Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[Kapowzer]

Not that it matters any more but Sligo or Viking will play:

FC DAC 1904 top of the Slovakian League after 3 games (6.500) or

FCSB (formerly known as Steaua Bucharest) 14th in their league also after three games (17.500).

[Handsome_Devil]

6 hours ago, Kapowzer said:

My criticism is we've often not taken advantage of the good times as much as we could or should have. Success on the park and the extra revenues you get from that is often felt like it is frittered away. 3rd-2nd-2nd, Two cup runs in 2017/18, 3rd and Europa 2020, 5th and ECL 2022. But successful teams are often pillaged especially it can be relatively cheap to hoover up our best performers.

How would you have taken advantage? I don't disagree btw, I just think it's very hard given the cyclical nature of success.

Partly this is how we budget - any extra used to be split in three, for now, for next season and for the season after that. Whether that's still the case I don't know but I imagine there's still an element at least.

Speculating to accumulate for us is hugely dangerous once you get beyond the amount needed to survive - we'd still be spending way less than the city clubs so achieving the success needed to pay it back is hard, missing means cutting next year to make up.

Off topic but if I were a Dundee United or, to a lesser extent, Hibs fan I would be very nervous right now...

And back to us, partly we have a fear of hubris...I wanted us to make a bigger deal of Europe, we'd have looked like right mugs had we done so. The year Hearts started well Levein got asked if fans could dream of the title, and he gave a perfectly reasonable asnwer (essentially: f**k it, why not, dream when it's there to enjoy) and within months he had them on the motorway to relegation.

I think, without tempting fate, we could be a little more bullish or inspiring but I can understand why those in charge aren't keen.

[Phillips455]

7 hours ago, Kapowzer said:

Not that it matters any more but Sligo or Viking will play:

FC DAC 1904 top of the Slovakian League after 3 games (6.500) or

FCSB (formerly known as Steaua Bucharest) 14th in their league also after three games (17.500).

Ffs. That would have been the easiest path to the group stages that we could have had (I think). We just had to completely collapse against sligo eh?

[Swami]

The whole thing’s on YouTube (it’s not as good as you remember but the version of Freak Scene is still amazing). 

[For Your Pies Only]

You could definitely argue, with some justification, that a larger percentage of prize money could have been put back into playing budgets over the last 10 years or so but personally I'd be hesitant to say we haven't taken advantage of windfall cash in general. Using it to pay off debts, build up contingency funds and upgrade facilities seems like a more sustainable way of consolidating success than investing extra cash directly in wages and transfer fees imho. It's rare for us to see players spend more than 3-4 years at the club now so building a settled team long term is a luxury I don't think clubs at our level have any more.

[Londonwell]

55 minutes ago, For Your Pies Only said:

You could definitely argue, with some justification, that a larger percentage of prize money could have been put back into playing budgets over the last 10 years or so but personally I'd be hesitant to say we haven't taken advantage of windfall cash in general. Using it to pay off debts, build up contingency funds and upgrade facilities seems like a more sustainable way of consolidating success than investing extra cash directly in wages and transfer fees imho. It's rare for us to see players spend more than 3-4 years at the club now so building a settled team long term is a luxury I don't think clubs at our level have any more.

I've no idea what are budgets are but I feel like we've actually spent quite a lot (relatively) on the playing budget in the last couple of years. Modest transfer fee's and 3 year deals have become much more of the norm. I've no issue with that side of things with the club at all, I'm not sure why anyone would have.

There's a different debate to be had on whether we aren't particularly great atm due to the wrong players being brought in or whether those players weren't being managed effectively to maximise their usefulness to the team. I guess time may tell on that one. But that shouldn't be a criticism of budgets, so I'm not sure where those arguments are coming from. 

[Swello]

43 minutes ago, For Your Pies Only said:

You could definitely argue, with some justification, that a larger percentage of prize money could have been put back into playing budgets over the last 10 years or so but personally I'd be hesitant to say we haven't taken advantage of windfall cash in general. Using it to pay off debts, build up contingency funds and upgrade facilities seems like a more sustainable way of consolidating success than investing extra cash directly in wages and transfer fees imho. It's rare for us to see players spend more than 3-4 years at the club now so building a settled team long term is a luxury I don't think clubs at our level have any more.

Agree with this. I think given what we've been through over the past 20 years or so, success to me is still "have a club that exists and is in the top flight" - the fact that the first part of that now seems at least stable under fan ownership and we have no external debt means that the 2nd part remains easier to deliver on.

