David
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Posts posted by David
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22 hours ago, MJC said:
I am not one of these Motherwell fans who sees us as this tinpot nonentity that are smaller than clubs like Falkirk, Dunfermline, Morton etc and who no doubt would be in favour of us merging with Accies “for the good of the Scottish game” and all that nonsense
I have literally never met a Motherwell fan who wanted us to merge with Accies. Ever.
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Anyone got Ellery Balcombe's number?
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2 hours ago, joewarkfanclub said:
Seems like a solid appointment and looks like we have followed a similar process to the managerial one to get the right candidate in.
I wonder if there is a bit of succession planning there and we might be going down the old Liverpool "bootroom" route?
Style, identity, promote from within....
Would certainly make things simpler as and when Jens moves on......
Known in Lanarkshire circles as "the cheap option."
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On 6/20/2025 at 11:15 AM, Ya Bezzer! said:
However you worry slightly when managers come in and start talking about 'modernising' Scottish football and adding extra 'dimensions'.
I would be more worried if we'd brought in a manager who had started talking about "good honest professionals" who "run their socks off."
Personally, I want modern and new dimensions. As I've heard people say in the past, if we're going to be pushing for top six/finishing 7th-9th, let's at least make it exciting for the people who part with their hard earned cash to watch.
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Not at all, I think the more discussion and ideas being exchanged, the better.
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On 6/14/2025 at 2:21 PM, Kmcalpin said:
I found it hard to form a definitive opinion on some issues as I agreed with the overall principle but not the detailed changes.
Can you provide some examples? Don't feel like you have to, I just found this comment interesting.
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2 minutes ago, MJC said:
I will be very surprised if this works out.
And I would have been very surprised if you'd said anything other than that.
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It really depends on what the club wants.
If it wants pragmatic solidity, clear structure, and safety-first organisation that grinds results, Neilson is your man.
If they prefer high-intensity pressing, rapid transitions, attacking fluidity, and a knack for developing youth talent, someone like Wimmer offers a more modern, progressive style.
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Just now, joewarkfanclub said:
I take your point.
But where's the adventure in that?
If we're looking for adventure, I'd rather we looked overseas. The idea of having Brown, who will be under the media spotlight as a "former Celtic man" throughout his tenure with us isn't really the kind of adventure I want. He'll never be "Scott Brown, Motherwell manager," he'll always be "Scott Brown, former Celtic player and scourge of Rangers."
If we're looking at hiring a Scottish manager, I'd choose Neilson over Brown.
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21 hours ago, joewarkfanclub said:
Id rather have Scott Brown than Neilson. At least he has a bit of personality about him. I suspect it will be neither of them.
Personality is all well and good, but I’d take a manager who knows how to get results any day. Neilson might not light up a press conference, but he’s shown he can win games in Scotland.
A win rate of 51 percent across more than 400 matches as a manager. He guided Hearts to the Championship title twice, once in a league that included both Hibs and Rangers, and again in a season with Dundee in the mix. He also led Dundee United to the title.
He’s taken a team to a Scottish Cup final and secured a third-place finish as well. If we’re judging Scottish managers purely on achievements and consistency, I’d say he’s well ahead of Brown at this stage.
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15 minutes ago, wellfan said:
It’s obvious that you’re trying to misrepresent my original post above as xenophobic, and I’m not having it.
Not at all. My point is that we need to move with the times. Look at the other leagues in Europe. They see foreign coaches all the time, it's commonplace. But in Scotland, we still look at a foreign coach as something exotic and risky, when in truth, it's not any more risky than appointing someone like Pressley or Neilson.
I was more questioning your logic behind the notion that a less-than-stellar experience with Wimmer would represent a need to return to the status quo. I don't agree with that at all.
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2 minutes ago, dennyc said:
It was written elsewhere...whether accurate or not...that Wimmer returned to Germany due to a serious illness in his family.
This is what I heard also, although not in any official capacity. And as you say, that is a private matter.
What I am confident of is that it wasn't a case of him arriving at Motherwell and deciding he missed his family. He knew exactly what would be required, in the short-term at least, when it came to that side of things.
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Just now, wellfan said:
That’s not what I said or implied, so don’t mischaracterise my point. My point was simply that the Board may now see it as too risky to appoint someone who doesn’t live in Scotland. The issue wasn’t that Wimmer was an unfamiliar foreigner, but rather that he wasn’t based in Scotland, which made it challenging for him to manage both the job and his personal life when issues arose back home.
