EK2DK

Time to get fresh legs on up top… ah that’s right -nae strikers

Can we send Kelly home early?

Scunnered. I have the impression that anything Fir Park way varies between bowling club committee behind the scenes and a slow motion car crash on the park. There is absolutely no joined up thinking across the club whatsoever

Despite fortuitous results elsewhere, It’s hugely concerning that our premiership survival is coming down to the dying embers of a transfer window. I’m absolutely baffled how we have managed to go from having Wilkinson (who was signed as a starter), Obika, Beireth, Bair (who was a 4th choice striker) and Shaw, to now looking like we will run with Bair and maybe, maybe 1 other. It’s absolutely abysmal. Wilkinson and Shaw might have been pish and Obika permanently injured but those are the players we handed contracts to. On a basic arithmetic level, we’ve lost Spencer, beireth, souare, Wilkinson and Shaw this window. We’ve brought in Halliday, Nicholson, Montgomery and Elliot when at the start of the window, we wanted to run with what we had + 2 according to kettlewell. On a basic levels, that means we’re short of 3 players - at least 2 forwards within that and are staring at a summer with 5 players under contract, a manager out of contract, no ceo and and interim ceo and chairman that are trying to punt to the club whilst making for the exit in circumstances that are pretty dire. It's a sickening state of affairs, especially for a fan owned club. From top to bottom, we need a massive, massive reset and huge changes in board and football structure.

You could be right - maybe someone just forgot to tell Bair?

I actually thought Alloa popped the ball around better than we did for large spells. In the end we overran them due to fitness levels which you’d expect but they seemed to have patterns of play which is something I just don’t see in this Motherwell team. I’ve genuinely no idea what we work on in training - I don’t see the overall strategy or game plan on the park at all. We don’t really like to go wide (O’Waddel at wing back isn’t capable of that role) we don’t break particularly quickly. We don’t play it long and feed off second balls as the forwards are too far apart. Kettlewell already said he wanted two additional players at the start of the window. Wilkinson, Souare, Shaw (maybe*) all leaving should’ve meant 5 coming in. Biereth and Spencer being recalled is frustrating but on the logic of the above, we should be looking at 5 more on top of what we have. How many weeks of KVV’s salary could’ve been covered by the fee paid out for the video; 4/5/6? Once again, we’re scrambling and lurching from pillar to post - it’s the same on and off the pitch at the moment and a really concerning state of affairs.

Reflecting on this week, I cannot help but feel this move is deeply misguided. I’m not a believer in accountants running businesses and I believe that this week shows exactly why. By Weir and McMahons own admission, they went to an agency to do a campaign with a brief. What they know deeply (and I’m sure very competently is finance and governance) but both have said they don’t ‘really get the whole communication and marketing part’. What that very likely means is that the brief to the agency will have been metrics based (on numbers) rather than based on messaging or perception, so you end up with an external marketing agency doing something with the brief but no meaningful guidance - perception is reality and to many of our fans, I’m sure that the perception has been far from positive. I agree that sole fan ownership doesn’t work btw and it needs some external investment but the way it has been handled is utterly tone deaf and goes completely against the previous core messaging of the community club. It’s like a couple of years ago, we put out endless marketing around the emergence of youth in turnbull, Campbell, hastie etc then proceeded to sell them off within 6/8 months. For me, from top to bottom, There’s no overarching vision but again - be it a Director of football or indeed general management - we’ve lurched from pillar to post on and off the park and that’s simply down to a lack of vision. Let’s also face it. Any investor coming in who may want let’s say (49%) of the club will have a big say in the CEO and who runs the business. Any wish to sell or gain major investment should and must be tied to whoever will come on board as CEO especially as McMahon and Weir won’t be around. It’s incredibly poorly handled.

Pubs for well fans tomorrow?

Likely it’ll be a team set up not to loose. We’re badly missing attacking options: —-------—---------—Kelly O’Donnell --McGinn—-Blaney—-Casey--Souare —————-------—Zdravkovski ——--------—Miller———-Slattery ————--------——Spittal ——————-------Wilkinson A full back, winger and striker tomorrow would be lovely, thanks.

