Casagolda

Hammell must have taken some pay cut to get a new 2 year deal. He's only made made 40 odd appearances over the last 2 seasons and hasn't reached his previous (high)standards in those games. Better option than Chalmers and Straker mind but that ain't exactly saying much. However with Pearson away, and going by Lennon's comments yesterday McDonald about to follow, that's a lot of experience and quality to lose from the team/squad. Keeping Hammell along with Lasley and McManus is probably more important than a lot fans like myself probably realise. McGhee's certainly going to have his work cut out this summer anyway, trying to replace two players of Pearson and McDonald's quality within our budget.

Going by Flow on twitter tonight we've got offers out to both McDonald and El Bakhtaoui. Surely we don't need both? In fact, I'm sure McGhee said not so long ago we couldn't afford both.

Good luck to him and McDonald if he goes too. I get where MJC is coming from about us constantly re-signing old players however these two were worth their weight in gold over the last 18 months. To the point I'm certain we'd be in the Championship right now if it wasn't for them. Still, that's now 23 goals and a lot of experience and quality possibly gone missing from the spine of the team if they do both depart. With several others including Hammell, Law and Ainsworth's future all still up in the air, it looks like we still have a lot of work to do this summer.

Massive fan of McDonald myself, thought he was superb for us last season from about December onwards. However, I'm not having this carry on again like last year where he spent all summer dicking about making his mind up and then turned up a week before the season started overweight, unfit and badly lacking in match sharpness. He was rank rotten for the first 3 months of last season due to IMHO not bothering his arse with a proper pre-season and was rightly benched by both Baraclough and McGhee for his piss poor performances. I'd be telling him if he doesn't sign his new contract and report for pre-season with the rest of the squad next week then it's getting withdrawn and we're moving on to other targets. Same to Hammell, McFadden etc as well. Although I'll be shocked if Hammell hasn't signed and isn't there for pre-season on Monday.

Tait and Heneghan both seem to be getting rave reviews from the fans of their former clubs, which is a positive sign I suppose. Heneghan was Chester's player of the year for both seasons he was at the club and a lot of Grimbsy fans seem to be touting Tait as their player of the year last year as well. Was expecting Brill to sign so Jacob Blyth was a new one to me. Seems to have had a Vardy-esque rise when Leicester bought him from Leamington in the 7th tier of English football but he never actually kicked a ball for them. Still has a fairly respectable record of 11 goals in 33 starts during various loan spells in League 1/2 and should at least provide us with a different option going forward. Time will tell if they're any good, what did strike me is the fucking size of them. Both Blyth and Heneghan are huge, even the diminutive Tait looks a bit of unit.

Triple signing this afternoon according to the Record. Assume that will be Brill, Heneghan and Tait.

According to Scott Burns of the express we're set to sign 22 year old centre back, Ben Heneghan from Chester within the next 24 hours. Never heard of the lad but if you google him the first thing that comes up is an article linking him with 4 English Championship clubs in January. Looks like he's gonna be Hall's replacement.

Just 18 starts last season for Ainsworth with 3 goals and 8 assists by my reckoning, still pretty good going. So that would be something like 23 goals and 28 assists in 103 games(65 starts) over the course of three years for Motherwell. Pretty remarkable return to be honest. If Lionel and Pearson are away that's a lot of proven experience and quality at this level being allowed to leave. Pearson I could understand given his age and the supposed money on offer, for Ainsworth I can only assume McGhee feels he can use his wage more effectively elsewhere if he's not going to be a regular starter next season. If both go that would leave our squad for pre-season as it stands looking like; Keepers Samson Defence Watt Law Ferguson Laing Kennedy McManus Chalmers Midfield Cadden Campbell Maclean Forwards Moult Moore Johnson Thomas With offers still out to Lasley, McFadden, Hammell and McDonald.

How on earth has Robbie Leitch managed to land himself a three year deal at a Premiership club? Boy can't even make it into the first team squad and was benched for the youth cup final for a 16 year old. Mental. Take it we get another six figure fee for Leitch as well then? He's been at the club for years after all. With the money we get for Leitch, Hall and Pearson we must be breaking the half million pound mark. Absolutely rolling in it.

