Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[YassinMoutaouakil]

[capt_oats]

Wee bit of content from big Robbo and some more screentime for DT.

Genuinely not sure where Robinson's getting this "people are waiting on us making lots of signings" line from like. Then again I never read the mentions so who knows...maybe there's a Twitter pile-on for us to sign half a dozen that I'm not aware of.

Of the 3 long term injuries - Ilic, Dunne and Turnbull...none are a centre-forward and we've lost Cole. I'd honestly have thought 1 or 2 max is what most rational folk would be expecting.

Edited January 11, 2020 by capt_oats

[craigkillie]

On 10/01/2020 at 16:34, weemac said:

Rumours on twitter we are signing a forward on loan from Bournemouth, the name being mentioned (by one guy) is former Kilmarnock loanee Mickael Ndjoli. 

No idea if there is any substance to it but its at least a name to discuss. 

I thought he was absolute tripe. Scored a couple of great goals but regularly looked completely lost out on the pitch. Rarely been as furious at an individual performance as I was at his as the lone "striker" against Hearts at Rugby Park last February when we were still very much in the title race.

[dezz]

That’s Kyle Lafferty signed a deal with Sunderland so we can scrub that one off the list, if he was actually ever on it.

[Archie McSquackle]

I hear Alan Burrows said on Off The Ball that we have a closed doors midweek game at Hibs. Makes sense as we both have Championship opposition in the cup and we've admitted to being caught a bit cold against County last year.

[nsr]

Perhaps when Turnbull returns we won't need a striker.,,

[RandomGuy.]

26 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

when we were still very much in the title race.

Do Kilmarnock fans actually believe that? That loss put you 4th and 9 points off the top.

[craigkillie]

1 hour ago, RandomGuy. said:

Do Kilmarnock fans actually believe that? That loss put you 4th and 9 points off the top.

If you're 6 points off the top with 15 games left, have objectively been the best team in the country over the previous year, and have consistently shown yourselves to be able to beat both Rangers and Celtic, then yes you tend to think that you still have a chance. If we had beaten Hearts that night we would have (at least temporarily) gone to within 3 points of Celtic.

Edited January 11, 2020 by craigkillie

[supermarv]

I’d have thought we’d expect maybe 3/4 fresh faces to brighten up our very good squad and get some of the younger prospects out on loan. We 110% need a striker everyone knows that, we lost an important(ish) player in Cole who needs replaced. Our wingers have been pretty hot and cold (Hylton in my opinion has been the best out of all), James Scott has the potential to do it for us and turn it on at times but I think we need to add some quality in the wide areas as an injury to any would hurt us. Ilic coming back could be like a new player, same with Sloth. 
 

Some will disagree here but if Gillespie isn’t going to sign a new deal then I’d sell him and get some cash. Get Carson in as first choice and a back up on a short term deal with Ferguson coming back in the summer to challenge Carson. 
 

So to me I’d say as it stands we need a striker, a winger which is only 2 but we may see outgoings or injuries that require us to get back into the market. 

[Archie McSquackle]

I suppose a lot of it depends on how close some are to recovering from injury. Dunne will be like a new player for us but yes, a centre forward and winger would be lovely.

[Gianfranco]

Losing Gallagher to the championship this month would be a huge blow. I’d be looking for more than the 500k being mentioned as well.

 

Hartley and Dunne would be an alright partnership but both are injury prone and Dunne is nowhere near as good as Gallagher on the ball. Declan is also a fucking leader. I wouldn’t be comfortable relying on Mugabi either but he’s not had a chance on his favoured right side yet to be fair to him. Our tactics might have to change without Gallagher’s composure on the ball.

 

[18May1991]

2 minutes ago, Gianfranco said:

Losing Gallagher to the championship this month would be a huge blow. I’d be looking for more than the 500k being mentioned as well.

Hartley and Dunne would be an alright partnership but both are injury prone. I wouldn’t be comfortable relying on Mugabi.

