Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[capt_oats]

14 minutes ago, Nightmare said:

Sky Sports reporter saying he's heading to Thistle.

If so, what can we expect?

This is his moment, this is his perfect moment.

[YassinMoutaouakil]

17 minutes ago, Nightmare said:

 

Sky Sports reporter saying he's heading to Thistle.

If so, what can we expect?

Someone who watches the 20s will probably be able to give a better appraisal-but based on his chances in the first team- runs about a lot and works hard, games tend to pass him by at top flight level though so hard to gauge how proficient he is technically. Scored a wind assisted screamer away to Ross County last season and I'd like to see him do well.

[ropy]

2 hours ago, Nightmare said:

 

Sky Sports reporter saying he's heading to Thistle.

If so, what can we expect?

Tends to score on his debut 

[Jim McLean's Ghost]

3 hours ago, Busta Nut said:

I've never taken to Polworth, He was great on the ball but His set pieces were always dodgy, although we scored from a fair few. He always seemed to look busy bet never doing anything on the defensive side of things too.

What is Yusuf Hussain's ethnicity? It's a wonder you don't see more Asian players.

Polworth's set pieces were great.

I bet you hated Tom Hateley's set pieces too.

What is your complaint? That we scored too many goals from set pieces?

 

[Busta Nut]

Just now, Jim McLean's Ghost said:

Polworth's set pieces were great.

I bet you hated Tom Hateley's set pieces too.

What is your complaint? That we scored too many goals from set pieces?

 

Meh.
You'd lose that bet
He hit the first man too often.

[well fan for life]

Tom Hateley may not be a popular figure. But let me tell you when he hit the back of the net against St Mirren to send us top of the table I was absolutely convinced we were winning the league. 

[ropy]

7 minutes ago, well fan for life said:

Tom Hateley may not be a popular figure. But let me tell you when he hit the back of the net against St Mirren to send us top of the table I was absolutely convinced we were winning the league. 

His goal in Odense was a highlight.  An away goal in Europe, what a novelty for me.  Going wild over a 2-1 defeat.

[well fan for life]

Just now, ropy said:

His goal in Odense was a highlight.  An away goal in Europe, what a novelty for me.  Going wild over a 2-1 defeat.

I had the shittest stream going for it. My old man & I absolutely bouncing round the living room. What a time. 

[MP_MFC]

Up until the Langfield assault game I had not experienced quite a last minute goal celebration like the one in Odense. The place went mental, limbs everywhere.

And then Jamie Murphy fucked us.

[capt_oats]

13 hours ago, Nightmare said:

Sky Sports reporter saying he's heading to Thistle.

If so, what can we expect?

To answer this a bit more fully;

He was signed from County as a Reserves player, a development project more than anything. I could be miles off base but at 22 I don't think he necessarily falls into the "highly rated youngster" category either. The ones we've heard talked up most of the current group are Max Johnson, Dean Cornelius and David Devine who are all a bit younger than MacIver.

He ended up around the fringes of the first team and the gif I posted last night was an equaliser on his debut having come on as a sub. After that he got a few run outs and started a couple of games here and there when Long was injured last season. He got another year off the back of that and I'd imagine the plan would have been to loan him out and have him playing regularly in the Reserves to see how he goes.

The 'rona put an end to the Reserves and his loan at Morton didn't really work out although looking at how unbalanced their squad was it's probably not too much of a surprise.

As @YassinMoutaouakil alludes to the club have pretty much scaled back their coverage of the u20s and Reserves so there's far less awareness of the current u20s/Reserves than there was of our "golden generation" of Campbell, Hastie, Turnbull, Scott et al. Which is annoying as it's one of the more interesting areas of the club.

It's hard to say much about what he's like other than the brief opportunities he's had in the first team where he's looked a nice enough player without necessarily having the physicality or threat to be an effective Premiership striker at the moment (if he did we'd probably have been playing him given our lack of goals recently) but he's probably shown enough to suggest that he could have enough about him to carve out a career in football.

It'd be interesting to see how he did in L1 with Thistle tbh.

Edited March 12, 2021 by capt_oats

[Swello]

Aye - one of the best jumps ever that one in Odense and it's one of the biggest regrets that we didn't get through that round.

I couldn't get holidays for this game and so I remember working from a hotel for as few hours as I could get away with on the day of the game (2pm finish) and laughably trying to do some work on the train from Odense to Copenhagen early the next morning with a hangover that would have floored Belgium. Turns out, you can't be very productive when you can only focus out of one eye and you keep looking longingly at the sick bag every few minutes.

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

I was 20 at the time and just back from 10 days in Ibiza which had just about skint me at the time, so I couldn't go in the conventional manner. A £125 bus that left Motherwell at 9am on Wednesady morning, done Dover to Calais and then drove through every country going to get to Odense, maybe seven hours before kick-off. It was again about 30 hours on the way back (straight after the game).

It was quite the experience but the thought of it now as an almost 31 year-old, even having spent a year in the house, makes me shudder. 