Aye I liked Hall but 200k(if true) for a guy that's played less than 20 first team games is a cracking piece of business. Personally preferred Hall to Kennedy but I think Kennedy came onto a decent game towards the end of the season so I can't envisage Hall being a massive loss. Surprised McGhee's talking about bringing in a replacement mind, given we've already got McManus, Kennedy, Laing, Ferguson and Watt all signed up for next season. Still, second summer in a row an English Championship club has come in and taken one of our youngsters for a six figure fee. Given how heavily our youth system has been criticized in recent years we've certainly been churning out some decent prospects in the last few years in Erwin, Hall and of course Cadden. Hopefully next season the likes of Thomas, Campbell and Turnbull can follow in their footsteps and start to make a decent impact on the first team as this is certainly the way forward for us as a club.

After last summer, I think it's important not to hit the panic button and take our time getting the right players in. Baraclough went transfer crazy last summer and went out and signed 11 players; Joe Chalmers, David Clarkson, Wes Fletcher, Louis Laing, Louis Moult, Kieran Kennedy, Connor Ripley, Theo Robinson, Jake Taylor, Craig Samson and Liam Grimshaw. Fair does it was exciting at the time, how many of them actually made any sort of discernible impact though? Three, maybe four at a push. Three of them in Chalmers, Robinson and Taylor would be serious contenders for a worst Motherwell eleven of the last decade. We signed another two strikers in Fletcher and Clarkson who managed one goal between them all season. An a third first team goalkeeper in Samson who made two appearances all season while we continued to pay Dan Twardzik to play youth team football for a few months, before presumably having to pay him off to get rid of him. In retrospect, it was a complete clusterfuck. Outisde of Moult, Ripley and to a certain extent Kennedy and Grimshaw it was pretty rotten. In fact if I was putting together my preferred Motherwell 11 from last season it would be; Ripley Law Hall McManus Hammell Cadden Lasley Pearson Johnson McDonald Moult Two of the eleven players we signed last summer would make it in, even if I was making up a bench at least four of the fuckers wouldn't make it. I know some would argue for Kennedy's inclusion over Hall, which to me is the only debatable selection, however I personally preferred Hall's style to Kennedy's. Before he chucked it in that last game against Celtic may I add. Either way, two or maybe three of the eleven players we signed last summer helped improve the team that finished second bottom the previous season and survived relegation via the play-offs. It simply wasn't good enough. We can't afford to waste our money the way we did last summer and bring in any old journeymen shite just to fill up the squad. It was actually reassuring to read McGhee saying the players he was looking to bring in were to improve the starting eleven, cause that's something that simply didn't happen last summer. McGhee's a lot more experienced than Baraclough though and I'm more confident/hopeful that he won't fall into the same traps that Baraclough did last year.

Was in the Scottish Mail this morning that 'Atletico de Kolkata' have apparently offered us 100k to try and take Pearson back to India. A six figure fee for a guy who'll be 34 a few months into next season who didn't manage 30 games for us last season? Surely we'd be booking his flight for him. To be fair to Pearson, 9 goals in 28 games last season was an excellent return from a central midfielder and he's done us a good turn over the last 18 months. Great player on his day however he's the wrong side of 30, injury prone and fairly inconsistent. If it's true and Pearson wanted to go, I can't see the club standing in his way.

Seriously though, what I wouldn't give to have Jennings from 4 years ago in the centre of our midfield next season. Or just any sort of central defensive midfielder with a good reading of the game and a sense of positional discipline. The amount of times one ball takes out our entire midfield and the defence is left exposed is frightening. To be fair young Campbell looked very impressive in there in the youth cup final, hopefully see him get some game time next season.

Bring back Steve Jennings.

I know, I said the exact same thing the other week on last seasons thread when it all came about. It was more the whole, we don't need another striker thing if Skippy re-signed I was intrigued by. Lot of faith being shown in Moore and Mackin if true.

See McGhee's in the paper today confirming that he's got no intention of signing El-Bakhtaoui because 'we don't need him', on the assumption that he feels McDonald is likely to stay. So does that mean McGhee's planning on going with Moult, McDonald, Moore and Mackin as our forward options for next season? Also Moore, Samson and Ferguson have signed up for next season.

