Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[YassinMoutaouakil]

4 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

There it is...

 

Lovely weather in North Lanarkshire by the looks of things.

[Ray Patterson]

So just need to get that New Stadium built then eh?

 

[Ludo*1]

I'd like to take this moment to honour you with the title of best run diddy club in the land. St Johnstone have been hoarding that trophy for far too long.

And I'm jealous as f**k of you.

[YassinMoutaouakil]

Tbh paying off your debt instead of simply ignoring it is decidedly not Establishment Club behaviour. Burrows out.

[Phillips455]

Ticket prices for the replay are out. £12 Adults, £6 Consessions and £3 for kids.

 

[supermarv]

Any confirmation of the trialist?

[well fan for life]

Presumably, now we're debt free, work will now begin on the Tony Straker statue?

[YassinMoutaouakil]

48 minutes ago, well fan for life said:

Presumably, now we're debt free, work will now begin on the Tony Straker statue?

I'm sure Knowetop Primary don't really need that football pitch.

[well fan for life]

23 minutes ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:

I'm sure Knowetop Primary don't really need that football pitch.

Yassin, thank you.

[Green Day]

13 hours ago, ArabAuslander said:

So just need to get that New Stadium built then eh?

 

I know this was a bit of a tongue in cheek comment, but it does raise a decent point about fan / community owned clubs and their ability to raise money in the normal way for large infrastructure projects.

I guess at least Well did not do the "Lets go into administration and ditch a load of debt route" which cuts off the possibility of mainstream lending in the future................as other clubs have discovered.

n.b. back on topic, congratulations to Motherwell on becoming debt free for the first time in (iirc?) 40 years.

[gannonball]

Motherwell seem to be doing everything right.

If you look at best ran clubs in Clubs in Scotland you could argue St. Johnstone are a well run club but have little in the way of decent fans engagement and their crowds prove that even in times of recent success.

Hamilton could be seen as as a well run club with a decent youth after punching above their weight for so long with a decent youth system/policy but donating money to Nigerian generals is a rather speculative approach.

I could then look at Hearts, Livingston etc but like those listed above they also have flaws, some more obvious than others. My club is obviously well run but hard to compare because of size and resources. 

 

Motherwell spend within their means, have probably the best club social media in Scotland, promote from within both on and off the pitch. Their youth system has been pretty decent for a while now and generally have an eye for decent relatively unproven coaches/managers. Add in community involvement and its a struggle to see anywhere they have been  going wrong. If any other club in Scotland is looking to go down fan ownership they should be looking at Motherwell’s set up. 
 

ETA - Killie could be seen as a well run club these days but still early days for them yet and trying to decide how much of it was the Steve Clarke effect.

 

Edited February 11, 2020 by gannonball

[ropy]

6 minutes ago, gannonball said:

Motherwell seem to be doing everything right.

If you look at best ran clubs in Clubs in Scotland you could argue St. Johnstone are a well run club but have little in the way of decent fans engagement and their crowds prove that even in times of recent success.

Hamilton could be seen as as a well run club with a decent youth after punching above their weight for so long with a decent youth system/policy but donating money to Nigerian generals is a rather speculative approach.

I could then look at Hearts, Livingston etc but like those listed above they also have flaws, some more obvious than others. My club is obviously well run but hard to compare because of size and resources. 

 

Motherwell spend within their means, have probably the best club social media in Scotland, promote from within both on and off the pitch. Their youth system has been pretty decent for a while now and generally have an eye for decent relatively unproven coaches/managers. Add in community involvement and its a struggle to see anywhere they have been  going wrong. If any other club in Scotland is looking to go down fan ownership they should be looking at Motherwell’s set up. 

 

Diddy team found

[Ray Patterson]

1 hour ago, Green Day said:

I know this was a bit of a tongue in cheek comment, but it does raise a decent point about fan / community owned clubs and their ability to raise money in the normal way for large infrastructure projects.

I guess at least Well did not do the "Lets go into administration and ditch a load of debt route" which cuts off the possibility of mainstream lending in the future................as other clubs have discovered.

n.b. back on topic, congratulations to Motherwell on becoming debt free for the first time in (iirc?) 40 years.

Tbh where they are based can be sold for Housing at quite a reasonable rate, they could probably sell that patch of land for £8-12m depending on other factors. A good new stadium (not a boring St Mirren Park) cost about £17m, so they'd probably need to receive a sizeable loan from elsewhere, maybe a low-interest loan from NLC would be the way to go?

[Swello]

2 hours ago, Green Day said:

I know this was a bit of a tongue in cheek comment, but it does raise a decent point about fan / community owned clubs and their ability to raise money in the normal way for large infrastructure projects.

I guess at least Well did not do the "Lets go into administration and ditch a load of debt route" which cuts off the possibility of mainstream lending in the future................as other clubs have discovered.

 

It will be interesting to see how we go from here. Based on what I heard at our AGM in December, a proper training ground is top of the shopping list (I think it was in the shopping cart, the paypal details were in and the cursor was over "complete order" before Turnbull's transfer fell through) and that will be illustrative of how we approach capital funding. I might be wrong but I'm not sure "normal" borrowing is an option for us, even 20-odd years on from Administration.

The chat at the AGM was about "alternative funding models" which I took to mean following a similar path to the way we paid off our debts - ie, some form of soft loan that we pay back through a percentage of transfer fees & profits. This feels totally feasible for a training ground - but I honestly don't know how a new stadium would be funded.

[RandomGuy.]

2 hours ago, gannonball said:

If you look at best ran clubs in Clubs in Scotland you could argue St. Johnstone are a well run club but have little in the way of decent fans engagement and their crowds prove that even in times of recent success.