So, going by your reckoning, and as weeyin says above, a new manager who we recruit from the south of England would fall into the "unfamiliar foreigner" category.
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9 minutes ago, wellsince75 said:
A man with a young family living in a different country from said family isn’t purely bad luck .
there was a level of risk - had the family been moving over etc etc then fine but to expect that to work and all be hunky dory isn’t just bad luck
I know a few things have been floated out there, but I don't believe that Wimmer left because he missed his family. There was more to it than that.
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19 minutes ago, wellfan said:
After the Wimmer debacle, I doubt the Board will take a chance on another unfamiliar foreigner who doesn’t live in Scotland. It may now seem a bit too risky.
The Wimmer situation was simply a case of bad luck. These things happen. What’s baffling is that some people still view overseas managers as though they’re strangers from another world, like we’re stuck in the late nineties. Football is more international now than it’s ever been. We should be focused on finding the right person for the role, regardless of where they come from. Their nationality shouldn’t matter.
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2 hours ago, dennyc said:
I’d be quite happy if we were to go for Scott Brown even though I detested him as an opposition player. And can anyone deny he is a winner?
Then again I’m against all this analytics bullshit. It all feels like a bit of a cop out to me. I can hear it now ……’Ah but the data suggested he was the man for the job’. Pretty sure even Kettlewell would have come out well using that system. Did that route not steer Hearts to opt for Cathro, as well as Critchley who outscored McInnes at the time? Crazy and hardly a strong recommendation for its use.
I’m old school so let’s draw up a list of favourites from home and overseas, invite them in for an interview/presentation and offer the job to the one that comes across best whilst meeting the ethos of the Club…community, youth development, Society interaction etc.
I wonder how many very successful managers would ever have gotten near their first appointments had analytics been the primary driver? Sometimes gut feeling and what you see with your own eyes might just be the way to go.
As for Scott Brown, let’s set aside the Celtic connection and the Kipre red card. He had a job to do for his Club and did it very well. Just as he did as a player with Hibs. He is a young, ambitious Manager who is doing well and is highly regarded at Ayr. Did a good job at Fleetwood who were flirting with relegation before his appointment. He left after a season or so with the Club in turmoil behind the scenes and up for sale. The Ex Chairman was jailed for fraud. We could do a lot worse than Brown.
Whoever we appoint has a huge job on their hands so we need to get things sorted soon.
I’m actually with you on a lot of that, especially when it comes to Scott Brown. I didn't really like him as a player, but I’d be kidding myself if I said he wasn’t a real leader. The man was a proper competitor, and he’s clearly serious about making his mark in management. What he managed at Fleetwood under difficult circumstances, and now at Ayr, deserves a bit of credit. If he were willing to buy into what this club stands for — the community, the youth setup, the Society — then I’d absolutely be open to it.
That said, I think the whole analytics thing often gets taken the wrong way. It’s not about choosing a manager because a spreadsheet says so. It’s just another tool to help guide the decision-making, not to replace gut instinct, not to ignore interviews or understanding what the club’s all about, but to add to that picture. Saying the data would have pointed to Kettlewell at the time is probably true, he was doing well by the numbers. The issue came later, when there wasn’t a structure around him to turn short-term results into something sustainable. The data didn’t get it wrong. The problem was, in my opinion, that the club didn’t use everything it had in the right way.
People always bring up Cathro, but that was more about Hearts throwing someone with no real experience into the deep end. Critchley didn’t set the place alight, fair enough, but he wasn’t picked purely on stats. He had a strong background with youth players and links to a top setup at Liverpool. Again, it’s more about whether the club gave them the proper support than about any numbers someone ran on a spreadsheet.
The truth is, some of the most progressive clubs in the game, including Brighton, Brentford, and even Liverpool, all rely on smart data alongside strong football minds. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
So aye, bring the candidates in. See who really understands what Motherwell’s about. But I’d want the Board to have every possible insight in front of them before making a decision, especially in a league where the margins are razor-thin.
As for Brown, he’s more than earned the right to be part of the conversation. Let’s just make sure we’re not going for anyone based purely on name or sentiment. Whether it’s Brown, someone from overseas, or a name that’s not even on the radar yet, it’s got to be the best possible fit for where we are and where we’re trying to go.