Is this a thing? Not read about it anywhere. Who’s looking at him? 

[Ron Aldo]

Is this a thing? Not read about it anywhere. Who’s looking at him? 

I'm sure it was Wigan, Bristol City and Swansea mentioned.

On another note, I hadn't realised Ilic was injured. I just thought he was out the picture so I'm quite glad there's still a chance he could make the team purely on the basis that he seems to have good patter.

[Desp]

8 hours ago, supermarv said:

Some will disagree here but if Gillespie isn’t going to sign a new deal then I’d sell him and get some cash. Get Carson in as first choice and a back up on a short term deal with Ferguson coming back in the summer to challenge Carson. 

A valid theory, but considering we've not had a single bid for him in the 18 months he's been at Fir Park, why would clubs throw money at us for a player they can get for nothing in a couple of months? 

I'm absolutely delighted that Carson is staying, but I'm somewhat reluctant to change the goalkeeper at this point when really, there's no reason to do so. Gillespie is, rightly, the no.1 at this point. We're third in the League, going well so unless there's a clear drop in form he should continue in goal. 

[supermarv]

32 minutes ago, Desp said:

A valid theory, but considering we've not had a single bid for him in the 18 months he's been at Fir Park, why would clubs throw money at us for a player they can get for nothing in a couple of months? 

I'm absolutely delighted that Carson is staying, but I'm somewhat reluctant to change the goalkeeper at this point when really, there's no reason to do so. Gillespie is, rightly, the no.1 at this point. We're third in the League, going well so unless there's a clear drop in form he should continue in goal. 

Basically just make clubs aware he’d be available at a price and get him and his agent talking to clubs. I’m sure we’d get a fee of around 200-300k for him. 
 

It’s not like selling him would cost us any money (league position wise) as Carson is just as good if not better. I do understand your point though why change if it’s working. 

[supermarv]

1 hour ago, Gianfranco said:

Losing Gallagher to the championship this month would be a huge blow. I’d be looking for more than the 500k being mentioned as well.

 

Hartley and Dunne would be an alright partnership but both are injury prone and Dunne is nowhere near as good as Gallagher on the ball. Declan is also a fucking leader. I wouldn’t be comfortable relying on Mugabi either but he’s not had a chance on his favoured right side yet to be fair to him. Our tactics might have to change without Gallagher’s composure on the ball.

 

There’s no way we should be allowed to part with big dec this window. If he’d been here for another season we’d be talking about one of the best defenders of the decade for us here. He is slightly older so some of these moves can be life changing for him as he’s pretty much been an average Scottish player jumping from club to club and had a pretty hard last 5 years. 
 

If someone offers in the summer I’d reluctantly let him go only for 1.5 million+ we need to stand firm and get what we are owed. 

[Casagolda]

Gillespie won’t be going anywhere this month and unless his form massively dips, I highly doubt he’ll be dropped in the foreseeable future.  

Gallagher has been immense since signing and given his age(29 next month), it’d be hard to begrudge him a decent move should the opportunity arise. However unless an absolutely mental bid comes in, that conversation can hopefully wait till the summer. 

We’re 3rd in the league and in absolutely no danger. So there’s little point panicking and bringing in bodies for the sake of it to further bloat what is already a pretty large squad. We certainly don’t need and won’t be be bringing in 3 or 4 new players. 

We need to try and replace Cole, other than that I honestly can’t see us being overly busy. Although it sounds like even that’s proving difficult and we’ve had at least one deal fall through already. 

Edited January 12, 2020 by Casagolda

[capt_oats]

3 hours ago, Gianfranco said:

Losing Gallagher to the championship this month would be a huge blow. I’d be looking for more than the 500k being mentioned as well.

Hartley and Dunne would be an alright partnership but both are injury prone and Dunne is nowhere near as good as Gallagher on the ball. Declan is also a fucking leader. I wouldn’t be comfortable relying on Mugabi either but he’s not had a chance on his favoured right side yet to be fair to him. Our tactics might have to change without Gallagher’s composure on the ball.

