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So I take it Gallagher and Polworth are the two players Robinson was saying we'd already signed the other week?

I don't know if I'd originally mis-read the "offered contracts" line below as being extension offers to players who were already at the club. Given Fané's still cutting about training it wouldn't be a surprise if he was one of the verbal offers?

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"So it is frustrating and it's difficult. But by no means will be thinking it's all over. We go again, we have already signed a couple of players and every Tuesday and Wednesday we are down looking in the lower leagues in England.

"We will bring more players in next season and try and progress. We have a brilliant recruitment team and we will go again.

"We have offered contracts to four boys and a couple of verbal offers as well, and nobody is rushing through the door to sign them, because financially we are not going to change anybody's lives.

"But what you have to look at as a player is are you going to play football, are you going to be exposed in the right way to benefit your career?

"Perhaps some of them might sign. It's still ongoing and we will remain positive and keep battling away to try and get signatures."

Daily Record

If we've made offers this early to 6 players and signed 2 on pre-contracts then presumably they're players there's competition for (clearly St Johnstone). The flip of that is that we almost certainly know which players are definitely gone and who we're having to replace.

Reading Robinson's quote on the official site and having seen clips of the sort of area of the park he plays I'd say Polworth sounds like he's in the Tanner mould: "He will give us another option in the middle of the park and out wide."

Edited by capt_oats
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Quite pleased with us signing players that I've heard of - looking forward to seeing them next year. Not looking forward to Tommy Wright sending his players out to kick f**k out of us in a few weeks time - he'll be fucking raging.

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Polworth is a far better player now than the one who was relegated with ICT.  A quality player who only has an eye for progressing play, he is always looking to open a defence and rarely wastes a pass when that’s not on. He does have a bit of dig about him but I’d want to see a workhorse beside him in a two or a three, ideally with Polworth the most advanced in a three.

Despite a ridiculous amount of assists I still don’t think Inverness have seen the best of him, because they don’t often play a striker who makes runs behind the defence.  

Edited by bunglebonce
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Wait...what?

Burrows talking about Hastie...all of it fair enough. It's in the Record if you want to read the whole thing.

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“We try to box clever but there will come times when we take a punch in the face. We have David Turnbull, Adam Livingston, Chris Cadden and James Scott on new deals but Jake hasn’t signed."

Surely some mistake there...?

Edit: It's a mis-quote.

 

Edited by capt_oats
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On the latest release from Alan Burrows. 

I like many was perplexed why we had not offered Hastie a longer term contract. Thankfully he has explained the reasoning. 

I recall being dismayed when Jamie Murphy left the club for a pittance only for Sheffield Utd to benefit from a sizeable transfer fee.  I think we had a sell on clause but it makes more sense reading the press article around Hastie. 

What is encouraging is the seemingly endless conveyor belt of talent coming through the ranks at Motherwell. Not many going for huge sums but if get a combined £800k for McKinstry and Hastie that is good business. Admittedly Hastie could go for many multiples of that were he to move on to Rangers or elsewhere. 

I am more pleased we have Turnbull on a deal to 2021. Fingers crossed he will break our record transfer fee of £1.75m. Anyone looking to buy him in the summer should be quoted £2m or no thanks.  Kent is a good player but if he is being quoted at £10m then that is minimum we should be expecting for Turnbull. 

Pleased with 2 signings so far. Polworth seems to be a bit like Tanner. And assuming Tanner is away he would be a more than decent replacement and at 24 as well. 

 

 

 

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Fair fucks to 'Flow. That's a decent exercise in expectations management, not just in relation to Hastie either. Just generally.

Seems weird to me he's having to explain as I've always thought the reasoning behind our recent approach to contract offers to Academy players was obvious. Apparently not, it was just a massive co-incidence that all those contracts expired just before the cut off for Development Compensation. 

Looking at it, it seems we offer a 2 year deal from 17-19 to see how they develop, then if they're around the first team they get a 2-3 year deal (depending on when their birthday falls) to take them up to 22 and make sure that worst case we're still covered by compensation. The fact we got more for Lee Erwin than we did for Murphy, Reynolds and Hutchinson combined pretty much vindicates that.

The fact we gave Allan Campbell a 4 year deal (and a 3.5 year deal for James Scott) means I'd hope we'll make exceptions now and again but it becomes a question of what the player is willing to sign. It needs buy in from the player, we got it from Turnbull but clearly Hastie has options on the table that are turning his head. Which is understandable since as 'Flow says he was doing alright at Alloa (and Airdrie) but nothing suggested teams would be knocking his door down.