The full thing stinks of deep rooted problems. I was never in the camp that thought Hammell should get the job. He wasn’t what we needed. We needed someone with some experience given the real low point that Alexander left us in - someone that knew instinctively how to lift teams and players when the going gets tough - SH simply doesn’t have that ability having never managed anywhere else. When I started in my career, I joined the company that I’d dreamed of working for, directly from the start. About two weeks in, a guy in passing in the office said to me, it’s great you want to work here so much but if you really want to help the company, go and work elsewhere for 5/10 years and come back; then you’ll bring us something we don’t have. It was sore to hear but ultimately, completely correct and SH should have had enough people around him and the club to say much the same. We look lost, he took over a team that was eye bleedingly poor to watch and we had a bounce, but the way we’ve fallen off a cliff can only be attributed to management. The players might not like you, but if the results are good then you’re at least doing something right, or indeed, you’d say okay, he’s recruited clearly very well, let’s give him a run - none of that’s true. Everything that has happened is totally scattergun from last minute signings to piling on subs. We’re no longer actually competing; we’re just getting pumped. No clear tactics, no clear plan and perhaps most concerningly , this mantra of “it’s not what I want to be associated with” he’s hit out with a few times now, screams of distancing yourself rather than really taking responsibility. I’m positive that Burrows going is a good thing. We’ve needed a proper strategy and plan as a club for years and neither he nor the board seem capable of doing that. We’re a club run by accountants and a guy who has been blind to systemic problems with the first team for years at this point so freshness is needed. My only hope is that they find the courage to pull the plug and give ourselves a chance of making the structural changes so badly needed whilst looking ahead to another premier league season and not one in the championship.

Eredivise has pretty comprehensive coverage in Scandinavia and strong representation in Germany - it certainly won't be in all markets but is definitely wider than just its home base. Agreed re. EPL and that is partly my point. Cormack's comments benchmark EPL which does not carry any weight. Whilst I don't want to discount any legacy fans, my point is that rather than actively cutting them off from a chance to see their teams, we should be providing opportunities for engagement. At its most basic level, Scotland it wet, cold and pretty miserable for the majority of the season. Take a club like your own as an example. How many do you take to Pittodrie for a 7.45pm kick-off on a Wednesday night in January? My guess is, not that many - 150/200 in comparison to the 4-5000 home gates you get. That isn't meant as a criticism btw. Football is expensive, petrol prices are up as is everything else - that isn't going to be reversed when inflation slows. We need to be engaging legacy fans by providing better match day experiences in combination with better access to their clubs via club TV or simply a deal which broadcasts much higher volumes of games than this deal with less of a bias toward the OF which there will undoubtedly be. Football needs to fight for peoples attention. That means ease of access for most - making sure that people even in Scotland can engage much more with their teams. Much of society is open source content in comparison to what it used to be and that needs to be embraced for the game to continue to evolve. It's a romantic idea that fans behave as they may well have used to, where football was the only form of entertainment. That is simply not the case now for most - it's either a choice of something else entirely for less money and hassle or consuming other content when football isn't presented in front of you. We need to be generating touch points for engagement - not stopping them dead.

The fact that Crocker's commentating is utterly, utterly woeful aside, the deal itself is a nail in the coffin type event for Scottish football. It serves to show the bowling club committee mentality that the governing body has when planning the game. It is navel gazing of the highest order and utterly pathetic. I believe it sadly clearly shows the lack of inventive thinking which has plagued our game for decades and is a significant step in cementing a Daily Record mentality at the time when there might actually be the chance to change it - with greater European participation and a higher level of wealth entering the league for the first time in years. Yes, the disparity between OF and the rest is getting wider which could be handled much more effectively however given it's Scottish football governance we are talking about - let's take it one step at a time. Comments surrounding getting what we can because we play second fiddle to the EPL are absolutely nonsense. When it comes to TV deals, that could be said of literally every league in the world and it holds no weight whatsoever. What has been opted for is a deal based off of scraps. Whether we all like it or not, TV has changed football and that isn't going to be reversed. It has meant that legacy fans are less important in all leagues around the world - what has been successful is combining better match day experiences with stronger TV coverage; see Netherlands & Germany as an example. This has meant growth on two fronts; keeping stadia busy and gaining home market and international audiences. Making it more in peoples faces and view points. Social media society dictates that you have to keep fighting for consumers attention; football is no different. At a time when we should be looking to expand the audience and ultimately grow the appeal of Scottish football, what we have done is effectively close the doors. We should be encouraging supporters who do not wish to attend or are unable to attend, to engage with the clubs wherever possible - buy club TV packages, be engaged with your team, buy merchandise, go along when you can and yes, there should be a TV deal, but not one which will effectively cut engagement opportunities in the modern world. Let's not forget that we are about to enter a period of recession that isn't going away any time soon and neither are inflationary prices going to fall even when things 'hopefully' calm down. Football will become even more of a luxury for people and what will almost certainly happen is that fans will not engage as they could/would have as it will be a case of out of sight, out of mind - unless you want to watch one of the OF away from home each weekend. Perhaps the above takes a little bit of more thinking and planning, but what we have opted for is what we have always opted for - the easy way out. It's the OF fawning piece in the Daily Record, the Clyde SSB call in, the 20 minute debate about their signing strategy prior to a weekend of challenge cup action. It is reductionist, narrow sighted and tedious - the hallmarks of a mentality that will serve nothing other than killing the game.