I know this sounds like low ambition stuff but I still look at the 2nd and 3rd tiers of Scottish Football and see lots of clubs that could be us if a couple of sliding doors moments had gone the other way. The fact that most of us have only seen Motherwell in the top flight is properly ridiculous, makes us unique amongst town clubs and is probably the biggest sign of success for us.

I think the fact that in terms of league performance that we've pretty much outperformed every peer of ours and even matched some larger clubs over an extended 15-20 year period leaves us with the problem of "where now?" that not many other clubs have. (Leaving cups aside for now) the only thing that would be a real game changer for us now would be (ironically), consistent european qualification and making it to the Conference group stage to access that sort of money.  Winning a cup is the thing we need to do as we've underperformed there and it is quite good fun - but that wouldn't change anything long term in any way.

[capt_oats]

1 hour ago, For Your Pies Only said:

You could definitely argue, with some justification, that a larger percentage of prize money could have been put back into playing budgets over the last 10 years or so but personally I'd be hesitant to say we haven't taken advantage of windfall cash in general. Using it to pay off debts, build up contingency funds and upgrade facilities seems like a more sustainable way of consolidating success than investing extra cash directly in wages and transfer fees imho. It's rare for us to see players spend more than 3-4 years at the club now so building a settled team long term is a luxury I don't think clubs at our level have any more.

To that point, it's probably worth revisiting the past decade or so of finances and it's always worth remembering Dempster's wacky approach to budgets/budgeting.

Here are the P&L figures going back to 2010/11:

2010/11: £541,863
2011/12: (£600,000)
2012/13: (£184,500)
2013/14: (£184,854)
2014/15: (£1,150,000)
2015/16: (£412,000)
2016/17: (£104,000)
2017/18: £1,720,000
2018/19: (£436,000)
2019/20: £346,590
2020/21: £3,575,615

The transition to fan ownership happened earlier than planned in 2016 with Hutchison bailing - I'm sure it's no coincidence that it's around that point where things start to turn from red to black.

Edited August 3, 2022 by capt_oats

[Swello]

Losing money when finishing 2nd tells its own story about what it costs us to put a great team together.

[Kapowzer]

4 hours ago, Handsome_Devil said:

How would you have taken advantage? I don't disagree btw, I just think it's very hard given the cyclical nature of success.

Partly this is how we budget - any extra used to be split in three, for now, for next season and for the season after that. Whether that's still the case I don't know but I imagine there's still an element at least.

Speculating to accumulate for us is hugely dangerous once you get beyond the amount needed to survive - we'd still be spending way less than the city clubs so achieving the success needed to pay it back is hard, missing means cutting next year to make up.

Off topic but if I were a Dundee United or, to a lesser extent, Hibs fan I would be very nervous right now...

And back to us, partly we have a fear of hubris...I wanted us to make a bigger deal of Europe, we'd have looked like right mugs had we done so. The year Hearts started well Levein got asked if fans could dream of the title, and he gave a perfectly reasonable asnwer (essentially: f**k it, why not, dream when it's there to enjoy) and within months he had them on the motorway to relegation.

I think, without tempting fate, we could be a little more bullish or inspiring but I can understand why those in charge aren't keen.

I kinda touched on it, we have 3,500 seats in our home stands that are already covered by existing matchday expenses. Every extra seat sold costs nothing but adds something. Have a target to increase that year on year, even if it's modest say 7% of current adult numbers .... 250 (250 x £330 av price = £82,500 or £1,600 p/w for those who go on wages). The atmosphere sitting tooth by jowl last week was what football is all about for me. Of course it will top out but the population of the Motherwell area has grown massively over my lifetime. I moved to the town as a 1 year old and despite family allegiances elsewhere decided to support my local club. I can't be alone.

Fair play to you if an existing season ticket holder and you have a £10 Well Society DD set up, £120 on top of you season ticket every year isn't personally for me. I'd rather they grew the membership rather than pumped the existing people for more. Tie ins with season tickets, but one and £150 goes to the WS, club  keeps the rest, do that for two seasons you have a signed up WS member and the club while not having £660 in the bank does have £360. WS funds in theory flow back to the club when called upon.

We have a great story to tell commercially and for prospective talent. A good conveyer belt from our academy most who make it ot the first team move on for +£350k to 10x that with Turnbull. We given Campbell, Scott, Hastie and Cadden then strong potential to become millionaires (two of them already are). Fan owned, non sectarian, community focused ... all values and ideals many corporates would be happy to align with.

Targeting the easy wins financially. Collectively we all seen Sligo as a formality (in the same way that Morton should have) and it could have been if we were sufficiently prepared.