Hastie could just have easily gone the way of Dom Thomas, Dylan Mackin, Ross MacLean, Craig Moore, Luke Watt, David Ferguson et al at the start of the season (when lots of folk now seem to be saying we should have handed him a 10 year deal and forced him to sign it). Tbh, he still could.

The whole Hastie to Rangers thing is utterly fucking tedious but equally chucking the guts of £400k at us (along with whatever ludicrous wage package they're offering) for a 20 year old off the back of 12 starts for Motherwell is as on brand a move for Sevco as you get.

Ultimately though, if a team is willing to take a punt of that sort of money on a player at this stage of his development then they're going to be able to offer better terms than we can. So it's a case of offering the best deal we can and leaving it up to the player, if they're on board then great. If they're not then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I don't know the details of McKinstry moving to Leeds but it's probably worth making the distinction that he was/is under contract until 2020 (as opposed to Hastie's contract expiring) so it's a case of Leeds swooping in and being willing to pay 6 figures for a 16 year old who has yet to play a first team game and has only just broken into our Reserves.

Edited by capt_oats
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1 hour ago, capt_oats said:

The whole Hastie to Rangers thing is utterly fucking tedious but equally chucking the guts of £400k at us (along with whatever ludicrous wage package they're offering) for a 20 year old off the back of 12 starts for Motherwell is as on brand a move for Sevco as you get.

Ultimately though, if a team is willing to take a punt of that sort of money on a player at this stage of his development then they're going to be able to offer better terms than we can. So it's a case of offering the best deal we can and leaving it up to the player, if they're on board then great. If they're not then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

This is ultimately, a good scenario for us, imo.

If he stays within Scotland, I'd imagine we'll be happy to forgo a bit of fee, for a chunk of sell-on.

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53 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

The fact we got more for Lee Erwin than we did for Murphy, Reynolds and Hutchinson combined pretty much vindicates that.

I think this sums up generally how bad our transfer policy was under Dempster, despite all the good press she got/gets - she had literally no idea of how to protect our investments, whereas what's happening now is exactly what is needed even if it means that we can't roll out the long contracts for the young boys to take them past 22. 

When you look at the development fees we've quietly raked in over the past few years (and will continue to do this summer), it will be well into 7 figures I think (I'm thinking of Erwin, Hall, Leitch, McKinstry and Hastie, although there may be others that I've forgotten) and that must put a very decent dent in the running costs for the academy over the same period (It wasn't clear from the accounts exactly how much our Academy costs to run but it would be nice to think that we are breaking even at least -maybe a question for the next AGM).

3 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

If he stays within Scotland, I'd imagine we'll be happy to forgo a bit of fee, for a chunk of sell-on.

And that is precisely  the (good) bargaining position you put yourself in if you get the contract durations right. Still looking forward to the money rolling in from #DT23's big move.

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1 hour ago, capt_oats said:

I don't know the details of McKinstry moving to Leeds but it's probably worth making the distinction that he was/is under contract until 2020 (as opposed to Hastie's contract expiring) so it's a case of Leeds swooping in and being willing to pay 6 figures for a 16 year old who has yet to play a first team game and has only just broken into our Reserves.

Don't know particulars either, but for any young player the opportunity to go down south to a massive club like that and continue his development, is there anything Motherwell can really say other than advise it's a great chance for him?

Great post btw.

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2 minutes ago, Swello said:

I think this sums up generally how bad our transfer policy was under Dempster, despite all the good press she got/gets - she had literally no idea of how to protect our investments, whereas what's happening now is exactly what is needed even if it means that we can't roll out the long contracts for the young boys to take them past 22. 

If you get a chance, check out the latest Nutmeg podcast where she is the guest. She talks fondly of her time at Motherwell, but still doesn't seem to have grasped her budgeting could have killed us. 

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14 minutes ago, AndyRoss said:

Don't know particulars either, but for any young player the opportunity to go down south to a massive club like that and continue his development, is there anything Motherwell can really say other than advise it's a great chance for him?

Great post btw.

Completely agree, I remember when Erwin went to Leeds i thought much the same for him, the difference here is Mckinstry has never experienced first team football, where as Erwin had and was now going to play reserve football which was only going to stall his development whereas Mckinstry is very much continuing his development at Leeds.  I believe he's quite got quite a sensible network as well behind him.

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3 minutes ago, Swello said:

I think this sums up generally how bad our transfer policy was under Dempster, despite all the good press she got/gets - she had literally no idea of how to protect our investments, whereas what's happening now is exactly what is needed even if it means that we can't roll out the long contracts for the young boys to take them past 22. 

