Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[Neil86]

I reckon if Turnbull was to go this summer, we will see him back on loan for the season as part of the deal, we should be pulling out trees to make sure that is part of the deal.

[crazylegsjoe]

Very impressed with this signing. It was only Monday I was expecting it to be Fane and was expressing my reservations about two injury prone players vying for the same role. I'm wondering if we've thought better of Fane, or whether it's possible we sign him too.

As things stand we have Sloth, Campbell, Turnbull, Polworth, Donnelly, Semple, Cornelius and I suppose thinking about it Grimshaw, although he's not played there in a while, as options for the three central midfield berths. It might be that we find that sufficient.

If Turnbull goes (and doesn't get loaned back) I could see the first choice three being Sloth, Campbell and Polworth. Polworth has assists to spare, but nowhere near Turnbull's goal rate. We probably need to realise that the next time we get a centre mid on 15 goals will probably be a long time away, so I'd say our focus should now be on wingers and forwards who have goals in them - no easy task right enough.

Which brings me on to being quite content with the fact Main is leaving. As much as he was "effective" in our new system, we only got away with his lack of goals due to Turnbull and Hastie scoring. If we're going to be without them next season (I hope not in the case of Turnbull), we'll need a striker who can contribute more than 3 league goals. Quite surprised at him getting a move to Aberdeen on one hand, but on the other, they seem to love strikers who don't score goals.

Main scored 8 in his first 16, then 7 in 42 thereafter. This season has made me convinced he went through a purple patch to begin with, rather than a drought now.

 

[Archie McSquackle]

1 hour ago, capt_oats said:

Aye, I clocked it as well but it's the way the video has been put together and I was fucked if I was re-doing the GIF.

Slightly wary that there's not a decent YouTube edit with a Eurotrance soundtrack tbh. Hopefully @thisGRAEME has the login for The Terrace WyScout.

Cards on the table I 100% thought we were going to just announce Fané and give Donnelly a shot at cover or we'd announce some League 1 or 2 jobber. Suffice to say "a skillful and creative midfielder, with vision and ability to both up the tempo and hold on to the ball" with actual international caps for Denmark is quite the fucking curveball.

It feels like we've definitely shown him the Ally Gorrin sales brochure (though tbf the agency he's with is one we seem to have a good relationship with).

Fwiw: here are the profiles of McHugh, Gorrin and the bold Casper (thanks Wiki).

In case anyone's interested this is the video I took the GIF from. It's a weird montage (the halfway line goal is from his "goals" section though).

 

Cheers. Going by that video he did in fact score both those goals! Looks as though we've signed the wrong Casper/Kasper if we were looking for a goalscorer but he's definitely a much better pedigree than we would normally be able to get so hopefully we can get him to rediscover his form.

[Luke92]

Sloth on the face of it looks like a good signing, he seems like a straight Gorrin replacement.  The boy has a very good pedigree let's see how he goes.

On the whole Turnbull debate, I don't think he will be away this summer unless someone comes in with an outrageous bid. The club have made it clear we aren't going to roll over on this one and I hope they stick to their word. Their definition of holding out for 'good money' might be different than mines though. For me, even a record fee of 2 million seems low. We would be mental to accept that sort of money in the summer with 2 years left to run and numerous clubs likely to be interested.

Turnbull is a once in a generation player for Motherwell, I think it's actually wild that some of our fans think 1-2 million is adequate. Another half season of this form and we could be talking 4-5 million. I would genuinely be up in arms if we sold Turnbull for a couple of million this summer. David Turnbull is not going to your run of the mill English Championship team, think directly to a big team abroad or EPL he is that good.

Some strong rumours suggesting Main is off to Aberdeen, very surprised at this. I thought his destination would be back down south.. Why Aberdeen would offer him a deal is beyond me. Maybe a bench warmer I suppose?

Main's last few months were actually no bad tbf, never been a massive fan but his hold up play can be decent at times. As a striker though his goal return is absolutely honking, his record is consistently bad. The Pompey fans hit it right on the money when he joined us 'couldn't hit a barn door' i think was the expression.

If I'm being fair overall Main has done a job for us though, he gave us 100% effort and I'll never forget his goal against Aberdeen at Hampden. Personally though I just never really took to the guy, probably just an on the pitch perception of him but he never seemed very happy to be here. Maybe he is just a miserable guy though... I'm looking forward to see what striking options we can get in, hopefully at least two quality strikers coming in. Johnson clearly doesn't fit into the current 4-3-3 and Scott is very much unproven.

[thisGRAEME]

Someone chuck me a Eurotrance track, and I'll try and get that done later tonight.