It was outlined at the Well Society meeting last night that next seasons budget is based on a 10th place finish, with no cup run and no player sales. Not that I have a problem with that of course, it's absolutely the right road to go down. The clubs lived out with its means in recent years and with no rich owner to bail us out anymore we have to be prudent with our money. However any talk of bringing back the likes of Nicky Law is fanciful, we couldn't even afford to offer him close to what he was on last time he was here let alone what he's become accustomed to in the last few years. McGhee's going to have the smallest budget of any Motherwell manager for a number of years, as evidenced by some of our senior players reportedly being offered new contracts with 30% wage reductions in comparison to what they were on last season. So he's just going to need to be creative with it, cause the days of us going out and just signing established players from other clubs like Vigurs, Higdon etc are gone sadly. Think next year might be a difficult one for us but it's absolutely the right route for the club to go down. Just have to hope the scouting system we have in place can unearth another few gems like Johnson and Moult and that a couple of the U20's can follow in Cadden and Hall's footsteps and make an impact on the first team.

Superb game that, glorious scenes at end. Well done Hibs, worthy winners.

I wouldn't read too much into it. Catching up on my lunch and so far today I've seen us linked in the media to the Celtic boy, Miles Storey and some Conference striker from Boston Utd. Storey's already signed for somebody else and I'd happily bet the other two aren't at Fir Park next season either. We're usually pretty good at keeping these things close to our chest so I'm always sceptical when our 'potential' signings are leaked to the media.

I imagine seeing Marvin Johnson line up at left back in the two post split games where Stevie Hammell was absent has already made that point pretty clear to Joe.

Hopefully a shite performance today doesn't detract from what has been a very good job by Mark McGhee since he took over. To finish in 5th while having no money to bring in new players and actually downsizing the squad he inherited by getting rid of the likes of Taylor, Robinson, Reid, Twardzik, Clarkson etc while promoting a few of the youngsters has been a great effort. Think I'm right and saying for next season the squad looks like; Under Contract Louis Laing - 2017 Kieran Kennedy- 2017 Joe Chalmers -2017 Josh Law - 2017 Stephen Pearson - 2017 Lionel Ainsworth - 2017 Chris Cadden -2018 Luke Watt - 2018 Marvin Johnson - 2018 Louis Moult - 2018 Dom Thomas - 2018 Offered New Deals Craig Samson Stephen McManus Stevie Hammell Keith Lasley Scott McDonald James McFadden Craig Moore Ben Hall David Ferguson Away Connor Ripley Morgaro Gomis Wes Fletcher Jack Leitch David Clarkson Still quite a bit of work to be done this summer, especially if the likes of McManus and McDonald are wavering on accepting new deals. Think we'll probably see a few more of the younger lads filling up the squad, however based on today's evidence Luke Watt is far from ready to solve our right back problem and Ben Hall better think twice about turning down Motherwell's offer as if any scouts were watching today he won't have many other options. I'd say right now we need; Keeper(Sadly I think this will be Samson) An experienced centre half(If McManus leaves) At least one, maybe two new fullbacks A Central Midfielder Another Striker(or two if McDonald leaves) Thoughts?

Not actually true, every single Motherwell fan rates him highly, it's just that he's lazy non trying b*****d half the time. You'll struggle to find a more talented winger at our level. Quick, can beat a man, excellent crosser of a ball and one of if not the cleanest striker of a ball in the country. Fact is if he didn't have a poor attitude he wouldn't be anywhere near our level. Still, I make it 47 starts, 20 goals and something like 18 assists in his two seasons at Fir Park. Could you imagine what he could do if bothered his arse more often? Quality player, terrible attitude.

You've also apparently been turned down by ex Motherwell striker Chris Porter.

Pearson's always been a decent player. He's won every major trophy in Scotland, played Champions League football, played Premiership football(after scoring the winner in the Play-Off final for Derby) and has double figures in terms of Scotland caps. You don't do all that if you're 'utterly brutal'. Pearson, like Clarkson, was training with Motherwell earlier this season but wasn't offered anything by McCall. Not that it means that much considering how stupid Clarkson's made him look since. The only problem I could see is that a large part of Pearson's game was heavily relying on his pace and energy. Originally as a left winger for Motherwell and latterly as more of a box to box midfielder when I last saw him playing for Derby. He's 32 now and has seemingly had a few injuries over recent years. If he's over his injuries though he should still be more than capable of doing a decent job for Dundee in the short term.

Cracking game. Congrats to St.Johnstone, well deserved win.