Our best dealings in the transfer market were off the back of need, summer of 2017 being a good example. In the good times such as the summer of 2018, two cup run windfalls were frittered away. We'll probably never know the full extent of our transfer business in advance of the 21st of July. Would going into the game with a centre half, left back and alternative striking option made the difference, certainly would have given us more of a fighting chance. If they rock up to FP on deadline day I'd just wonder why they were not available 6 weeks before.

We're now in an era of no existing debits to Boyle or Les. The stadium has the potential to require minimal intervention during the summer break and attract outside games for extra revenues. Everything has had a lick of paint, new seats, even a semi-malfunctioning scoreboard. All good investments, we just have to make sure we don't end up with the nicest stadium in the Championship.

[Londonwell]

9 minutes ago, Swello said:

Losing money when finishing 2nd tells its own story about what it costs us to put a great team together.

I may be misremembering but was the chat at the time not that our payment structure for players was heavily influenced by win bonuses significantly topping up the wages. Given we won a hell of a lot of the games around that time it very nearly put us in significant financial trouble. Seems quite an irresponsible way to budget if that was the case. 

[Handsome_Devil]

14 minutes ago, Kapowzer said:

I kinda touched on it, we have 3,500 seats in our home stands that are already covered by existing matchday expenses. Every extra seat sold costs nothing but adds something. Have a target to increase that year on year, even if it's modest say 7% of current adult numbers .... 250 (250 x £330 av price = £82,500 or £1,600 p/w for those who go on wages). The atmosphere sitting tooth by jowl last week was what football is all about for me. Of course it will top out but the population of the Motherwell area has grown massively over my lifetime. I moved to the town as a 1 year old and despite family allegiances elsewhere decided to support my local club. I can't be alone.

Fan owned, non sectarian, community focused ... all values and ideals many corporates would be happy to align with.

 Would going into the game with a centre half, left back and alternative striking option made the difference, certainly would have given us more of a fighting chance. If they rock up to FP on deadline day I'd just wonder why they were not available 6 weeks before.

If you have any concrete ideas to increase gate numbers I'm sure the club would be delighted to hear them. We've had various campaigns with little long-term impact, we had the free offer to low income folk last year and simply found they didn't turn up half the time.

The values/corporate thing is being worked on already according to the last AGM.

As for players, various legitimate reasons. Maybe someone wasn't available until his club signed someone new, maybe someone didn't get the 3k a week offer they thought they were worth and eventually decided the 2.5k we would pay was the best they could do.

There's advantages of getting your business done early, as Robinson did/does, but the club is convinced there's more quality available later than earlier. There's different risk/reward there obviously and you still need to find it...but rightly or wrongly that's the current belief (or was until last Friday!).

[Kapowzer]

4 minutes ago, Handsome_Devil said:

If you have any concrete ideas to increase gate numbers I'm sure the club would be delighted to hear them. We've had various campaigns with little long-term impact, we had the free offer to low income folk last year and simply found they didn't turn up half the time.

The values/corporate thing is being worked on already according to the last AGM.

As for players, various legitimate reasons. Maybe someone wasn't available until his club signed someone new, maybe someone didn't get the 3k a week offer they thought they were worth and eventually decided the 2.5k we would pay was the best they could do.

There's advantages of getting your business done early, as Robinson did/does, but the club is convinced there's more quality available later than earlier. There's different risk/reward there obviously and you still need to find it...but rightly or wrongly that's the current belief (or was until last Friday!).

I think you underestimate how many at the club feel threatened or dismissive of offers of outside help, a few are very precious of their areas of responsibility. Where were the results of the free offer shared? Pretty shit by many of those who took it if the case.

I wrote up the mammoth summary of the AGM so agree but at the time it seemed to be leaning more to individuals. Maybe we will see some of it come to fruition soon enough. The other announcement that we were told that was imminent was Dalziel Park which still has nothing official conveyed 4.5 months later.

Every method has pro's and con's. Slattery and Kelly on 3 years may prove to be lucaritive as they've both been performing. McGinley, Ojala, Efford, feels like you're lumbered with them, where 1 year deals makes the spring clean easy.

Baccus looked like a player on Sunday and we swim in the same pool as St Mirren. Livi have done good business despite being pillaged again this summer. Gogic is still free and for many offer so much more than Maguire but I appreciate he offers the same resale value as McGinn. However if Hammell stays in post, I expect to see players utilised to their strengths more. Hopefully we will see Alexander leaving as a watershed for Maguire as he has all the physical attributes to make it.