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1 hour ago, MJC said:
The longer this drags on the more worried/convinced I’m becoming that it’ll be Richard Foster.
If the same thorough and analytical process the club used to identify Wimmer doesn’t point to Foster, Neilson, or any of the names currently being linked in the press as the right fit, then they won't be considered I'd imagine.
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7 hours ago, purestate said:
I don’t know why likes of Newcastle keep getting referenced as not changing their kit.
the number of black stripes on home kit changed every year from 2020 as has the extra trim, inc colour variants.
Celtic also have wild variety of bizarre takes on hoops in recent years.Celtic have been wearing hoops on their home shirts since as far back as 1904. While the shade of green might shift slightly from time to time, or there may be a faint pattern woven into the hoops, the core design remains instantly recognisable around the world.
Newcastle have stuck with black and white stripes since 1894. The width of the stripes has varied, and the trim has seen changes over the years, but the overall look has stayed the same.
Now compare that to us.
Is the message here that our home kit doesn’t really have an identity of its own beyond the colour palette? From a branding perspective, the approach we take is baffling. We’ve got a distinctive colour combination, yet we’ve never settled on a consistent design to anchor it.
There’s nothing wrong with tweaking the details (a different collar, a shift in trim, even the size or placement of a central band), but let’s not kid ourselves. Clubs like Celtic and Newcastle have a look that’s unmistakably theirs.
We don’t.
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Looks to me like they’ve tried to cram two different designs onto the same shirt.
I just don’t get why we can’t stick with the amber shirt and claret band. It’s distinctive and people recognise it as ours. Do other clubs mess about with their traditional look as much as we do? Take Celtic, for instance – they keep their hoops. You don’t see Manchester United randomly switching to stripes, do you? Maybe one shirt in the last twenty years had a “V” on it, but they mostly stick to their main design and colours.
There are still two other kits each season where you can be as creative as you like.
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22 hours ago, fizoxy said:
Saw an article with John Terry lamenting about his unsuccessful efforts to secure a manager job, maybe he could do a job here?
The only positive in that appointment would be to play the drinking game every time a Scottish journalist or media personality described the move as "box office."
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12 hours ago, joewarkfanclub said:
Surely the sponsor is paying for their name in the kit worn by the first team to reach customers who are watching the team in the stadium or on tv?
Wait, you're saying that me wearing the latest shirt while shopping at Wishaw retail park isn't going to help G4Claims land new business?
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3 hours ago, mio said:
Stephen Pressley has resigned from his position at Brentford? Surely to god no!!!!
The club has made clear that it's using the same approach and framework as the one that brought us Wimmer, so unless Pressley falls within those parameters, I doubt we'll see him anywhere near the job.
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1 hour ago, Kmcalpin said:
Some overlap with the managerial thread. Not sure I wholly agree David. We're a fan owned club and should be kept informed of what is going on. Again I'm not advocating a blow by blow account of everything thats unfolding;thats clearly unreasonable. However its not unreasonable to be told if anyone is in charge, even temporarily, of the playing side.
The club clearly reads this forum as Kyrk MacMillan's recently released interview answers most if not all of our questions. Having listened to it, I'm now pretty much up to date with what is going on. He's given us the necessary information in an open way, whilst still being professional. Thats all many of us asked.
We may be a fan-owned club, but that doesn't change my post. There's information that simply can't be divulged to the public, even if that public includes Well Society members. There are processes in place for a reason.
I would think that the interview with Kyrk was planned for such a time as more details had been ironed out with Ahmet, and most likely not because he was reading SO during his lunch break today and decided to get an impromptu video recorded!
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34 minutes ago, Spiderpig said:
Enlighten me wtf is sensitive about the club confirming that a current club employee is still employed at the club?
The last I heard, both Ahmet and Wimmer left Scotland on the Monday after our final match, likely heading off on holiday or spending time with their families. It’s possible the club simply haven’t had the opportunity to speak with him in detail yet. Or perhaps those conversations are just getting underway and nothing has been finalised.
The club aren’t obliged to share anything publicly at this stage. I’m sure once there’s a clear decision between the club and the individual, we’ll all be informed.
2025/26 Ins & Outs Discussion
in Club Chat
Posted
Christ almighty.