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Ye big Shaun was unfortunate as he was signed as Uncle Phil's replacement plus he didn't decide the fee. Not the worst......definitely better than Davie Shanks! ( one for 1980's fans)

To be fair, I'd trust every national team selector above Scotland's.

It may help in some cases, but its really tinkering round the edges. For many young lads, a first team salary of say £2k weekly up here would pale into insignificance against a salary of say £5,000 a week at a Wolves or Bournemouth. If the SFA ever impose financial penalties on clubs not giving youngsters game time then the fines should be based on turnover and not be a flat rate.

With the influx of players and an injury list that is easing, what would you say our best 11 is? thor or SEB? left wing Williams or do we move inside and give manny free range up the wing? lowry or Kanga? Said? Where is cookie? faddy and hodge in mid and a back 4 am hoping at the moment they are working on keeping possession and defensive transition.

I think that is the intent of the initiative though. Instead of a promising 17 year old heading down south to play academy football there, they are instead offered a first team wage and the carrot of a place in the match day squad with the guarantee of time on the park ahead of a journeyman who is probably sitting on the bench on a higher salary. Obviously some will still opt for the £££, but you'd like to think it will help in some cases. I am speculating of course, nobody knows how it plays out in reality and whether this is any sort of answer... but it is pretty alarming to hear how far down our country is in terms of giving game time to academy players.

It's funny how we trust every other national team selector but our own when it comes to being capped because Vogts was handed a hard shift from Craig Brown and just threw everything at the wall in terms of team selection to see who would stick, it doesn't just apply to Scotland. Would describe the whole thing as a promising failure, good/bad/mid, he's gone.

John Hendry was probably our worst ever forward signing. Utterly appalling buy. His career was pretty incredible mind you, Dundee, where he failed to break into the first team, Forfar on loan where he scored a couple of goals and then Spurs?? wtf!! Where he played a couple of games and scored 2 against Arsenal in a league cup game. He really should have retired at that point. big Shaun wasn’t the worst although not worth a penny of that huge fee we gave to Killie. He scored a rasper against the artist formerly known as Rangers so he does hold a special place in my heart. for what it’s worth I felt AP was a good player, he just struck me as someone who wanted to give Europe a try, he arrived and was chronically homesick and wanted to go back. I think we did get an offer from a Scandinavian side but he point blank refused to go as he wanted home. Ultimately a bad signing due to the money we paid but a decent player… you don’t get caps for Australia at that time if you weren’t decent.

Our business model now means that spending chunks of money is taking a punt. In Kettlewell's time and before we were looking for freebies.

Other than the transfer fee I raise you Omar Daly signed by his pal Stuart McCall. Biggest waste of space I think I have witnessed at Motherwell. Wonder how much he cost us in wages for no return. And again we were excited when he signed. Jamaican international and a flying machine. Apparently. The point is we sign players every season that don’t work out. Some cost us decent money by way of a transfer fee. Others in wages. Anybody remember Bob Malcolm? Connor Shields? ( currently in Cambodia). List is endless.

Good post Denny. The biggest single issue is that of compensation payable by large English clubs. By dangling very attractive salaries to young Scots, they hoover up the best talent. Thats a very hard nut to crack, but the SFA can't ignore that. Most of these youngsters head south and then return home a year or two later. Understandable,but it does stunt their development.

He scored 17 goals in 26 games for Newcastle Jets the season we signed him and had just broken into the Australian team. A team that would prove good enough to reach the World Cup via Asian qualifying. That’s not easy. When we signed him nobody on here thought it was a poor signing or that £250k was excessive. In truth folk got excited. For whatever reason it did not work out despite early promise. I remember a goal at Ibrox and a cracking strike at Easter Road. Whether it was family reasons, style of football, injury, homesickness, attitude or Managerial choice we will never know but it was certainly a signing everybody thought was refreshing and showed ambition. . His biggest critics appear to have forgotten that, or chosen not to accurately remember. But it did not work out and better for him to move on. I agree it could have happened earlier. I wish him well and would not be surprised if he is a success wherever he ends up.

Apostolos Stamatelopoulos will continue to divide debate within the Motherwell Support for evermore. There were those who had him pegged as a donkey early doors and that is a hill they will die on. There are those who will forever believe there was a player in there and "circumstances" were all that prevented him from showing his best. As always, the truth is probably somewhere in between. He has however now moved on. And so should we. That Callum Hendry is a dud. Lets get him out the door.......😉😉😉

Just for clarity, and before anyone else suggests it, Im 100% in support of fan ownership, and 100% accept that doesnt mean fan run. We do need to trust those elected to run the club on our behalf up to an extent. Day to day matters and actually delivering projects they should 100% be left to get on with once the decision is made. However, for such a major decision as " Where do Motherwell FC play their football". We should be consulted. The level of information required in advance of making this decision may vary from fan to fan. But bit should clearly lay out the costs/pro's/cons of each choice.

A shame it didn't work out but he never really seemed settled. Still a better option than 2 of the 3 strikers he's left behind.

I remember the £350,000 punt on Shaun McSkimming and £200,000 punt on John Hendry.......cheers big Eck

A quarter of a million pounds is not a punt, Theo Bair was a punt.