Deadline day is 8 fixtures into our season (ECL, 5 league and LC), you've kind of hobbled your season a little by doing your business later by having the the potential to be out of 2 competitions and work to do in the third.

[Handsome_Devil]

58 minutes ago, Kapowzer said:

I think you underestimate how many at the club feel threatened or dismissive of offers of outside help, a few are very precious of their areas of responsibility. Where were the results of the free offer shared? Pretty shit by many of those who took it if the case.

Indeed...but we announced somewhere - either officially or through Flow - more than 5,000 ST holders last season, they clearly weren't all turning up regularly. This season we moved the offer to the POD only (I think) because we were having to call the East sold-out or close to it only to have plenty empty seats on the day. 

[capt_oats]

11 minutes ago, Handsome_Devil said:

Indeed...but we announced somewhere - either officially or through Flow - more than 5,000 ST holders last season, they clearly weren't all turning up regularly. This season we moved the offer to the POD only (I think) because we were having to call the East sold-out or close to it only to have plenty empty seats on the day. 

There was a news story published at the time.

Quote

"Our season ticket total sits currently at 5,226, far exceeding our record number and with a further increase anticipated before our next home match with Aberdeen.

A total of 4,784 supporters purchased season tickets for the 2021/22 campaign, surpassing the previous record sales total of 4,488.

Of that number, 3,732 fans carried their tickets over from 2020/21, with 1,052 others purchasing new.

Our Well In scheme has further boosted that number, with our staff continuing to process applications with a view to reaching a total of 1,000 distributed free season tickets before our next home match with Aberdeen."

Link

[Dosser1886]

1 hour ago, Kapowzer said:

 

I wrote up the mammoth summary of the AGM so agree but at the time it seemed to be leaning more to individuals. Maybe we will see some of it come to fruition soon enough. The other announcement that we were told that was imminent was Dalziel Park which still has nothing official conveyed 4.5 months later.

 

Been wondering for a while what is happening and when the plans for Dalziel park were going to come together, but all gone very quiet.

[Lobby Dossar]

21 minutes ago, Dosser1886 said:

Been wondering for a while what is happening and when the plans for Dalziel park were going to come together, but all gone very quiet.

Dalziel Park is a pipe dream ……… it is run by Trustee’s whose prime objective is to look after its own interests. 
What have they got to gain with getting into bed with Motherwell ????

The money they could make by just selling some of the land to a developer !!!! 

[Kapowzer]

27 minutes ago, Lobby Dossar said:

Dalziel Park is a pipe dream ……… it is run by Trustee’s whose prime objective is to look after its own interests. 
What have they got to gain with getting into bed with Motherwell ????

The money they could make by just selling some of the land to a developer !!!! 

The pitches that remained after the development in the late 90's are pretty much protected for school/FP use. No more sell off's. The Trustee's would welcome investment and guaranteed rental surely?

From memory, we were looking to do something with a facility specifically for us, wither it be an upgrade/extension of the existing ones or a new purpose built place, it was not alluded at the time. In lieu of what was denied in Muirhouse due to the Bullfrog lobby.

I think the issue there is space, at peak times (Saturday around 1pm) the carpark is bursting so no scope there. There is scope to extend the grandstand the full length of the rugby pitch and add what we may require, you could probably 4x the size of the current structure. There's a lot of land to the south of the astro's that may be what is sought. However the status of that land, ownership and designation is beyond my pay grade. Certainly houses would bring in more revenue than a facility for us but that may not be an option.

Also I may be recalling wrong here but more of a synergy between our ground staff and the permanent guy up there to raise the standard of the surfaces.

[Swello]

I wonder if this season will have the widest ever gap between the league's top 6 budgets (or 2+4 budgets) and the bottom 6 - it kind of feels like that at the moment...

[ATLIS]

3 hours ago, Kapowzer said:

Baccus looked like a player on Sunday and we swim in the same pool as St Mirren. Livi have done good business despite being pillaged again this summer. Gogic is still free and for many offer so much more than Maguire but I appreciate he offers the same resale value as McGinn. However if Hammell stays in post, I expect to see players utilised to their strengths more. Hopefully we will see Alexander leaving as a watershed for Maguire as he has all the physical attributes to make it.

Deadline day is 8 fixtures into our season (ECL, 5 league and LC), you've kind of hobbled your season a little by doing your business later by having the the potential to be out of 2 competitions and work to do in the third.

I wouldn't say we've been pillaged. The only starter we lost was Forrest and replaced him with an international in Bahamboula. We lost Sibbald but he hasn't been a starter in over a year too. I do agree with the good business though but this summer was about casting off dead weight like McMillan/Jacobs etc.