capt_oats

LULZ Forest Green announced their released list earlier...

This is Nathan McGinley...not Scott Fox.

I've been enjoying the Scottish Football Marketing Podcast. Flow did one a while back and that's Grant Russell just done one.

We've not "launched" the goalie jerseys yet AFAIK. Perhaps we haven't taken delivery of them? I'd have thought that may be more likely than us re-signing Tait like.

Genuinely not sure if I've been whooshed here but it's surely Scott Fox...

It's what the community of football clubs believe is right...

Actually, I completely forgot about the split. The reality is if they're splitting to a bottom 8 after home and away rounds then you're looking at 2 auto relegation spots from 8 teams after 26 games vs 1 from 6 after 33 games at the moment.

Aye. If it's 2 auto promotion spots + a play-off from a 10 team league then you can understand the Championship sides clambering on board that bandwagon.

Are they scrapping the play-offs? If not you've got 3 potential relegation places compared to 2. That's an increase from 16.6% to 21.4%. If you're talking about the 2 automatic spaces then it's an increase to 14.2% of teams automatically relegated from 8.3% with the status quo. Reasonable or not as @Green Day says you're increasing the risk of relegation.

As @Desp says both could be true. Fry's comment is that it's his agent that's knocked the deal back. Tbh, given O'Hara is transfer-listed at Peterborough and Fry is well...Barry Fry I wouldn't be surprised if this was him packing O'Hara's bags for him and nudging him towards the door with a not to subtle "get a move on".

Seems there's some O'Hara drama. The Record are reporting local press has Barry Fry saying they've agreed a deal but his agent kb'd our contract. but O'Hara's just tweeted.

Just for you RG. Just for you.

Yeah he's currently out of contract - he's been offered a new deal with us but the chat seems to be he wants to head back south. Going by his IG it looks as if he's still back home on Merseyside. Whether he's as good as others are making out? Sort of. He's turned into a decent player for us but it's not like he's on a Moult, Higdon, Sutton or Porter level. He looked like he was hitting some form for us by the time the shutdown happened. He's got a great turn of pace which is deceptive and he ended up in double figures for the season - however the caveat there is that 3 of his 11 goals came in the SC game against Dundee and the goal against St Johnstone was peak Zander Clark. Looking at his career history this is the first season he's ever been in double figures. He's more the sort of forward who get's in behind and runs the channel off the CB than someone who'll offer you presence. The flip of that is that some of his finishes have been A+ and watching him leave Halkett on his arse on various occasions has been great value. You can definitely see why he was highly rated coming through at Everton. I think most of us would have happily have kept him around but equally if he does move on it's not going to be a Moult-type hole to fill. I'm bored so I've gif'd some clips of his good bits below:

Agree 100%. As @RandomGuy.'s pointed out being open to reconstruction but against voting this through at the moment aren't mutually exclusive positions. We've been very quiet on the whole thing so it's difficult to get a handle on what our position is - I don't know if it's because Burrows is on the board or not - but the original statement we put out from Jim McMahon was along the lines of if reconstruction is to go through then it needs to be for the right reasons and be viable long term.

Aye. I think it hinges on who from the 5 that have been offered deals sign up and whether there's any intention of the short term contract on the table to Dunne being more than us just making sure we do the right thing. It's a weak take but White taking Dunne's squad number suggests that big Charlie Taxi is away. Clearly he could just take another number but he's had the same shirt in the 3 seasons he's been at the club. Reading the interview Hartley did after his exit was announced it was interesting to see him say that prior to the shut down he and Robinson had been talking about an extension and it was only after everything went tits up that it was no longer viable. Going by the rough timeline that conversation would have been happening at the same time as the Lamie pre-contract. That plus the short term offer to Dunne suggests there may be another CB squad place going depending on how things play out.

FWIW: it's more based on the positions they play rather than any definite preference. I agree Polworth's done more than enough to consider himself a starter. @boozyBJ's point about Lamie playing left back is fair, it's probably where he'll start next season given Carroll's out with a long term injury but the wee bit of blurb has him as a centre back and a left back. I could be miles out but given the noises about budget I could see Gallagher as our RB cover (if needed). Same as Lamie's able to play both positions on the left Gallagher played RB a fair amount for Livi I think. I could see us going for another left sided centre back if Charlie Dunne kbs our offer. Agree on the wide player point although I'd imagine it would be a 'can play across the front 3' type deal in the same vein as Cole or Scott. I'd been wondering about this actually. It seems incredibly dull, boring logic but given it's widely accepted that the Lamie and White deals were done fucking ages ago pre-shutdown - if we've offered out those 5 extensions I take it that's pretty much what's needed to complete the squad and what we've got budget for ATM eg: if Long pies us we'll be looking for a replacement for him and same with Dunne etc. By my count we've got 19 bodies contracted at the moment (including folk like Cornelius, Semple, Devine etc) another 5 would take us up to 24 which sounds about right - you'd have 17 "first team" and 7 "younger boys" (Semple, Cornelius, MacIver, Devine, Hussain, Morrison, Robinson) making up the rest. Robinson's PLZ interview suggested 15-16 "first team", so close enough.

