[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

42 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

Perhaps. You almost think he couldn't not rate him, but the example I always use in this case is that the last man to get Scotland to a World Cup rated East Fife's Jonathan Page higher than Millwall's Shaun Hutchinson.

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.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

45 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

To be honest, I think Hammell was just a broken man by then and answered the question in the manner that he thought would get him least grief.

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.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

4 minutes ago, well fan for life said:

Doubt it. He was out of contract so we were due whatever compensation amounts to these days.

We've fumbled a lot of things in the last few years but that's got to be the worst of them.

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.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

4 minutes ago, wellfan919191 said:

Is there any truth in these Dylan Easton rumours? I know some guy in twitter has been posting about it but doesn't seem very trustworthy with transfers and not heard anything from elsewhere.

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.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

13 hours ago, Busta Nut said:

We need more sensible people thinking about this rather than the Facebook/Twitter crowd who think it's gonna be like cheating in Football Manager.

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?

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

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:

Quote

Accounts

Members also accepted the accounts, which showed that we brought in £155,000 over the year. The Society currently holds a fund of £560,000 at the bank. This reserve:

• acts as reassurance for auditors
• continues to grow
• is a substantial safety net, which would be available to the club at a moment's notice if required 

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.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

1 hour ago, fat_tony said:

I think we bought and then sold Sol didn't we?

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:

On 20/04/2024 at 08:11, Jay said:

The player sales model debate is an interesting one. For me, it's not a precarious model by any means. And I'd suggest that it demonstrably works.

We're in a situation where the club doesn't urgently need outside investment - it would just be preferable. Our model ensures that it's unlikely that the hypothetical gap outlined in the Well Society's consultation earlier in the year, and the hypothetical gap that is the very reason for courting external investment in the first place, will, based on the experience of fan-ownership to date, materialise. It never has under fan-ownership and, even if it did, the Well Society has enough funding to cover that gap as a one-off. The issue would be if something that has yet to happen didn't just happen one year, but two in quick succession.

Of course, nothing is impossible in football. Over the same time period that fan-owned Motherwell has remained in the division, reached cup finals, and made Europe, clubs with bigger resources such as Hearts, Hibernian and Dundee United have all been relegated. So it's a duty of the club to at least recognise that hypothetical gap and see if there's a more productive way to eradicate it, other than relying on the Well Society to plug it if it happens once, and then to probably slash our playing budget if it happens again in quick succession (before the Society has built up the safety net again).

But in terms of our model, David Turnbull always gets picked out as a seeming "anomaly" but in reality, he's the result of an effective player sales model. Since fan-ownership came into being, we have - purely off the top of my head, so there'll probably be others I miss - sold, for cash, guys like Louis Moult, Cedric Kipre, Kevin van Keen, Sondre Solholm Johansen, James Scott & Ben Heneghan.

We could have, had we tied them down on contracts, added Chris Cadden, Allan Campbell, Jake Hastie, Dean Cornelius & Max Johnston to that list. However, the compensation for each still numbers in the hundreds of thousands meaning that, collectively, that's still well over £1m.

We will probably sell Theo Bair on for a relatively decent fee in the summer, January, or next summer, while at the same time, Lennon Miller will almost certainly go for a price that you could perhaps list alongside the Turnbull fee.

In terms of any investment meaning a change from that model and the ability to keep our best players, I would argue that is incredibly unlikely, if not impossible. The player sales model is only partly because of a financial need, it's also largely because of the club's stature in world football. As has been mentioned elsewhere, it was confirmed at the AGM by the club that no investment offer is transformational, meaning that there would be no change to the model. In fact, you could argue that, if any investor was keen on getting a return on their investment, the player sales model could become even more important in that situation.

The only way in which our model ceases to be our model that I can see is if we ended up with an incredibly unlikely Colin & Christine Weir scenario where a diehard Motherwell fan wins the Euromillions and wants to just chuck cash at the club. But even in that situation, where you don't necessarily need to sell players, players would still be sold - because the best guys will always want to move on to play at perceived bigger clubs or in better leagues, regardless of how much cash you're able to throw at them.

The player sales model at Fir Park has been in place, and worked successfully, before fan-ownership, has worked under fan-ownership, and will continue to work regardless of whether the club is owned by the fans, an external investor, or a hybrid of the two. Personally, I think it's both a successful model that we should be positive about, because we're good at it, and a model that will be integral to the club whether we like it or not anyway.

On 20/04/2024 at 16:33, steelboy said:

Safety certificates meant we had to level the pitch? Further SPFL sanctions when we haven't been sanctioned for the pitch since 2010? Are you sure about that?

I don't understand where you are coming from at all with concerning the losses. We make a profit one season. The money is in our bank account and we spend it. It shows up as loss the next season. It's totally normal. You seem to be suggesting that we should never spend more than we earn in any 12 month accounting period regardless of the cash in the bank which is a fairly mental way to budget for anything.

The 12 month period is totally arbitrary, it's not the be all and end.

On 20/04/2024 at 17:09, steelboy said:

Levelling the pitch and adapting the East Stand to the new height were the expensive outlays.

We earned it. Then we spent it. The alternative would be sitting in a relegation battle with a pile of money in the bank and not touching it for no reason at all other than some people don't like seeing an annual loss.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

12 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Its probably because you actually have players enter *dons wankers hat* Zone 14 -

  Reveal hidden contents

- so he has support to play with. Under Davidson we regularly had not a single player having a touch in that area, and the CMs were generally stuck out wide, alongside wing backs and the wingers/second strikers, creating "overloads" against the corner flag while the striker stood marked by entire defences.

