Kmcalpin

Very strange signing as many are saying. However Mark McGhee is not one to hand out a contract, albeit a very short one, purely on the basis of sentimentality. There must be more to it than that.

Good post. I agree with your overall point about marketing and new housing - we simply haven't done enough as a club. However it might surprise everyone how new housing affects the population of an area. It very much depends on how much there has been. Firstly where have incoming households moved from - many will have moved from the Motherwell/Wishaw area. Secondly an area like Motherwell will require several thousand new houses over a number of years just to maintain population levels. Information on future new housing moving forward 10/20 years can be obtained easily from the Planning Department.

Yes, I'd agree with that. Presumably Taylor too will be returning down south. We don't want to be left too light up front as injuries and suspensions kick in. So far, Wes Fletcher has proved to be very injury prone.

Quite right Raoul. Not only that but some players have clauses in their contract allowing them the right to move if bids of a certain value are received.

Oh yes it is

An equally subjective and selective, but opposite, view might read something along the lines of "Anybody who thinks its a good idea for small clubs to get smaller and big clubs to get bigger and that clubs should bring in more foreign players at the expense of home grown talent" is delusional". However both this and your comments are deficiently, and poorly set out; and somewhat bombastic in tone. In truth I believe that the answer lies somewhere between the 2 extremes. The first thing we need to understand is that employment of footballers is unlike normal employment. Under the old system there were injustices ie clubs holding onto players on long deals and unwilling to let them move on. I quite understand and accept that. Some clubs, most famously Dundee United, abused this. So change to protect individual’s rights was quite in order. It is the way in which it was implemented that has done harm to the game. The Bosman ruling has had a number of unintended consequences and these can be summarised as below: · Small clubs become smaller/poorer and big clubs get bigger/richer – the now famous spears V nuclear warheads argument. · Big clubs can snap up good players from smaller clubs for nothing. · Players can demand higher salaries as no transfer fees are payable. · An ending of the foreign players cap to the disadvantage of home grown talent. · Salary levels for the top players have been totally unsustainable · Much needed money has been lost to the game through agents. As Wee Yin has said, some kind of expanded compensation scheme should have been implemented. If a player leaves a small club, or indeed any club, that club should be entitled to a cut of all future transfer fees. That would prevent a club like ours losing a player for say £100,000 who 2 years later moves to an English Premiership Club for £2,000,000. That would protect the game at all levels. As it is small clubs have had to cut back and that inevitably has meant a reduction in squad numbers. So, good players, especially the top ones, have really benefitted whilst their less talented colleagues have suffered.

People have a right not to agree with him and I think he himself would accept that.

I have no problem with Bosman's actions,as he was very honest and open about what he was doing. He made very clear that that he wasn't on any kind of crusade to help others or rectify wrongs. He didn't give a jot about the effect on football or clubs. He was pursuing change purely out of self interest nothing more nothing less. Now I don't agree with him but thats another matter. I just wish other folk would be as honest as he was.

I think MMcG is beginning to get the best out of the players as both he and them get to know one another. He believes in adapting his system to suit the players at his disposal. As he admitted he is only gradually changing things and there are probably quite a few things that he hasn't got round to changing yet.

Absolutely Cap'n sir. We have 3 loanees whose future needs to be ironed out (Ripley, Grimshaw and Taylor). If say 2 of those are retained then that frees up 1 wage. We then have Moore, Reid and Ferguson out on loan. So whilst money is tight there may be scope to ship someone out and bring someone in on loan. At the recent meeting Mark McGhee expressed his surprise at the number of strikers we had signed and at the lack of central defenders (he may reconsider this in the light of Ben Hall's impressive debut). Add to that, that we may wish to ship out the likes of Theo Robinson and Dan Twardzik and we may see some limited movement next month.

A good post and you're right about changing social reasons. For that reason we have to attract more women to football as Hearts have successfully shown. Fans now want better facilities and not everyone wants to stand. Working patterns are changing too as you say. Money - I'm not so sure that its as important a reason as some would have us believe. Yes ticket and travel costs are far too high and they do deter some fans from attending but for many others its a case of choice. £20 is a helluva lot for a football match but not for a few bets on the horses or a few drinks at the local or at home. Men are now spending far more on clothes than they used to do. The cost of golf club membership has rocketed. Concerts don't come cheap. All of these alternatives and more are competing with football tickets. TV football too has had a huge impact. Years ago I would have read about the likes of big English teams like Bolton, Burnley or Arsenal in football publications and occasionally watched them on the box, but that was it. In recent years wall to wall coverage of the English Premiership excited young Scots fans who then saw that standard as being the norm and anything less was rubbish. In recent times that has begun to change, as English clubs have enjoyed less success in Europe and Scots fans, both young and old, have discovered that there are bigger and better clubs like Barcelona to support. So yes, social reasons are very relevant as you point out. It shows that the club must work hard to show the local community that its not just about putting a decent team on the park. Overall our attendances are low just now but Christmas is approaching and we've not been playing well. Our core support in recent years never really varies outwith 3,100 - 4,100. By way of comparison, I think a year ago we played Ross County at Fir Park and our home crowd was about 3,100.

Any word on Louis Laing's unexplained absence?