[capt_oats]

27 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe said:

Very impressed with this signing. It was only Monday I was expecting it to be Fane and was expressing my reservations about two injury prone players vying for the same role. I'm wondering if we've thought better of Fane, or whether it's possible we sign him too.

As things stand we have Sloth, Campbell, Turnbull, Polworth, Donnelly, Semple, Cornelius and I suppose thinking about it Grimshaw, although he's not played there in a while, as options for the three central midfield berths. It might be that we find that sufficient.

If Turnbull goes (and doesn't get loaned back) I could see the first choice three being Sloth, Campbell and Polworth. Polworth has assists to spare, but nowhere near Turnbull's goal rate. We probably need to realise that the next time we get a centre mid on 15 goals will probably be a long time away, so I'd say our focus should now be on wingers and forwards who have goals in them - no easy task right enough.

Which brings me on to being quite content with the fact Main is leaving. As much as he was "effective" in our new system, we only got away with his lack of goals due to Turnbull and Hastie scoring. If we're going to be without them next season (I hope not in the case of Turnbull), we'll need a striker who can contribute more than 3 league goals. Quite surprised at him getting a move to Aberdeen on one hand, but on the other, they seem to love strikers who don't score goals.

Main scored 8 in his first 16, then 7 in 42 thereafter. This season has made me convinced he went through a purple patch to begin with, rather than a drought now.

I think it may have been @Swello who was advocating having different styles of play. It's encouraging that we seem to be sticking with the #SexyMotherwell brand which seems a good shout against sides around us but looking at the results against those in the towards the top of the league there's probably an argument for being a bit more robust.

I've only seen Fané on his YouTube clips but a 6ft 4" Viera-a-like could almost certainly have a role to play over the course of a season. The other thing is his injury was a break and a dislocation rather than being something more recurring AFAIK (I imagine it'd take some getting over all the same). Sign him up I say.

I thought the comment from Robinson in the Sloth news story was quite emphatic: "”We are continuing to work on transfer targets. Our priorities now lie in bringing in forwards.” It's the one area we're massively short in but I'm guessing we've got a far better idea of what we need/want now. Genuinely interested to see what these signings look like because, as I said earlier, I 100% didn't see a player with the CV Sloth has pitching up.

There's wide-player supposedly almost signed from "a non-league environment" (well, according to Robinson last week). So that's good.

Edited May 22, 2019 by capt_oats

[Desp]

10 minutes ago, Luke92 said:

On the whole Turnbull debate, I don't think he will be away this summer unless someone comes in with an outrageous bid. The club have made it clear we aren't going to roll over on this one and I hope they stick to their word. Their definition of holding out for 'good money' might be different than mines though. For me, even a record fee of 2 million seems low. We would be mental to accept that sort of money in the summer with 2 years left to run and numerous clubs likely to be interested.

Turnbull is a once in a generation player for Motherwell, I think it's actually wild that some of our fans think 1-2 million is adequate. Another half season of this form and we could be talking 4-5 million. I would genuinely be up in arms if we sold Turnbull for a couple of million this summer. David Turnbull is not going to your run of the mill English Championship team, think directly to a big team abroad or EPL he is that good.

 

Where everyone will agree here is about the ability of Turnbull and the likelihood of him reaching the top.  It's impossible to think otherwise.

However, Motherwell won't get £4m or £5m for him, either now or in January.  It's just not going to happen.  He is absolutely a one-off in terms of what our club can produce and bring through, but so was McFadden.  So was Gauld at Dundee Utd, and even Robertson too, despite him being there only a year.  The fees Utd got were £3m and £2.75m respectively.  IMO, that's the absolute maximum we are looking at here.  I could see us dealing for £2.2m-£2.5m with a sell-on clause.  In the position, and debt, we are in, let's not get away from the fact that would be an incredible sum of money for Motherwell Football Club.

Furthermore, regarding his move, you don't want him going straight from Motherwell>the top.  Simply because, the real money for us is in the sell-on clause.  Aberdeen are in line for £6m if Ryan Fraser, as expected, moves on this summer for circa £30m.  John McGinn has spent one season in the Championship and is now valued at around £25m.  Hibs are on a % of his next move too. 

Where I'd be looking for Turnbull to go is someone like Bournemouth, Southampton or one of the promoted clubs like Norwich, Sheff Utd or Villa/Derby where he has a chance of getting into the team.  Alternatively, get him to a top end Championship club like Cardiff, Fulham, Villa/Derby (depending on who stays down), Middlesbrough etc where he can excel like McGinn has and his value will multiply by 10 within a season. 

There is no doubt we could get some serious, serious cash for Turnbull.  It might just take us a few years to collect it all.  