The costs involved are ridiculous however indicative of a much wider problem in Scottish football which is related to engaging new audiences and broadening the appeal of the game. This is something the SPFL/the clubs have been horrible at for years. So much of the dialogue and actions surrounding the premier league is tribal which by its very nature speaks to those in the tribe but isn't appealing to new audiences and providing a platform for growth in viewership of fan bases. Other leagues have managed to scale beyond their borders but this is something Scottish football doesn't do in nearly the same way - it's very insular. Whether that's the often primitive dialogue surrounding the Glasgow derby and the OTT promotion of that, to the 'us and them' media dialogue which permeates pretty much all football media in Scotland; it's all extremely excluding and in line with over inflated ticket prices that exclude new audiences and fans. The recent TV change was a part of that. Last season, there was the opportunity to grow audiences by having fans into stadia and allowing the more casual viewer to watch on TV. This is a model that exists in Germany and other countries for all games and generally widens the appeal of the league, increases fan numbers and in turn has wider commercial incentives through larger merch. sales etc. Scotland reverted to an exclusionary viewership model on the other hand. Your average Kilmarnock fan that either doesn't have the means to journey to Dingwall on a Wednesday night in mid-winter or vice-versa or supporters that don't have the money to go to away matches (or home for example) are now excluded rather than being offered a means to access their teams and again look at how we can expand the league. It's a similar policy the SFA adopted with the Scotland team. In short, the prices are nonsense but are completely attune to the hubris engulfing Scottish football.

Get that clown out. Alexander out

Shambles

Fair point regarding the fees however we also just received a fee for Woolery which you would imagine would all but negate at least one of the 3 you mentioned above. I agree with your point regarding the society piling in cash - it would be short term behaviour - however keep in mind that the reason why most supporter invest in the society is the belief that it will transfer to better viewing on the pitch. Whilst it’s never good to not play to the gallery, there is something to be said for a part allocation of cash reserves over and above a certain holding being given towards first team endeavours. At times like this, it’s very easy to pick everything apart which by in large isn’t helpful. It has been mentioned prior however I am really struggling to see why we spent what I can only imagine to be a healthy amount of cash on flying the squad to an Austrian training camp whilst it’s pretty clear to see that we need to invest into new on field talent and yet claim we constantly have no money to strengthen. This isn’t a new phenomenon at Motherwell. I struggled to wrap my head around the frequent apparent hypocrisy of how our senior mens team operates 10 years ago and I still cant quite figure it out today.

In +30 years of watching Motherwell, I can’t remember starting a season like this one. The general apathy/seethe towards the management and direction isn’t countered by any positivity that I can recognize within the support. Loosing to Sligo isn’t the problem (crap result but things happen, they’ve happened to all Scottish teams over the years) but it’s the manner it has happened. We know that the club budget 10th and finished 5th. We know we posted record profits. We know the society board was asked at their last AGM to consider pumping in 600k to strengthen the squad. We know that we have received /will in the near future payments from uefa for qualifying. We know that we released Donnelly, Grimshaw, Roberts, O’Hara, Amaluzor and Nierenold as first team players and have brought in 3 replacements - one of which was to cover for the departing Woolery. So effectively, 2 inbound v 6 outbound. That’s compounded by Watt leaving in January and no one coming in to replace. We know this more acutely than most fan bases because the club is fan owned and details are scrutinized more closely. We also know that since Christmas, we have won 4 matches in 22 competitive games. The evidence is there for all to see. There have been systemic issues for 8 months yet we’ve done nothing to address is it, neither at management or board level. It’s either arrogance, ignorance or a worrying combination of both. For a fan owned club however, the implications of further disenfranchising an already apathetic or angry support are business critical. Something needs to happen and to happen quickly however the lack of action in either signings, meaningful communication or strategic shift suggest anything but is the likely outcome.

Shitfesting your way to Europe is a whole new level of satisfaction

First time caller, long time listener. After 30 years of watching Motherwell, I can safely say that this is the worst I’ve seen. We have absolutely nothing about us. I genuinely had more joy watching Butchers side that finished bottom than this crap. We are rudderless and yes, Alexander needs emptied however this problem is far more fundamental than the club would care to admit. We’re relying on managers coming into the club to set the direction in terms of signings, investment and style. That puts us in a position of tremendous vulnerability and why the ‘rollercoaster’ continues. With the greatest respect to other clubs, Motherwell are probably the 8th biggest club in the country but we don’t act like it. We are left open to the whims of managers because they are given free reign. That’s why you have Robinson’s thunder dome and laterally a plethora of lower league English crap, McGhee’s second spell nothingness and now Alexander’s brand of eye bleed. The core problem is that there is no football leadership within the club. With the greatest respect to the board who I’m sure are all trying their best, they are a group of grey haired accountants with a media man as CEO. No harm to burrows either however what we don’t have within any of them is a vision for football and what we want it to be. That’s why we often end up with a group do out of contract duds in clusters and is probably the definitive reason for disconnect between supporters and club. A fan ownership model dictates the need for longevity in relationships between supporters and the club - it is hugely risky to have a situation where we have now where our main source of income feel apathy towards the club. The only way to address this is for a director of football to be introduced before we change a manager - it’s the sticking plaster before the next shitshow otherwise.