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So you would move but you need a number and funds in the bank to match that number. Fair enough.

Why would Kryk and the rest be employing analytics and scouring Europe for the most progressive young managers that no only compete at the business end of the table, entertain and get folk through the door to then turn round and say, you know what we need? SMiSA 2.0! There's been enough learned from stadium design as much from mistakes made to best practice to know what helps build atmosphere and bring in crowds rather than keep them away. Seat pitch and rake, acoustics, facilities, etc. wouldn't be ignored, because it's not what we seem to be doing*. *Granted I've written extensively that the WS rank and file have been willfully ignored .... but you get what I mean.

Id prefer to stay where we are for sentimental reasons but also because I dont want the club saddled with lots and lots of debt which may see it come a cropper if a rainy day comes. I feel that a rebuilt Main Stand is within our means but a complete new build is not...unless its an absolute shiter of an effort like Paisley. You've set out your reasoning in a very considered and structured way, however i dont believe we will get to the stage of having the amount of home fans You've suggested, and ive absolutely no interest in supporting the option of having even more marauding Old Firm fans at our games than we already do. If there is a business plan (or some maddy willing to fund it for us) out there that proves palatable, and the club would benefit from it then Id change my stance, Ive no doubt.

There were tonnes of seats available in all 3 home stands in our last home match against Dundee United. If someone can convince me that its affordable, without giving masses of the stadium to weegies, isnt going to absolutely hamstring us with a massive mortgage and isn't going to be a Bill Barr effort then I'd listen.

I'm not asking them to fund it, I'm suggesting that making 18,000 seats available gives us the opportunity to help fund it for a relatively modest increase in cost (well 40% more concrete and seats) compared with simply replicating the 13,000 we currently have. The fact that they have 53,000 and 62,000 capacity stadiums which are often full suggests there is at least scope to get 18,000 seats sold. Over 20 years, that represents at least £10m in additional revenue. If I'm being asked how we pay for it, I'm simply pointing to the most straightforward and sustainable wealth generator available to a football club: arses on seats. And this is really where I think we're talking past each other. Your position seems to have evolved from preferring a revamped POD, to concerns that Ravenscraig would be a white elephant, to the potential issue of being outnumbered or out-contributed by OF fans, and now to whether we'll ever sustain a 10k to 12k home support. Or maybe its all of them combined. I'm happy to debate any of those points, but it can sometimes feel that whenever I put forward something to address one concern, the discussion simply moves on to another. I'm not saying those concerns aren't valid, just that I'd like us to properly weigh up the potential benefits alongside the risks rather than assuming the risks are necessarily decisive.

We had regularly over 7,500 home fans in the second half of last season. So the point about the home end stands. Its currently at capacity most weeks with queues for toilets and food kiosks ridiculously long. We need/deserve better facilities. Whether thats a refurb or a relocation. Wouldnt you even like to hear what a proposal to relocate would look like, sound like and what the numbers would be before making a decision? I am by no means all in on a new stadium, but Id sure as hell like to have a look at it before deciding Fir Park is still the best option.

I honestly think it is inconceivable...we had great crowds for the European games, we get great crowds for cup finals, we have seen our crowds in general go up during this crest of a wave we are currently on, but lets not kid ourselves that we are going to see 8000 motherwell fans, let alone 10 or 12k for normal league games on a regular basis. What goggles says is in theory a possibility, however i remain unconvinced that its anything more than pie in the sky. He might be correct in saying that moving is the best option, but I don't like the idea of asking the OF to fund it nor do I believe that our crowds will double at any new stadium.

With everyone fit, I think our best 11 is this..... Paulsen Johnny K JKL Moorman Longelo Fadinger Priestman Lowry Maswanhise Seb Kanga Although Id have no issues whatsoever with Jake at RB or RCH, Williams at LB or Hodge in one of the sitting/pivot roles.

Goal fest in Scotland this evening so far then, Insee. 😂

A lot of this makes absolute sense to me. Ambitious? Yes. But achievable? Certainly. I agree about the OF tickets though. We should always maintain majority share in our own stadium. Especially a brand new shiny one like we are proposing. Giving them 8k in an 18k stadium is fine for me. We just need to do everything we can to ensure we sell out our end. It would be quite something if we could grow our support to that level. In years gone past I would have said unachievable, however, we are currently at maximum portential in our current set up, so its not inconceivable.