We only looked like a well run club until we didnt...

A warning there for those chucking their hats into praising Motherwell and encouraging all clubs to follow their model, just as I thought people were too quick to praise our "model". 

A successful business model doesnt show itself during the good times, only in the bad, it remains to be seen how Motherwells model will do if/when they have a poor season and no sellable options.

Obviously the "model" will try and prevent that and that's the whole point, but its not always possible.

[gannonball]

1 minute ago, RandomGuy. said:

We only looked like a well run club until we didnt...

A warning there for those chucking their hats into praising Motherwell and encouraging all clubs to follow their model, just as I thought people were too quick to praise our "model". 

A successful business model doesnt show itself during the good times, only in the bad, it remains to be seen how Motherwells model will do if/when they have a poor season and no sellable options.

Obviously the "model" will try and prevent that and that's the whole point, but its not always possible.

I think you may have misunderstood me. I still think Saints are a well run club tbh, I just think they don't do themselves any favour in terms of growth.  Its been mentioned on here a few times  regarding failing to capitalise on the cup win with late merch and season ticket packs etc. Your man Brown finally seems to be relenting a bit over control now though so may be more susceptible to fans engagement. My point really is that whilst there are well run clubs in this league Motherwell seems to tick all the boxes.

[Kyle]

18 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

We only looked like a well run club until we didnt...

A warning there for those chucking their hats into praising Motherwell and encouraging all clubs to follow their model, just as I thought people were too quick to praise our "model". 

A successful business model doesnt show itself during the good times, only in the bad, it remains to be seen how Motherwells model will do if/when they have a poor season and no sellable options.

Obviously the "model" will try and prevent that and that's the whole point, but its not always possible.

If bad times are not finishing below 8th place over a decade, then bring on more bad times.

Doesn't lessen your point though - Motherwell are streets ahead of us in terms of pr, fan engagement, how they recruit (ie it's not just down to the manager pulling rabbits out of the hat in the last week of every transfer window) and have now joined us in being debt free (or at least debt free to outside creditors). I think a good example of the difference between the two clubs came in the last couple of months of last season. It would have been easy to forget that we actually finished about Motherwell last season as their fans were clearly buzzing and we were on a total downer and I think a lot of that was down to the messaging coming out of the respective clubs. 

I'd say Motherwell are the example those who wish to go down the fan ownership route should follow. From the outside looking in, there's a real sense of 'this is our club', something that we have been sorely lacking. If Motherwell win a cup - say they win the Scottish cup this year - there's no way they wont capatlise on it. I'm sure the messaging would be constant, inclusive and probably result in a big upturn in season ticket sales. We effectively shut down for 6 weeks after our cup win and then the chairman refused to sign any new players, after we'd released 4 or 5. If it wasn't for a decent result in Europe against Luzern the good feeling would've been gone before a league ball was kicked the following season. We got a few hundred extra season tickets I think but that's returned (possibly even lowered) from the pre cup win numbers now.

God I hate Motherwell, but in the nicest possible way. It's so infuriiating to see a comparable (albeit slightly bigger) club doing these things so well and to see us looking so amateur. At least we always get the Saints lotto results at 12:30 on a Wednesday though.

 

Edited February 11, 2020 by Kyle

[RandomGuy.]

16 minutes ago, gannonball said:

I think you may have misunderstood me. I still think Saints are a well run club tbh, I just think they don't do themselves any favour in terms of growth.  Its been mentioned on here a few times  regarding failing to capitalise on the cup win with late merch and season ticket packs etc. Your man Brown finally seems to be relenting a bit over control now though so may be more susceptible to fans engagement. My point really is that whilst there are well run clubs in this league Motherwell seems to tick all the boxes.

I'm saying we aren't, and have never been, a well run football club, we're a well run business.

People seem to rave about us as if we've done some incredible thing, when all that happened was we didnt spunk millions down a drain in the 90s/00s and have been able to capitalise on being one of the richer clubs since. Without McDiarmid Park we'd be nowhere near the top flight.

This whole "other clubs should follow their plan!" line that gets trotted out seems to ignore about 90% of issues holding clubs back from copying that plan.

[Al B]

2005 you work behind a bar in a hotel, and in your spare time you're a regular Motherwell poster on Pie & Bovril.

Fast forward 15 years and you're the CEO of the club, you have transformed it on and off the park, made them debt free for the first time since before you were born, overseen fan ownership, been awarded CEO of the year and nominated onto the SPFL Board of Directors.

I mean, my life's been fairly decent but....ffs!!

[Swello]

24 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

A successful business model doesnt show itself during the good times, only in the bad, it remains to be seen how Motherwells model will do if/when they have a poor season and no sellable options.

I think this is a fair point. At the afore-mentioned AGM, it was pretty explicit that our "model" remains feasible in a season where we finish 10th and get pumped out both cups early but it wouldn't survive a relegation for long. 

I don't think it's worth going over the top as like any other mid-sized club - it still remains a very marginal business in a normal season. Where I do think we are a good example and worth praising is that we have - within very tight financial constraints - put a lot a "building blocks" in place that set us up well for the medium term. We've put in place a good coaching infrastructure/youth setup, we seem to have as good -if not better - a recruitment policy as our peers, we've got as good a media/PR team as there is in a club of our size and through fan ownership and media, we seem to have got the supporter (and especially younger supporter) engagement stuff right.

All of those pieces mean that there is a sense that club is on an upward curve, almost separate to the on field stuff (where 3 losses in a row is still a crisis worthy of a sacking just as its always been)...