You'll know better than me but it feels like the big difference between shite Bair and good Bair is the level of support around him? 

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.

[The St. Mirren FC 2023/24 thread]

29 minutes ago, djchapsticks said:

The shite aspect of it is that it simply doesn't work that way.

If the opportunity to play first team games for SMFC presents itself against the opportunity to be on the books of a club the size of City or Chelsea, there will only ever be one winner. These clubs aren't looking at guys in the 19/20 age bracket up here for their academy and to progress to first team football. 16/17 is where they catch them so if there is firm interest in Ethan that becomes an offer then it's highly unlikely, even if he was to stay and shine in our first team, that those particular levels of club will still be interested in him in 2 seasons even with first team football under his belt. You'd be looking at English championship level clubs at most.

If City or Chelsea make a bid then it's quite literally a once in a lifetime opportunity and I don't think there's anything that we could offer that would tempt a player to hang about. That isn't a sleight at us either. Even Celtic stood no chance when Liverpool decided they wanted Ben Doak.

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.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

1 minute ago, Vietnam91 said:

Thought he was cross border jiggery pokery like Humphrey?

Nope.

Signed for an undisclosed fee.

https://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/2015/06/30/steelmen-sign-dragons-moult/

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

2 minutes ago, Vietnam91 said:

I can't recall the last player we bought we sold for money, everyone arrived for free or were promoted from the Academy. Maybe Marvin Johnson?

Louis Moult for one.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

16 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

It's something I think I took for granted under Tommy Wright (and before) that we'd sign cast offs and improve them, and I'd kind of forgotten that. But it's been years since we had anyone like that.

It's relevant to Motherwell too, maybe. It seems like being able to shine shite is a major plus point in this division and it's easy find someone who can't and you suffer for it. If Kettlewell is doing that regularly then you should maybe see that as outweighing any negatives tactically. 

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.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

40 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Suspect ill be getting quoted a lot in the next hour or so with laughing emojis, thanks @capt_oats

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).

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

33 minutes ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:

I'm putting myself forward for a seat on Ketts' I Told You So parade.

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:

On 28/07/2023 at 08:09, capt_oats said:

Entirely unbothered by the Bair thing. I mean clearly I’d rather we didn’t based on his entirely shite time in Perth but equally if we do and with the caveat that we are looking at bringing the Danish sensation in from Arsenal- the big lad will be our 4th/5th choice striker.

It’s not like we’ll have chucked 6 figures or whatever it was Saints paid for him.

He’ll be Mandron v2.0.

Tbh, much like @Swello I’m more interested in the other guy.

and the reactions to the announcement start here:

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

21 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

I think yer man is just very pro-St Johnstone, to the point it's assumed we do everything right and if things don't work out then it's someone else's fault, so the easiest reply to Bair turning his career around is claiming its luck etc.,  rather than admitted we failed him via coaching/tactics etc.

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

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

59 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

I don't think it's fair to use Nicolsons opinion are an example of the entire support, the Callum Davidson saga should show you why.

Most Saints fans wanted Bair to succeed, saw he was awful for us, and were shocked he got another top flight side, which led to the reaction when he signed for you last Summer. The reaction now is of a feeling of a missed opportunity with us, with fingers being pointed at Davidson/MacLean for what seems a clear inability to get him performing.

I think I've seen one or two say Bair is still shite and that this season is a one off, most wish him well and use it as a dig at Davidson. 

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.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

4 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

Brace yourself for an Eric Nicholson-ing.

This has honestly made my day.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

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. 

[All things Dundee FC]

26 minutes ago, stu2910 said:

Exactly, facing a further fine if there is a single postponement is a joke.  So we could have the best record for avoiding postponements next year with only 1 when others have 2 or 3 and yet we'd be fined for it?  Makes sense.

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?

[All things Dundee FC]

1 minute ago, Pens_Dark said:

It doesn't but it definitely suggests that. Makes reference to a further breach of SPFL rules - to me that's left to be fairly interpretive.

Either way the size of the fine is an absolute joke if you take in to account Motherwells fine previously. Amazing what a tantrum from Rangers can do...

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:

Quote

"A spokesperson for the SPL told BBC Scotland: "The Motherwell pitch was investigated by the SPL last season and a sanction was imposed.

"The club were fully co-operative throughout the process and the club and the SPL look forward to moving on from this following the club's extensive work over the summer on their pitch.""

Link

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.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

1 hour ago, Swello said:

 

Aberdeen being our bogey team is a new thing. Taking points against every team is a rare thing for us I would guess.

A couple of interesting posts from Narey's Toepoker:

[All things Dundee FC]

6 minutes ago, Ludo*1 said:

I can't really see that standing up in court. The £120k is payable if we have a single postponement due to a waterlogged pitch next season - even if we sort our pitch - that's just laughable.

As for the television costs of £36,429.60, that can get in the bin.

It's no surprise to see we're pursuing legal advice.

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

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

I went for Bair's dink because it's clearly the best goal there.

Also, when did we start getting stuff sponsored by Volvo?

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

44 minutes ago, Alanos said:

According to Transfermarket, most of Raith’s squad is OOC.

Anyone there that would do us a turn?

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:

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]