So...assuming the Scott Burns report about Hussain having signed a two year extension is correct this is where we are at the moment in terms of players under contract. Offers of extended deals (TBC): Charles Dunne Christopher Long Barry Maguire Peter Morrison Harry Robinson Contract Expiries: 2021: Carroll, Mugabi, Gallagher, Campbell, Polworth, Hylton, Seedorf, Devine, Semple, Cornelius, MacIver, Watt 2022: Carson, Grimshaw, Lamie, Turnbull, White, Donnelly, Hussain (?)

It's Jordan White... I see he's taken Dunne's #18 shirt...

I'm not sure I'd go as far as to imagine Fox will be cheap. I see Lasley's confirmed our interest as well (and also had a wee bit of chat about Lamie): Fox left County for Thistle when they were in the Championship so I'd have thought he'd have been one of Thistle's higher earners. I'm not sure what Thistle's budget's been like in the Championship. I'd hope he'd be cheaper than Gillespie so ultimately there's going to be a trade-off somewhere and there's going to be a slight drop off in terms of who we're able to bring in. It's about finding a middle-ground between a Carson/Gillespie level and someone who's completely inexperienced at our level like Morrison (should he extend his deal). Also, it's 2 out and 1 in as both Gillespie and Ferguson are away so there's a potential budget saving in that respect. If he's a bit more cost effective for the squad role compared to Gillespie then fine - he's a 'keeper that's experienced and has worked with Hinchliffe before. It's clear what the role is too. The chat seems to be it's a 1 year deal so it's probably not worth folk losing their minds over on Twitter. As an aside, if he does sign up that's another Lanarkshire boi in. I'm genuinely curious if this is a conscious thing with the recruitment this summer.

I see there's a footnote about big Yussuf signing his 2 year extension in Scott Burns story about Fox. I had been wondering when we might hear about the extension offers. That would leave Dunne, Long, Maguire, Morrison and Robinson still outstanding.

Tbh, this is what I thought had come into play. The way the reconstruction discussion has panned out there's never been anything other than discussion papers raised. Unless there's a concrete proposal with specific detail as you say there's not too much you can survey on beyond the general stuff. I suppose in the absence of specifics even a broad survey would have been instructive, even if it was just for the optics. The statement did say that the WS were planning on a consultation "shortly" and that was almost two months ago and it just seems to have been dropped from any subsequent updates from the club.

Glad you asked that as I'd been wondering the same thing but didn't really want to be that guy. The statement was 20th April: I mean I trust Burrows and McMahon implicitly in terms of governance but yeah I also have thoughts on reconstruction. So if they were planning on asking I'd have been happy to share them. Aye. I'd been getting Samson vibes from this as well. The difference is as it stands we only have two 'keepers contracted Carson who's been out since 2018 and Matty Connelly who's 17. Morrison's been offered a new deal but it'd be a risk to go into a season with a 22 year old who's got lower league experience but has never played a first team game for us as our only back-up. In the end Samson didn't make his debut until almost 8 months after he signed. He arrived on 15th September and his debut was the 1-0 win against Hearts at Fir Park on 23rd April. He made two appearances in total that season - which was weird given he left Killie because he wanted first team football but entirely befitted his squad role of "another goalkeeper who isn't Dan Twardzik". McGhee deciding to replace Ripley with him and making Samson #1 seemingly just because he'd been hanging around was where things fucked up. I've said it before but back-up goalkeeper at Motherwell is a pretty niche role. Someone who's experienced enough at our level but content enough to come and just sit on the bench behind an established #1 is a difficult circle to square on our budget. Tomas Cerny's gig at Aberdeen is the dream I suppose. We've been spoiled having Gillespie and Carson on the books at the same time but equally we'll have been paying two first team wages for the privilege. If we're able to get Fox in on less than we were paying Gillespie and Carson continues as established #1 then aye...fine.

So going by this bit of the paper if the indicative vote doesn't show support they're finally drawing a line under this utter shitshow and sticking with the status quo? Friendly reminder of Ann Budge's comments on 10th April. It's what the community of football clubs believe is right lads...