 

[YassinMoutaouakil]

29 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

There's wide-player supposedly almost signed from "a non-league environment" (well, according to Robinson last week). So that's good.

I'm slightly intrigued about what he actually means by this. It's most likely just Robinson's round-about way of saying National League obvously but I'm choosing to ignore that. 

[capt_oats]

1 minute ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:

I'm slightly intrigued about what he actually means by this. It's most likely just Robinson's round-about way of saying National League obvously but I'm choosing to ignore that. 

It's absolutely what he means IMO. What I'm interested in is what sort of player he is. I know he said he's rapid but you had someone like Frear who signed up from Forest Green when they were National League but while he was quick he was also built like the side of a fiver. The flip of that was you had Marvin signing from Kidderminster who was not only rapid but was far more robust.

Given we've seen Gboly make an impact along with Hastie doing the same, I'm curious to see if that's the profile of player we're going for (especially bearing in mind Frear wasn't a Robinson signing).

[MFC97]

53 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

There's wide-player supposedly almost signed from "a non-league environment" (well, according to Robinson last week). So that's good.

The deal for this player is near enough done all he needs to do is sign the dotted line when he comes back from his holiday so this will be announced soon as Flow confirmed on twitter and also we are in talks about getting Ariybi back.

So, so far our team coud potentially be the following for next season:

Goalkeepers

Trevor Carson

Mark Gillespie

 

Defenders

Richard Tait

Liam Grimshaw

Declan Gallagher

Barry Maguire

Charles Dunne

Jake Carroll

Peter Hartley

Adam Livingstone

 

Midfielders

David Turnbull

Allan Campbell

Casper Sloth

Liam Polworth

Chris Cadden (Providing he signs the extension)

Liam Donnelly (Looks like midfield may be his position now)

Craig Tanner (If he proves his fitness)

The Unknown Winger

Gboly Ariybi (If the club do end up getting him)

 

Strikers

Danny Johnson

James Scott

Jamie Semple

 

Looking at that im really looking forward to the new season , if said players sign the extensions that will be great. If we are trying to sign the amount of wingers rumoured then maybe a chance that Tanner might play as a striker? However I feel that with a couple of strikers and maybe a couple of other signings our squad will be complete already. Think most of these signings will happen before the Linfield game at the end of June! Should be good!!

[Luke92]

51 minutes ago, Desp said:

However, Motherwell won't get £4m or £5m for him, either now or in January.  It's just not going to happen.  He is absolutely a one-off in terms of what our club can produce and bring through, but so was McFadden.  So was Gauld at Dundee Utd, and even Robertson too, despite him being there only a year.  The fees Utd got were £3m and £2.75m respectively.  IMO, that's the absolute maximum we are looking at here.  I could see us dealing for £2.2m-£2.5m with a sell-on clause.  In the position, and debt, we are in, let's not get away from the fact that would be an incredible sum of money for Motherwell Football Club.

Furthermore, regarding his move, you don't want him going straight from Motherwell>the top.  Simply because, the real money for us is in the sell-on clause.  Aberdeen are in line for £6m if Ryan Fraser, as expected, moves on this summer for circa £30m.  John McGinn has spent one season in the Championship and is now valued at around £25m.  Hibs are on a % of his next move too. 

Where I'd be looking for Turnbull to go is someone like Bournemouth, Southampton or one of the promoted clubs like Norwich, Sheff Utd or Villa/Derby where he has a chance of getting into the team.  Alternatively, get him to a top end Championship club like Cardiff, Fulham, Villa/Derby (depending on who stays down), Middlesbrough etc where he can excel like McGinn has and his value will multiply by 10 within a season. 

There is no doubt we could get some serious, serious cash for Turnbull.  It might just take us a few years to collect it all.  

Unfortunately if clubs in Scotland continue to have this attitude and accept these fees things will never change.  How long are clubs from England going to plunder the league for next to hee-haw? Robertson and Van Dijk are two of the best defenders in the world now apparently and clubs in this country were given next to nothing for them (even with the add-ons)

James McFadden moved directly to Everton for 1.25m 16 years ago.  Personally I think Turnbull is technically as good (if not better) than McFadden. If the club shares this opinion taking 2m for Turnbull 16 years later seems absolutely wild.  As I alluded to, Turnbull is not just a standard English Championship signing, his technical ability lends itself to a European style. This should ensure that there is a lot of competition for his signature. I think people are going to be very surprised at the level of clubs interested.

With all this being said, I don't think the boy is in any rush to move this summer. He seems to be really enjoying things.

Edited May 22, 2019 by Luke92

[YassinMoutaouakil]

26 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

It's absolutely what he means IMO. What I'm interested in is what sort of player he is. I know he said he's rapid but you had someone like Frear who signed up from Forest Green when they were National League but while he was quick he was also built like the side of a fiver. The flip of that was you had Marvin signing from Kidderminster who was not only rapid but was far more robust.