A punt is just slang for a speculative investment that we hoped would make us money, but you knew that. The guy had just scored 17 goals in 25 games before he joined us, so it was a calculated risk if you want to split hairs on terminology. Eli Just was deemed no use to his parent club and pushed out to 2nd tier Austrian League loan obscurity. That was also a punt, but that one worked out.

initially yes, but the hope is our home gate increases steadily and their share is diminished to make way for the good guys, nothing would be as satisfying in 2040 as saying sorry, you're down to 6,000 this season because 12,000 Dossers have bought season tickets ..... It's all about how you frame it I suppose. I'm happy to get the OF fans to fund a nice shiny state of the art ground because the club they follow are happy to vacuum up our academy kids and divert funds away from locals who buy into the religious and glory hunting stuff. I'm suggesting 18,000 seats available, not 10,000 to the OF but initially they would possibly take it. Unless, from the first season we're in it, we get the 8,000 that we had for HJK or Freiburg as our datum, add on 2,000 because of the novelty of a new stadium then the maximum we can offer OF is 8,000 tickets. In addition to point one in the earlier post: We maintain our current playing budget and in theory that is ring fenced purely for football operations (unlike some clubs that really have to cut their cloth to fund a stadium). I'd also suggest 30% of all transfer profits to be made available to pay off the loan earlier. Important to stress profits and not income as that takes into account what they arrived for and agents fees. While we will not realise what we did this past summer every year, if you take ballpark £15m from the last two windows with minimal spent for Eli and Lennon, Watt and Ward (£5m would be available). The last two summers were definitely a high water mark and an outlier (for now). The income received does allow us to have this conversation. If we use a handover of 2030 between then and 2050, even if you were fiscally conservative, would it be fair to apportion an average transfer profit of £1m per annum (£20m over 20 years) and another £300k for the pot (£6m over 20 years). The club would still have the lion's share (70%) for reinvestment in players and academy.

Really tough. I love Priestman I think he's going to be fantastic. But Hodge could be really great too. So um. Paulsen Koutroumbis JKL Moorman Longelo Priestman Hodge Fadinger Lowry Maswanhise Kanga Lowry playing a Just role.......false 9 would be the only way to do it because Maswanhise can't play as a central striker Williams, Thor, Said, JGR, Charles Cook would be 5 great subs

You've lost me in any vote by advocating for the Old Firm to be given 10,000 tickets at our new home...call that cutting off my nose to spite my face, or being completely parochial but as a business plan, I wouldnt be able to buy into that at all. I completely agree that this issue is far too big for the society (and therefore owners) not to have any sort of say in it, or at least see the details. If someone could convince me that a new stadium wouldn't be a white elephant, and/or a noose around our necks then I may soften