When you look at the development fees we've quietly raked in over the past few years (and will continue to do this summer), it will be well into 7 figures I think (I'm thinking of Erwin, Hall, Leitch, McKinstry and Hastie, although there may be others that I've forgotten) and that must put a very decent dent in the running costs for the academy over the same period (It wasn't clear from the accounts exactly how much our Academy costs to run but it would be nice to think that we are breaking even at least -maybe a question for the next AGM).

And that is precisely  the (good) bargaining position you put yourself in if you get the contract durations right. Still looking forward to the money rolling in from #DT23's big move.

Hot take: I'm kind of echoing @well fan for life here but I genuinely wouldn't be expecting players with the sort of ambition/potential/call it what you want we're hoping for to be sticking around after 22/23 anyway. So it's all a bit of a moot point IMO.

We're pitching ourselves as a platform for players so the balance is protecting our interests while actively delivering on a sales pitch to develop careers and trying to facilitate that rather than going full Jim McLean.

It's not on us to try and convince someone to spend their entire careers with us.

Fwiw: Barring unforeseen circumstances I think it's pretty safe to say we'll be able to add future fees for Cadden, Campbell and Turnbull to that list of Academy alumni.

1 minute ago, AndyRoss said:

Don't know particulars either, but for any young player the opportunity to go down south to a massive club like that and continue his development, is there anything Motherwell can really say other than advise it's a great chance for him?

Absolutely. If that opportunity comes up then it's really all about the player (and I don't mean that in a cynical, money grabbing way). It's a genuine life choice.

There's f**k all point in us getting in a pissing contest trying to match Leeds (or any club at that level). It's about picking your battles I guess.

All we can really do is say, we can offer you first team football and a small wage bump when it comes the time to renew and point out the benefits while also acknowledging that getting the opportunity to move to a club like Leeds is pretty much the career trajectory that we're selling to kids joining the academy.

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1 minute ago, capt_oats said:

Absolutely. If that opportunity comes up then it's really all about the player (and I don't mean that in a cynical, money grabbing way). It's a genuine life choice.

There's f**k all point in us getting in a pissing contest trying to match Leeds (or any club at that level). It's about picking your battles I guess.

All we can really do is say, we can offer you first team football and a small wage bump when it comes the time to renew and point out the benefits while also acknowledging that getting the opportunity to move to a club like Leeds is pretty much the career trajectory that we're selling to kids joining the academy.

On this as well, McKinstry is Motherwell as f**k, isn't he?

No point even trying to compete as you say, but in a worst case scenario, McKinstry goes to Leeds, and doesn't make it. He's still likely to be more than suitable for us if he wants to come back, so keeping everyone on side seems the wisest thing to do, really. In addition, if 18 months down the line he's ready for first team football, you'd like to think we're at the head of that queue.

In this scenario, McKinstry is happy, Leeds are happy, we're happy. Having links and relationships along these lines are far from a bad thing to have, and maintain.

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The full family are, he was the mascot for the Panathinaikos game at Fir Park, would have been a magnificent story if he'd broken into the team and played a starring role for his boyhood heroes, but I think your point is spot on - part of his development will be various loan spells. Might be reading too much into it, but the fact he's still featuring for the reserves suggests relations are still strong too. 

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11 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

On this as well, McKinstry is Motherwell as f**k, isn't he?

No point even trying to compete as you say, but in a worst case scenario, McKinstry goes to Leeds, and doesn't make it. He's still likely to be more than suitable for us if he wants to come back, so keeping everyone on side seems the wisest thing to do, really. In addition, if 18 months down the line he's ready for first team football, you'd like to think we're at the head of that queue.

In this scenario, McKinstry is happy, Leeds are happy, we're happy. Having links and relationships along these lines are far from a bad thing to have, and maintain.

 

5 minutes ago, AndyRoss said:

The full family are, he was the mascot for the Panathinaikos game at Fir Park, would have been a magnificent story if he'd broken into the team and played a starring role for his boyhood heroes, but I think your point is spot on - part of his development will be various loan spells. Might be reading too much into it, but the fact he's still featuring for the reserves suggests relations are still strong too. 

Tbh, with half an eye on all of that unless there's an agreement in place with Leeds that would block it (given signed up as a scholar at their Academy induction at the weekend) I wouldn't be against giving him a run out post-split. The season's pretty much done so 10-15 mins off the bench or the like realistically isn't going to do any harm.

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