[Swello]

15 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

I was 20 at the time and just back from 10 days in Ibiza which had just about skint me at the time, so I couldn't go in the conventional manner. A £125 bus that left Motherwell at 9am on Wednesady morning, done Dover to Calais and then drove through every country going to get to Odense, maybe seven hours before kick-off. It was again about 30 hours on the way back (straight after the game).

It was quite the experience but the thought of it now as an almost 31 year-old, even having spent a year in the house, makes me shudder. 

That was my experience of Dortmund away - bussed it overnight for £100-odd quid, glamour night in Bochum and straight back after the game. Couldn't handle that now - but it was by far one of my best times watching us.

[thisGRAEME]

4 hours ago, well fan for life said:

I had the shittest stream going for it. My old man & I absolutely bouncing round the living room. What a time. 

threw over my coffee table and ran screaming into the garden. 

My flatmate was furious.

[capt_oats]

MacIver to Thistle confirmed.

 

[santheman]

1 hour ago, Swello said:

That was my experience of Dortmund away - bussed it overnight for £100-odd quid, glamour night in Bochum and straight back after the game. Couldn't handle that now - but it was by far one of my best times watching us.

You young ones don't know you're living.

I hark back to the Texaco cup games against Stoke Tottenham and Norwich.

Norwich in particular, 6 of us in the back of an old Bedford van with a mattress in the back. Can still remember the pong as someone had severe flatulence due to the amount of swally he had.

Had to follow rivers all the way home from Carlisle on the back roads as the radiator sprung a leak and we had to keep topping it up every 10 miles. Reached Abington before it finally gave up and we hitched it back to Motherwell in the back of a cattle truck.

Happy days

 

[Archie McSquackle]

We completely underestimated the time it would take us to walk from the centre of Odense to the ground and were running pretty late. Fortunately some locals on their way to the game pulled over and offered us a lift - nice guys the Danes!

If you're going to lose 2-1 in an away leg then a top-corner free-kick in the last minute to make it 2-1 is probably the best way to do it.

 

I also did the overnight bus from Fir Park to Dortmund - for all the complaints about budget airlines they're a hell of a lot better than being on a bus that needs mopped out at Dover.

[Nightmare]

3 hours ago, capt_oats said:

To answer this a bit more fully;

He was signed from County as a Reserves player, a development project more than anything. I could be miles off base but at 22 I don't think he necessarily falls into the "highly rated youngster" category either. The ones we've heard talked up most of the current group are Max Johnson, Dean Cornelius and David Devine who are all a bit younger than MacIver.

He ended up around the fringes of the first team and the gif I posted last night was an equaliser on his debut having come on as a sub. After that he got a few run outs and started a couple of games here and there when Long was injured last season. He got another year off the back of that and I'd imagine the plan would have been to loan him out and have him playing regularly in the Reserves to see how he goes.

The 'rona put an end to the Reserves and his loan at Morton didn't really work out although looking at how unbalanced their squad was it's probably not too much of a surprise.

As @YassinMoutaouakil alludes to the club have pretty much scaled back their coverage of the u20s and Reserves so there's far less awareness of the current u20s/Reserves than there was of our "golden generation" of Campbell, Hastie, Turnbull, Scott et al. Which is annoying as it's one of the more interesting areas of the club.

It's hard to say much about what he's like other than the brief opportunities he's had in the first team where he's looked a nice enough player without necessarily having the physicality or threat to be an effective Premiership striker at the moment (if he did we'd probably have been playing him given our lack of goals recently) but he's probably shown enough to suggest that he could have enough about him to carve out a career in football.

It'd be interesting to see how he did in L1 with Thistle tbh.

Cheers for the write-up.

He’ll certainly have his chance, as our current attacking options are Brian Graham, perma-crock Zak Rudden and Blair Lyons, who McCall clearly doesn’t rate.

Sounds like he’ll be a good fit as a “worker” to do the heavy lifting next to Brian Graham in McCall’s 4-4-2.

[Swello]

27 minutes ago, santheman said:

You young ones don't know you're living.

I hark back to the Texaco cup games against Stoke Tottenham and Norwich.

Norwich in particular, 6 of us in the back of an old Bedford van with a mattress in the back. Can still remember the pong as someone had severe flatulence due to the amount of swally he had.

Had to follow rivers all the way home from Carlisle on the back roads as the radiator sprung a leak and we had to keep topping it up every 10 miles. Reached Abington before it finally gave up and we hitched it back to Motherwell in the back of a cattle truck.

Happy days

 

Well before my time - but the Texaco Cup stuff sounds like a good laugh whenever I hear about it. A trip to play Spurs would have been brilliant - I would have loved us to get a competitive game against an English team in one of our European campaigns.

 I'm sure I read that the Spurs captain when asked about getting beat at Fir Park, said that "Motherwell was all muck and nettles" - I love that.

[santheman]

14 minutes ago, Swello said:

Well before my time - but the Texaco Cup stuff sounds like a good laugh whenever I hear about it. A trip to play Spurs would have been brilliant - I would have loved us to get a competitive game against an English team in one of our European campaigns.

 I'm sure I read that the Spurs captain when asked about getting beat at Fir Park, said that "Motherwell was all muck and nettles" - I love that.

I could write a book Swello