Sure and I can answer that, I don't disagree with the underlying point about risk. A £30-40m commitment is obviously a completely different proposition and I'd want to know exactly how it would be serviced, what the downside scenarios look like and what happens if the current level of player trading isn't sustained. My £250k house analogy wasn't meant to suggest that taking on a £30m mortgage is somehow equivalent to an individual taking out a mortgage. It was really about the standard being applied to the club: that it somehow needs to have every penny sitting in cash before it can even contemplate a major investment. Nobody buying a house says, “I can't afford this because I don't have £250k in my bank account.” They look at income, expenditure, existing assets, borrowing capacity and the risks if circumstances change as well as projected wage increases or any lump sums (bonus', inheritance, etc.) coming their way. The club should be doing exactly the same exercise. In my scenario I suggested we go from a 13,000 stadium to a 18,000 one and make those additional 5,000 seats available to a guaranteed three OF fixtures (possibly four if top six is secured) with potential for two Hearts fixtures (I don't think they'd take the full 10,000 allocation but can assume it would over their current 5,000). Over 20 years that brings in an extra £10m than we realise at present. If you wish to apply that to the mortgage analogy I illustrated, it's now like buying a £250k house on a £35k salary, finding £10k to stick a plumbed garden room studio at the bottom of the garden and stick it on Air B&B for £25k a year income. That changes the complexion of the means to repay the mortgage. To keep the analogy going if you were let go, your personal finances dictate if you get a stop gap job to keep the wolf from the door, do some side hustles or if you do a job that allow it, a few 'homers'. While a football club can't lose it's job, the equivalent is relegation. Reduced revenues demand the club bounces right back up to the top division. For at least one season we have the WS buffer fund, beyond that it gets gets tricky. However, we would also have means to earn money from the stadium outwith matches. A brand new 18,000 stadium would have a whole raft of ways to make money to keep the finance payment schedule over what we currently have. As outlined already, concerts, events, conferences, restaurant, cafe, office and business' rent, gym and Scotland U21/womens, cup finals, etc. Before anyone says we're a football club, sure, a space is rented and we take the rent with favourable access rights granted. What I've proposed to date is five fold: We maintain our current playing budget and in theory that is ring fenced purely for football operations (unlike some clubs that really have to cut their cloth to fund a stadium). We exploit the OF dominance in our area and follow the precedent set by the McLean stand in the mid 90's to fund a significant portion of the build. A new stadium offers no upheaval, relocation, or loss of income during development. The residents around FP would welcome it. We reduce our costs by co-locating all assets and 'sweat' the stadium and ancillary grounds 24/7-365. Consider new revenue streams not even on our radar or we would be capable of at present, there are so many opportunities. While I'm happy with the conclusion for some being “the numbers don't stack up, so we stay at Fir Park and rebuild the Main Stand.” What I don't think is acceptable is reaching that conclusion before the owners have even been properly involved in assessing the proposal. That's the bit I'm arguing about. I'm not advocating a £30m mortgage. I'm saying the people who own the club should get to see the numbers, understand the risks and have a say in whether the opportunity is worth pursuing. If, after doing that, the answer is “too risky, let's rebuild Fir Park”, fair enough. That's a perfectly legitimate position. But that's very different from saying “we can't possibly do it because we don't have £30m sitting in the bank”, which isn't really how major capital projects work.

Surely the clubs dont have to vote it into sfa competitions?

Im in full agreement about the well society and how those at the club should be showing it a lot more respect... ...where I am struggling is the, analogy of the 250k house on the 35k annual earnings. If you lose your job, and have no income, you lose your house (unless you have some form of insurance that would see you through). My concern on taking on a mortgage at club level, of 30 or 40million, would be how we serviced that...yes we have cash in the bank just now, but what if this is a club level purple patch. Id rather err on the side of caution, rebuild the main stand with the finances we have (plus a mo doubt smaller mortgage) and stay where we are.

You've thought this through haven't you? 😁😁 Great post pal and very well detailed