Correct. A few of our group left from Perth and travelled down the A9, M80 and M73/74. That is the way they normally travel. We commented at the time on the entire South Stand being open and could only assume that Dundee had advised us to expect well in excess of 2,000 fans. We travellled via Kincardine Bridge yesterday and it was fine although it took us a good 30-40 minutes longer.

No cause to crow at all but Inverness and Hamilton both attracted sub 3,000 crowds yesterday, as did Killie the week before. Christmas is acoming - its that time of year for shopping, nights out on the lash and monumental hangovers.

An important win for us today and it was possibly the best performance of the season. Some good football and we're gradually looking more organised although our off the ball work rate has to improve drastically. For me Lou Moult was the MOTM although young Hall had a very impressive debut. Moult has a high work rate with not a little skill. I thought too that Keith Lasley had his best game for a while although he did go missing for a longish spell in the second half, as did Pearson and Grimshaw. The two full backs had a mixed game. Hammell and especially Law looked very good on the ball but they were all too easily caught out of position in the second half. Law in particular had a rather uncomfortable time of it when the young Liverpudlian, Calder, appeared on the scene. We played some good football, especially in the first half and it would have been no injustice to go in at the interval 3 or 4 goals up. The players are also starting to look more confident. Overall a good team performance but we did lose our way a bit in the second half, especially following the substitutions. For a lengthy spell Dundee piled on the pressure after the break and it came as no surprise when they scored. 2-0 can be an awkward lead and we looked uncomfortable whilst trying to defend and soak up pressure. Still we held out until the third goal sealed it. A bit surprising to see Ben Hall make his debut as Mark McGhee hadn't mentioned him but Dylan Mackin's late, but welcome appearance from the bench, was less of a surprise. Louis Laing's absence remains a mystery. Good to see MMcG use some youth. The most disappointing aspect of the game for me was our off the ball play. We need to work a lot harder in closing opposition players down and denying them space. Dundee were given far too much space at time in spells, but in fairness Mark McGhee knows this. If we can rectify this weakness we'll be a top 6 side. In fairness though we thoroughly deserved our 3-1 win and our weakness should be viewed in that context.

OK. The competitive season will kick off say 2 weeks earlier and I assume friendlies will be played beforehand (an assumption I know). Normally these would be played midweek although in recent years we haven't played as many as 4 league cup games in a season - so that could already be 1/2/3 more games per season. Will the season finish earlier? Although there will be a 2 week break in January the displaced games will need to be squeezed in at other times in the season. So all in all the close season would probably be shorter and the season more intense given there's a 2 week break in January. In short we'll probably be playing more games (at the moment a minimum of 1 league cup game and with the new set up a minimum of 4 league cup games). The season will simply involve more stops and more condensed periods of activity.

To achieve that surely the league would involve more midweek games being scheduled to replace midweek league cup ties? If so it would be a more intense season for the players.

Granted the players will get a short break in January to recharge their batteries but they will get several weeks less in the summer to recharge their batteries. Swings and roundabouts?

All quiet on the team news front; hopefully we haven't picked up any more injuries in the past week.

There will still be friendlies; all this means is that the close season will get even shorter. Clubs will want to generate revenue and so many such games will be open to the public. From a football perspective few managers will want to go into a competitive game against reasonably strong opposition with an unfit squad. Likewise, if a club like ours needs to make as much cash as possible from a good cup run it doesn't make sense to risk losing a game they should win through players not being match fit. In short we either move to summer football or we don't. No half baked, in between compromise please, which achieves nothing.

Exactly Cap'n. Surely it can't be down to the weather as our winter lasts longer than 2 weeks. Players needing a break? Players down south play more games than we do. Also our season is irritatingly broken up by international breaks meaning that its stop start, stop start ad nauseum. Its very worrying, very worrying indeed, that our owner expressed concern that the proposed break coincides precisely with the time of year that many clubs suffer cash flow problems. Trying to piece together the admittedly scant evidence, would suggest that this particular proposal has been included at the behest of bigger clubs like Aberdeen and Celtic. We all know how the SPFL works with endless bickering/horse trading/behind the scenes deals and compromises. Given that, I'd hazard a guess that Celtic and perhaps Aberdeen have been given this concession as a trade off for some other perhaps totally unrelated concession. Its also significant that Celtic won't be in this season's European competition much longer and could be looking to arrange a money spinning friendly. Might be totally wrong though.

I think Mark McGhee is right. Dom Thomas seems to be hitting a bit of a plateau in his development now. To move up to the next level he needs to bulk up / toughen up (which he himself admits) and to improve his final ball. Mark McGhee and his lieutenants know the lad far better than we do and you have to trust their judgement.

Have the detailed proposals been published yet? Often with these ideas the devil is in the detail.

No problem with that providing we're right.

Les Hutchison is quoted by the BBC as saying "We were not given time to review the impact of such changes on the summer transfer window, the financial impact of a two week winter break when club finances are at there weakest, the impact on pre-season player preparations for the new season and reduced player recovery time. The majority of clubs are run on very tight budgets and need time to review the financial impact of such significant changes." So who exactly took this decision? We are always told by Neil Doncaster that he and his fellow officials don't take decisions but simply implement the wishes of the clubs. Les Hutchison's comment about the financial implications of a 2 week break in January is very well made.