capt_oats

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.

Tbh, I wondered if we might see some interest from MLS about Oor Thelonius. On the point of 'the model', I know there was a fair amount of handwringing around the £1.6m loss from sections of the fanbase but the key point for me is that we're generally set up to be break even and profitable in the right set of circumstances and, I think @StAndrew7 mentioned this either here or on SO, it probably ties into why someone like Barmack might be interested in chucking some pocket money at the club - not that he'd make anything out it but unlike say, Dundee FC - given they're in the news at the moment, our business plan means we're not a financial black hole. If you look at our accounts for last year, we saw a reduction in 'player trading' of £780k - we only brought in one significant fee c. 200k for big Sol (£194,246). Conversely our reporting for *this* season has us having brought in c. £1m (£991k) presumably for Max Johnston and KVV. The point is that while there's been this narrative about the £750k shortfall (in the absolute worst case) it doesn't actually take that much to move the dial in the other direction. Similarly, again from doom scrolling through the SO thread, the whole £1.6m losses came about because we *had* money to spend - so we spent it. The idea that we'd be seeing expenditure such as installing new pitches and knocking down the front of the east stand to rebuild an annual occurrence is just daft. Presumably if we hadn't seen the Turnbull money in, we wouldn't have been spending £1.2m on a new pitch which means the P&L over the last two seasons would have been totally different.

I mean, I stopped posting years ago (July 13th 2022 to be exact but it's going on 5 years since I've posted with any regularity). I was never a Day 1 guy anyway but a brief scan of the last few pages of the New Investment Options thread is exactly the reason I binned it. That's absolutely fucking exhausting.

I didn't actually realise there was uproar about the article then I looked at Steelmen. Fucking hell.

I know people are tying themselves in knots over the majority shareholding thing but the part that I keep bumping against is that there's absolutely nothing in Barmack's background or CV that suggests that either he or his wife actually want to own a football club, let alone a Scottish football club, let alone a mid-tier Scottish football club at that. I can understand why in any normal circumstance an investor would say, "I'm putting in X amount, I want X% ownership" but I guess there's a chance that doesn't actually matter as long as he's protected and there's scope for him to benefit. I'm kind of in a similar place to @Al B above in thinking that there's a chance that people are getting too focussed on the Scottish football 'bubble' or "how can he make money from Motherwell?" (answer: he probably can't) rather than a more general question of "how can he make money?". Which is a very different proposition. Based on the US culture/media pods I listen to (*waves at The Ringer*) the general feeling is that the next big market for the streamers in going to be live sport/events . Apple already have the rights to MLS & MLB, Netflix aired the SAG awards live etc. Both Barmack and his missus hold/have held senior positions at ESPN, Netflix, Google, Snapchat etc does a small stakes investment in a small market league give them any benefit down the line when the media landscape changes. Although, having said that there's an argument that Scottish Fitba' is still too beholden to more "traditional" broadcast agreements I'd argue that there's probably more likelihood that they'd be able to make some sort of ROI in this sort of market rather than expecting any sort of profit via the Football Club. I mean, I absolutely cannot wait for our Twitter bio to change to "We exist to connect dots between big media companies and fanbases" but ultimately that's his business (not making money out football clubs).

Aye, tbh that’s why I mentioned his erm, partisan coverage of the accounts. Where he was giving himself a stroke over the wage bill compared to Killie etc. Basically, it’s not the first time he’s gone off piste.

I noticed that Flow and Grant are following him on socials and he's following Burrows on IG: Also, I'm not sure why people are still focusing on him making some sort of documentary given the mention of it was a) because he was asked and b) his reply was "It would depend on the right elements coming together, but that's not the reason for our interest in Motherwell" It kind of feels like people are just jumping to conclusions without actually reading what's been said. Similarly I noticed that the PA journo McCafferty was kind of misrepresenting things again (IIRC it was him that was kicking off over the accounts before Weir clamped his points about Killie in that interview in January). I mean, that may well end up being true but as yet there's nothing that's explicitly said that it would "end majority fan ownership". It's just what has been rumoured off the back of vague comments from the AGM. This is the quote about it from Barmack: "Our perspective is we never want to make an investment that disempowers the Well Society and the connection the fan-owned group has with the club. There's a bunch of different ways to construct deals that can accomplish the objectives of a fan ownership model, alongside outside investors. Any of those deals are dependent on trust and having good relationships. But while it's early stages, we're only interested if we can co-invest with the Well Society." As I say, the deal may end up being something that "ends" majority fan ownership but as yet, as far as I can tell there's been nothing from either Barmack, the club or the WS that even indicates what the deal is.

Ha! Tbf it was in a big screed of my nonsense and there's clearly been a lot of other stuff going on since I posted that. I also wasn't intending to make any grand claim, just point out something I'd read on the internet.

100%. I've never really got the whole "keep politics out of sport" stance for exactly this reason. Especially in this case, given that part of the brief that surrounded the McMahon video was (I'm paraphrasing) the hope that we could seek partnership with someone in line with the "values" of the club and matched our ethics. Given the trend toward 'sportswashing' that's prevalent in both football and sport in general it's a fairly natural response to want to establish what the values and ethical stance of the club is in the first place or as a fan owned club what we think those ethics should be. That is, one way or another, political and tbf, it's a subject that @crazylegsjoe_mfc covers well in his response to @Wellin's post on the previous page.

I mean, yes. No Tories thanks.

Anyway, on big Theo, just look at him…he’s thriving

I think I said at the time that not getting a replacement for Biereth through the door in January was a failure regardless of what happened. Which, tbh, I stand by. I agree that I don’t think we’d have been any better off had we got KVV, Eamonn Brophy, Stevie May, Aidan Keena, the laddie who ended up at Hibs or any of the other names chucked around but while clearly it’s great that big Thelonius has gone on the tear he has, finding ourselves in the position where, by our own admission at the AGM, we were phoning around anyone who would answer at 10pm on deadline day and in some cases being openly laughed at as we scrambled can’t really be chalked up as a W. Otherwise we presumably wouldn’t have been in full blown panic mode trying to get hold of literally anyone before finally bringing back a guy whose loan we’d cancelled a fortnight earlier. Having said all that, another goal involvement for Jack Vale at the weekend. Some boi.

True. Although the reporting has mentioned they're expecting a similar loss next year for this season so @thisGRAEME is just 12 months ahead of the curve. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/68768050