Given we've seen Gboly make an impact along with Hastie doing the same, I'm curious to see if that's the profile of player we're going for (especially bearing in mind Frear wasn't a Robinson signing).

Scenes when it's some boy from Wishaw Juniors.

[dezz]

Clubs will be knocking our door down with offers of £5m+ when DT robs Vertonghen and pings one into the top bin from 25 yards over in Brussels in 3 weeks time.

[Poet of the Macabre]

Loved reading the European away day tales guys, thanks.

[Desp]

13 minutes ago, Luke92 said:

Unfortunately if clubs in Scotland continue to have this attitude and accept these fees things will never change.  How long are clubs from England going to plunder the league for next to hee-haw? Robertson and Van Dijk are two of the best defenders in the world now apparently and clubs in this country were given next to nothing for them (even with the add-ons)

Unfortunately, if Scottish clubs outwith the big two decide to stand firm and demand £10-£15m for players, clubs in England or Europe will sit tight for a couple of years and pick the player up for f**k all when his contract runs out. 

Of course, if David Turnbull played in England he would be going for funny money, but he doesn't.  English clubs have the guarantee of tens, if not hundreds of millions coming their way each summer through TV and sponsorship.  That means they can effectively name their price for players they sell as they don't need the funds as much, plus they know the other club has plenty of their own cash.  We don't, therefore we can't.

I agree with the rest of what you say, but at the end of the day football is a business.  What do MFC turnover in a year?  About £5m?  So you're asking clubs to double our annual turnover in exchange for one, albeit a very good, player.  Doubtful. 

I agree there will be many clubs looking at him, many of which will be of the highest calibre.  I don't think any of the names on the list would shock me, or most other 'Well fans.  Still, David and his representatives need to pick the right move to ensure he plays wherever he ends up next.  Plenty of young British players going over to Germany.  It wouldn't surprise me if some of them were having a look.  Does he go there?  Or does he take a small step to somewhere like the Championship before making his next big jump.

The 'Catch 22' MFC have now, as a business, is that as we approach the final two years of his contract, his value will depreciate each window.  As much as Motherwell fans will want to see him in a C&A shirt, we have this window and probably the next to get 'maximum' value for him. 

[weemac]

56 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

It's absolutely what he means IMO. What I'm interested in is what sort of player he is. I know he said he's rapid but you had someone like Frear who signed up from Forest Green when they were National League but while he was quick he was also built like the side of a fiver. The flip of that was you had Marvin signing from Kidderminster who was not only rapid but was far more robust.

Given we've seen Gboly make an impact along with Hastie doing the same, I'm curious to see if that's the profile of player we're going for (especially bearing in mind Frear wasn't a Robinson signing).

I saw on twitter yesterday that we were interested in Notts County right winger Enzio Boldewijn.  No idea how reliable the source is though. 

[Busta Nut]

If we get £3m for Turnbull it will be a miracle.

 

Talk of funny money is fantasy stuff.

Would be ideal thought.

[thisGRAEME]

31 minutes ago, weemac said:

I saw on twitter yesterday that we were interested in Notts County right winger Enzio Boldewijn.  No idea how reliable the source is though. 

I've never seen him and I don't know who he is but I'm in.

ENZIO BOLDYIN?!

Sign him up.

Edited May 22, 2019 by thisGRAEME

[Swello]

52 minutes ago, Luke92 said:

Unfortunately if clubs in Scotland continue to have this attitude and accept these fees things will never change.  How long are clubs from England going to plunder the league for next to hee-haw?

The sad answer is that while our clubs continue to pay a relative pittance compared to the silly money down south, then English clubs will be perfectly at liberty behave as they do now. Agents are hugely incentivised to move their scottish-based players on to England as early and as "cheaply" as possible as a result of the money on offer, so it's the harsh reality of the situation. 

@Desp nails it above - the best path for us with our best prospects is to sell to a "2nd order" club for a decent fee in the calculation that if they then move to an "apex" club, the sell-on would be way beyond what we could ever hope to generate.  This has the good side effect that as a player from a club like us would massively struggle to get the game time they need to develop at a very top club where guys that cost £50m can be sitting on the bench - their best development opportunity lies at precisely the sort of club we need to sell to. This should mean club, agent and player are after the same thing....

[Neil86]

47 minutes ago, weemac said:

I saw on twitter yesterday that we were interested in Notts County right winger Enzio Boldewijn.  No idea how reliable the source is though. 

Would tie in with the non league enviroment to an extent as they have just been relegated to the national league.