Stama Good luck to wherever you end up At least the media commentators will be happy they no longer try to pronounce your name. 👋

Miles better. I don't mind that we took a punt on AP. We need to keep looking in different markets for players. Sometimes you get a Priestman sometimes you get an AP. Just and Watt were punts that worked, and we have taken a few more this season that look like they might work out. In fact our hit rate has been pretty high recently, so statistically we're due for a couple of absolute Casagoldas. Although I see he did hit 51 goals in 87 appearances for his last club, Crossing Schaerbeek, on Belgium. So he did find his level in the lower leagues there.

Other than the KDM Evolution Trophy as it's called this season, the youngsters have no competitive games. No U20 league, no reserves. So the choices boil down to going out on loan or staying at the club and hoping for the odd first team 5 minutes. I'd like to hear more about Alfred's perspective as in his last presser he started to discuss how they had made it successful in Sweden.

I agree. It would achieve next to nothing. The SFA are only proposing it so they can say they are taking action. Quotas for cup games and/or league games will merely throw a few youngsters in at the deep end every now and then and most will sink. They need regular game time at a decent level to prepare them for what lies ahead. At the moment that can only be achieved by way of Loans which relies on other teams and is limited in numbers. It can work with Whyte looking to be a good example. But success is relatively rare. Oh for the days when Craigen was in charge of our youth team, playing competitive games every week or so against top division youth teams. A group of youngsters being prepared for a step up when they were ready. Does that even happen now or is it all closed door run outs, training and bench sitting? That competitive environment seemed to stop when certain teams, backed by the SFA, were allowed to enter B teams in the lower leagues. How did that work out? Covid didn't help either. I get finance is an issue but perhaps if the SFA invested some of their cash in funding youth leagues in which participation was compulsory for all top division Clubs it could be possible. A bit like Premier League 2 down south. Surely something can be worked out if the Clubs are rewarded financially.

I think this is the crux of where we are at present. Whether anyone feels the board gets a free pass because of the managerial recruitment and the general perception that the club has been well managed in recent history is, ultimately, I'm sorry to advise, a matter of personal opinion. Likewise, some are seemingly quite happy to overlook ratified policies designed to protect everyone involved and provide clarity, because their personal ambivalence towards those policies appears to be directly linked to the state of our bank balance ..... £1m in the bank and operating loss "can you explain yourselves please" vs £15 million in transfer business in 13 months, "do what you like lads". You may believe that, despite those processes being in place, the ordinary fan shouldn't meddle. These are all positions I've seen voiced on this subject in the past month on both forums. But if you're going to argue that, then surely the alternative and fair position is that the 'owners' of the club should at least have been furnished with the bare minimum supporting documentation, allowing us to review it, ask questions and form an informed opinion. At the very least, it moves the discussion beyond the rather convenient position and potentially the banked on one of assuming a lot of fans will say "I'm not qualified to have an opinion on it." Keeping transfers ultra secret and family members in baseball caps and scarves is fun and welcome but for that in isolation. We were told at the AGM that the feasibility report had been received two weeks previously and that the board hadn't had sufficient time to digest it. But you're two weeks out from the one event in the calendar where you are directly accountable to the club's owners. Couldn't you at least skim it? Turn to the final page conclusions, understand the broad recommendations and provide a condensed summary to the people you're ultimately answerable to. The business we've done recently means we're at a fork in the road with true choices when before our path was very much defined for us. Reality check: in theory, we're a fan-owned club (yes, the italics are deliberate). With that comes an expectation, rightly or wrongly, of a greater level of transparency and accountability than you might reasonably expect from a traditional local businessman, whale or venture-capital. That's part of the bargain and covenant of fan ownership. And whether each individual fan personally has an appetite for that level of scrutiny is ultimately immaterial. A process was defined for matters of this nature. It was ratified, presumably for good reason, and it exists to provide protection and clarity for everyone involved. That process has, to a large extent, been ignored and a plan steamrollered. And that's the bit I find concerning. Not necessarily the outcome, not even necessarily the decision that was made, it's the precedent that has now been set. If a ratified process can simply be bypassed because, in this particular instance, it was inconvenient, expensive or ultimately could have been opposed to a desired outcome, what's to stop exactly the same thing happening again? If some recall, the club had to be reigned in when Sevco faced demotion to the 4th tier, Derek Weir and Dempster outlined the real implications for the club, but they still took it to the support/owners even if they personally may have voted the opposite way due to their roles as directors. However they then had a mandate. Once you've established that a process can be ignored because it worked out alright this time, you've rather undermined the whole point of having the process in the first place.

Not that much better.

Of course its possible to knock down the POD and rebuild it on the exact same footprint...that the footprint is the same doesn't mean that the facilities within the stand or the configuration of it would be the same as it is currently. The malaise around the South Stand is something that has caught me off guard a wee bit, I genuinely didnt realise it was in such a bad nick, but is it purely cosmetic, that a good clean and some paint will sort, or is it much more acute than that? The East has had its issues for as long as there have been seats in it, mainly around exiting the stand after matches and concourse being narrow. For me, we look at replacing the POD, with a functioning, money making facility with much better hospitality facilities, a bar, a restaurant etc. This can be done with finance that currently exists within the club and a much smaller mortgage than what we'd be left holding for any new stadium at the Craig.

I wouldnt expect most fans to be abreast of all the information required to make a fully informed decision on whether to refurb Fir Park or rebuild elsewhere. Obviously there are emotions involved either way. Thats exactly why it is important to have the feasibility report published, together with a laymans summary of what it means for the club.

Delighted mate, should have been done a lot sooner though.