Fan owed, not fan run was a phrase often trotted out by Feely and Dickie, which in hindsight seemed to mean, let us get on with abolishing the Trust we lead in favour of £300k a year from Erik. But there is an important distinction here. In a fan-owned club, there is an expectation that on the big stuff, where we play, where we spend several million pounds on infrastructure, etc., you ask the owner. Nobody would have sidestepped Boyle or Hutchison on something of that scale. You may find it inconvenient, irritating or have a low appetite for engaging over just getting on with it, but that is part of the price of the model, a model in place when you accepted a position and/or role. If you don't want the owners to have a say in major decisions, you can choose not to work for a fan ownership vehicle. I could understand an argument about moving goalposts if any the board were brought in before fan ownership and suddenly finding themselves subject to a different governance model. But they weren't. Of the two seats reserved for club employees, Caldwell met most of the WS board before his appointment and, by all accounts, said (yes, italics again) the right things about fan ownership, mutual respect, two way street, etc. Two others are there because they were elected to the WS board, so in theory they believe in and support the model. The final two are there because the owners saw merit in what they offered and invited them. 99.9% of the decisions in the club are made by the board or by department heads on a day to day basis. That's what the board and department heads are there for. But, like any business, there is a point where a capital expenditure becomes too significant to be decided in isolation. Everyone understands where their personal discretion ends. That is precisely why I wrote the need for a major-votes policy into Our Club, Our Future as a key deliverable following the events of summer 2024. it was driven because if it wasn't for Jay and others, the handing over of the keys by McMahon and Dickie would have been a formality. The next step was defining exactly what should trigger a vote. That was written after I was no longer involved, but when eventually published it looked robust and, importantly, clear. It was adopted last summer. Yet here we are. A feasibility study was commissioned. Architects were appointed. A planning application was prepared and submitted. And now more than £3m is apparently about to be spent. If it hadn't been for an eagle-eyed Well fan spotting it, the first most of us would have heard about it would have been a month or so ago. As it was, we found out in mid-April, which in itself is unacceptable. And then the timeline makes the explanation an even harder circle to square. In mid-February, we were told the feasibility study had arrived only two weeks previously and there wasn't enough time to properly review it before the AGM. Yet within the following eight weeks, it was reviewed, a substantial planning application had been green lit, produced and submitted. Elevations, sections, floorplans, site plans, renderings, traffic management and environmental reports were all compiled. Unless a significant amount of that is stock or boilerplate material, that takes time. Granted, some drawings take less time than when I studied architecture, and AI can now spit out passable 3D material quickly enough to convey an idea. Although, for what it's worth, the image on the official site is grossly out of scale. The bigger point is this: the process was well underway long before the owners/wider fanbase were meaningfully brought into the process was the 31st of July, the point we were was to ask for help with materials, labour or services. Most Motherwell supporters, whether they want radical change or would rather preserve tradition, probably have a number in their head that makes a move possible. That's why people cite Euromillions wins or a run in the Champions League. It's shorthand for, “if we suddenly had the money, we'd do it.” For me, and for some others, the transfer record of the past 13 months changes the conversation. For the first time, it feels as though we may have choices rather than simply having to accept whatever is inevitable. For others, the number might be £50m, allowing the whole thing to be paid for outright. But what I find odd is the standard some seem to be applying, that the club should somehow have all the money sitting in the bank before even considering the possibility. That's not how ordinary people make major financial decisions. Someone on here urging caution sitting in their £250k house they bought while earning £35k a year has to be on some level of irony.

I dont know how much you've read into it, but thats how it seems. Though not a fine as such, rather a reduction of final prize money by 10%, and that be redistributed among those that do comply. Google tells me premiership prize pot is 34M, so 10% of that is up for grabs. If half the teams don't comply you are looking at around 3.4M split between the 6 teams who do. Obviously which clubs comply/ don't comply will alter that sum, but ballpark... doesnt sound to shabby especially for any teams who are close to the criteria as it stands. You can also argue that it reduces the temptation to pack out the bench with journeymen if you are using a few academy graduates there. IMO theres a logic to it, but can totally understand the scepticism around it. Having said that i think the clubs have to vote it in? So an obvious plot hole there.

I'd rather see incentives instead of punishment when it comes to developing youngsters, but I'm not sure what form they should take.

Really interesting and very tough decision. I would love to see Longelo and Williams combine on left side. Midfield 3 of fadinger hodge and lowry. Wide right between kanga...said...JT. Up front Seb or Thor Defence Moormann a shoe in and then between JGR..JKL SOD and Koutrombis

As long as the SFA and SPFL are run by this current mob of inept incompetents, nothing will improve. Anything they propose will only make things worse and somehow manage to make an already stupid situation even more stupid.

Put simply, we don't. We're not alone in that regard. Big English clubs are cherry-picking the top young talent from all over the world, including leagues with more resources than ours. It'll come down to what certain young players see as the way forward for them. Some will want to stay in their native country and get footballing experience, while others will want to move to England and enjoy the bump in salary and try to make a dent there.

Should be interesting to hear AJ’s pre match interview. Hopefully no negative news on injury front and see how he thinks his first real extended time with the players has gone. For sure, he won’t have fixed all our issues. It’s going to take a bit of time before we see the finished article. As Long as we continue to pick up points and play entertaining football I’ll be happy, we can’t (won’t) win every game.