Given we've spent the last 6 months raising Gallagher's profile and turning him into both a sellable asset and an international footballer I'd like to think that we'd have been self aware enough to realise that there might be interest in him during this window but equally unless a Championship side rocks up to Fir Park with a massive bag of cash for both us and him I'd like to think that it's something that could be parked until the summer - similar to Kipré.

It's interesting that all three clubs are from down the road - which is a step up in profile from his options having been us and St Johnstone last January. Another win of sorts for the strategy.

Again, it's been said previously about other players but I'd think the club would be delighted that our players are getting attention from Championship level clubs especially at a point in the season where we're offering out PCAs to folk - and will actively be encouraging it.

2 hours ago, Desp said:

A valid theory, but considering we've not had a single bid for him in the 18 months he's been at Fir Park, why would clubs throw money at us for a player they can get for nothing in a couple of months? 

I'm absolutely delighted that Carson is staying, but I'm somewhat reluctant to change the goalkeeper at this point when really, there's no reason to do so. Gillespie is, rightly, the no.1 at this point. We're third in the League, going well so unless there's a clear drop in form he should continue in goal. 

100%. Randoph's the one everyone uses as an example (with good reason). The only reason we got the offer for Carson was the injury to Gordon that led to Celtic phoning round every 'keeper they could think of like they were short of a body for 5s at the last minute.

It's easy to say "we should sell Gillespie if he doesn't sign" but it needs another club to want to buy him with 6 months left on his deal. We saw with Moult that it's the sort of circumstance that actually needs a fair bit of work upfront to sort out.

I'd like to think that the actual transition would be something that we've discussed with Carson when we've been talking to him about signing his new deal.

50 minutes ago, Casagolda said:

Gillespie won’t be going anywhere this month and unless his form massively dips, I highly doubt he’ll be dropped in the foreseeable future.  

Gallagher has been immense since signing and given his age (29 next month), it’d be hard to begrudge him a decent move should the opportunity arise. However unless an absolutely mental bid comes in, that conversation can hopefully wait till the summer. 

We’re 3rd in the league and we’re in absolutely no danger. So there’s little point panicking and bringing in bodies for the sake of it to further bloat what is already a pretty large squad. We certainly don’t need and won’t be be bringing in 3 or 4 new players. 

We need to try and replace Cole, other than that I honestly can’t see us being overly busy. Although it sounds like even that’s proving difficult and we’ve had at least one deal fall through already. 

^^^^ This.

Currently all in - including injured players plus Reserves who are around the 1st team (Semple & MacIver) - our squad counts in at 24 bodies. The only obvious incoming is to replace Cole who's out the door.

There are clearly players who haven't had much by way of game time (looking at you Casper) but ultimately the squad seems pretty balanced and the there's a reason that it's a cliche that the January window is difficult to do business in. Someone like Sloth still has 1.5 years of his deal to run so unless someone comes in to take him off our hands it's unlikely we're going to pay him off.

Our market is literally players who aren't getting a game at their current club or have explicitly been told to please f**k off - we've done OK with some, less so with others.

Given our numbers and general league position and form unless there are players moving on it'd doubtful we'd disrupt what we have or in a financial sense - spend money we don't have to bringing in additional players.

Edited January 12, 2020 by capt_oats

[Busta Nut]

I'd get Carson in the first team. Selling Gillespie is a lovely thought. As mentioned it's not gonna be done though.

[Casagolda]

53 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

Our market is literally players who aren't getting a game at their current club or have explicitly been told to please f**k off - we've done OK with some, less so with others.

On this, clocked yesterday that David Vanecek claimed we tried to sign him during the summer when he was hunted by Hearts. 

Quote

"The manager from Motherwell called but for me it wasn't good money and that was a problem and was why I left Scotland."

 

Fair enough I suppose. 

A 6’4 target man though, guess that would kind of tie in with the kind of striker Robinson was/is looking for.