I don't even think that's particularly controversial: Turnbull at Celtic was, IMO, a better player than Ferguson at Aberdeen. The fairly benign point I was making the other day wasn't even whether they are/aren't good players it was simply that, IMO, in terms of their Celtic careers Lewis Morgan and Turnbull aren't especially comparable and that if you're using examples of young Scottish players who have made the move that haven't really worked out then, for me, Turnbull doesn't really fall into that bracket. Morgan, respectfully, made a relatively small number of appearances (14 in the league, 31 in total 11 of which were starts) and was all over the place on loan whereas Turnbull established himself as a first team regular (100 league appearances, 134 in total 82 of which were starts) before his time at the club tapered off - particularly after it became clear there was no chance he was signing the extension he'd been offered. Anyway, as I say, the David Turnbull vs Lewis Ferguson thing has been done to death on our thread so apologies to the Buddies on here for the incursion.

Equally I'm not knocking Morgan. I just don't think that his and Turnbull's Celtic careers are particularly comparable.

Not being a dick or anything but what happened with Turnbull? His Celtic career probably didn't pan out as he might have hoped but a serious injury and a change of manager was as much a factor in that as anything. He made 125 appearances for Celtic compared to Morgan's 31. Won PFA YPOTY, was Celtic's POTY and YPOTY in his first season along with being included in the PFA team of the year and was a member of the Scotland Euro2020 squad. Along with: 2 League Titles 2 Scottish Cups 2 League Cups His time at Parkhead was hardly a bust.

I’ve seen us win a cup and it was a nice time. We’ve had another 4 cup finals since all against either Celtic or Rangers. Which is fairly shite luck. It’s not out of the question that we’ll win another but I’ve said it before in our thread: given the choice of winning a cup vs not getting relegated I’ll take extending our run in the top flight every time. I mean, ideally we win a cup AND don’t get relegated but I’ve seen us win a cup, I’ve never seen us relegated and would prefer to keep it that way.

Tbf, I don't think anyone's actually *upset* about it. Most, if not all, understand the situation around Bair/St Johnstone/us. It's been covered enough. It's more a side-eye that Nicolson's talking about it...again. As I said earlier, it may be that he's watched that video we put out and has taken the comments about Saints personally but I think @YassinMoutaouakil sums it up in the post above (especially if it's not part of a bigger interview): That said, you can't knock Eric's commitment to taking a bullet for Davidson and MacLean. Fair play.

Aye to me the version of Mandron that St Mirren have isn't that far off the one we saw IMO. I mean, yes there was a fair amount of point and laugh at them signing him but broadly he was kind of fine for us.

It's weird right? It's like of McGarry spending his time writing follow up pieces on whoever our version of Theo Bair is? It just doesn't really happen. In fact, who is our Theo Bair equivalent? Someone who we invested a bunch of money in, was a bust but went on to be prolific at their first season at their new club? We've had plenty of obvious busts but folk like Fletcher, Blyth, Manzinga, Fisher, Sloth or whoever either didn't get anywhere near the number of appearances for us that Bair did for Saints or didn't end up doing anything at their next club (or in the case of some both).

Eric Nicolson back writing about Theo Bair again is it? This definitely isn’t a reply to the wee bit of content we put out with the big man eh?

Bevis captaining Uganda. Good for him.

Bring him home.

See, I don't think it has to be 'transformational' investment or anything but the trade off has to be proportional and on our terms. Actively looking to bring investment into the club is, IMO, A.Good.Thing but rolling out an investment pitch in the way McMahon did, at a point where everything was as up in the air as it was, when we didn't have a permanent CEO in place was again IMO, utterly fucking dumb. So aye. Get Ewan McVicar's Da' in, stabilise things and let McMahon step down in the summer then see how things go. Hopefully we can get back to making Good Decisions rather than the fuckery of the past 18 months.

It needed done and it's not Gerry Britton so that's a start... One of the first things returned on a Google search (after his LinkedIn) is: https://www.shropshirestar.com/sport/football/shrewsbury-town-fc/2023/05/03/shrewsbury-town-fans-pay-tribute-to-departing-chief-executive-brian-caldwell/ Which is generally pretty positive. As far as I can see no one's calling him a c**t and I think the statement from their fan group is interesting: There's also a thread on Shrewsbury's forum about him from around the time he left as well again interesting few mentions about his communication with fans etc on the first page. It's 10 pages: https://blueandamber.proboards.com/thread/105568/brian-caldwell Also, h/t to @djchapsticks and @Div

Appreciate there's an element of "didn't fancy her anyway" about this but while I'd absolutely have preferred Spittal to stay I kind of feel the same about him as I did Goss in so much as based on their careers to date we've probably got the absolute best version of them and I'd have been wary about chucking the sort of money that in Spittal's case his form has absolutely deserved. Making Spittal our second highest paid player or whatever would have felt a bit risky on the off chance he regressed to the mean. While his numbers and general contribution will obviously be difficult to replace it kind of feels like he's the type of player we've got a decent enough track record of being actually being able to recruit. Similar to our Murderers Row of #9s hitting double figures over the last 30 years I guess. As I said, assuming he has f**k all interest in trying his hand in England or abroad and he's looking for a club that's a commutable distance from his house then a sideways move to a club with a larger fanbase but we've fairly regularly finished above and long term deal with the sort of significant uplift to his wage Hearts could offer is his best case scenario here. We got a good two seasons out of someone that was viewed as entirely underwhelming by a large section of the support when he signed. Absolutely fair fucks to him and also to Kettlewell for getting the sort of turn out of him he has. Tbh, I'm just confused how this can happen when he's already signed a PCA with St Mirren. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Alexander was only at the club for 2 games after Spittal signed. I think you're confusing Alexander with Steven Hammell who absolutely did misuse Spittal on a regular basis.

Respectfully, f**k off.