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David

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Everything posted by David

  1. It's very clear what Hibs would be getting. What I'm wondering is, what exactly is Foley getting? From what I see, he's putting in some money to have no direct control over football matters. The board wouldn't change, and he gets no security of Hibs's assets. Guys like him don't spend their money for a laugh, despite what he claims. There's more to this, long-term, than what's being let on to the regular punter.
  2. Just more news to depress me with, eh? 😂
  3. The only stats that matter are those that show we've won four, and drawn nine in 22 games, and sit 9th in the table.
  4. If I told you we were going to bring in a striker this window who was 27 years old and had scored over 50 goals in our top flight, you'd think that was a signing we didn't want or need?
  5. A few things on Stav Nahmani as a potential target. First of all, he's only just turned 21 years old. He's still young in football terms, so he's still improving. He's also not had much of a chance at St Mirren. He's only started two games or something like that. Also, how St Mirren play and how they utilise their strikers may differ from how we do. Also, we can only afford what we can afford. Finances and availability within the market during this window is a huge factor.
  6. Honestly, I'd rather we continued to operate within our means. And if that involved a drop down to the Championship or even lower, then so be it. I'd rather watch a fan-owned Motherwell Football Club play in the Championship with the best players we can afford and a healthy smattering of youth in our ranks, than some 2nd-rate, oil-backed English teams reserve outfit plying our trade in a weird frankenstein league. But that's just me. Maybe the majority would be happy to go along with it, in the hopes of a few of the oil dollars rolling off the big table and into our hands. I'd likely pack it in and follow junior football at that point.
  7. I imagine it would mean we'd get access to more Mika Biereth's. But it also means we'd have more players taken away at the drop of a hat, just like Mika Biereth. The truth is, at that point, you need to ask if we're really still Motherwell FC? Or just QPR B, or Sheffield United B? If it did happen, it's likely the closest I'd actually come to just chucking it altogether and following rugby instead.
  8. We live in an age where people seemingly know the age and schooling plans of players kids. You think a PCA has any chance of being kept quiet?
  9. It's not that much of a stretch. They're similar to us as far as league and cup ambition goes, and can reportedly offer more money. Plus, it wouldn't require the player to uproot his family or take kids out of school. It's a no-brainer.
  10. I would admit that if I'd ever claimed it, but I haven't. In fact, when fans on this forum slate the manager, I often say there's a reason he's being paid to do the job he's doing while we're all discussing it on an internet forum. If you're looking for people to admit to what you're asking there, I think there's probably more than me you need to ask. Like most fans, I'll give my opinion on things, but I've never claimed to know better than any manager we've had. It should also be said though, that one signing that has come good in Bair isn't a vindication of our transfer business and approach to it as a whole. There will always be outliers and surprises that pop up, but for every Bair there's an Obika, Souaré and Shaw. It could still be argued that one of the reasons Bair looks like such a decent signing is because the overall bar set by the recruitment team and our playing squad this season has been set so low.
  11. So, after this weekend I have to say that I've officially been won over by Theo Bair. As most of you know, I had very little hope of seeing him be a success at Motherwell, despite really hoping he would be. He's worked hard and has proved his doubters, including me, wrong. And I've never been happier to be wrong. We all love a "lad comes good" story, and this is one of them. Let's hope it continues for him and he can even hit double figures!
  12. As much as it pains me to say it, he's worked daily with the likes of Brendan Rodgers and Ange Postecoglou. He's spent his time there training with a much higher quality of player than you'd find at Fir Park, and Norwich City as well. He's also spent his time there getting accustomed to life and how to deal with living as a player at a big club. At Norwich, he could have been wandering the city without many people bothering him. Not the case at Celtic, and it won't be the case if he ends up at a club like AC Milan or whoever picks him up this summer. Yeah, he's always going to be a talent. That doesn't go away. He was talented when he left Motherwell. Add in the above and he leaves Celtic as a better player than he was when he arrived there.
  13. I'm not so sure he was mentally ready to move overseas. I wasn't even that sure he was mentally ready to move down south to be honest, so I think Celtic has been a relatively decent move for him financially and from the perspective of getting used to dealing with being at a big club with a lot of fan pressure and so on. Wherever he goes, he certainly goes there as a better player than he was when he arrived at Celtic.
  14. Considering the clubs sniffing about him just now I'd think moving to a midtable English Championship side would be the last thing on his mind.
  15. That's exactly what I meant. The price I pay for using my phone to mess about on a forum when I should be working 👀
  16. Yes, but there's only so much that a recruitment team and manager can do when they are recruiting players. From virtually every angle the Shaw signing looked like a sound piece of business. He's 25 years old, Scottish and knows our league, he has scored 24 goals in our top division with Hibs, Kilmarnock and Ross County, and 23 in the lower leagues of Scotland. In fairness, he started two league games for us and scored two goals. In one of those starts, he came off injured after less than an hour and had been deployed as an attacking midfielder rather than a forward. As a sub, the most time he got on the park was 30 minutes against Rangers. Would it have been different had he gotten a run of actual starts? We'll never know. The stats would suggest he would have found the net for us, but he didn't really get much of a chance beyond coming on with anywhere from ten to twenty minutes to play in games. I could accept criticism of how Kettlewell utilised him for sure, but criticism of the actual signing? Not so much.
  17. Kettlewell and Daws weren't the only ones who were behind the idea of us signing Shaw. Go back and read the responses when he signed. He was considered a "decent signing" who would kick on if given playing time. Funnily enough, there's no sign of you claiming he would be a disaster and that Kettlewell and Daws had got it wrong. You only jumped in and made that claim with 20/20 hindsight.
  18. I agree, it likely has very little to do with financial savings on the relatively low wages Biereth gets at Arsenal. It's more likely that the loan management team in London has looked at his numbers and performances up here and figured he's shown that he can perform at this level and that it would be more worthwhile seeing if he can do a job at a higher level for the next six months rather than continue as he is here, which would really tell them nothing. What this situation should tell us is that we cannot rely on loan signings. They will either come in and do terribly like Shaw or do well like Biereth and end up becoming a loss risk.
  19. I think if you look at his record to now, the amateur accusation is perfectly valid. He played for a largely terrible Vancouver Whitecaps side that finished 23rd & 17th overall in the two seasons he played double figures for them. He managed three goals in three seasons. He then moved on to HamKam in the Norwegian 2nd tier, where he hit four goals in 17 games. At St Johnstone he scored 1 goal in 33 games. Now, I understand everyone is getting all giddy because he scored two against Livi and got another against Hibs, but as I said, it'll take more than a wee purple patch of a couple of decent games to really change my mind. And again, I hope he does. If he goes on to repeat those performances and manages to grab another two or three goals then I'll be a happy camper. But you're right, we are where we are. And so long as we continue to sign players largely based on "gut instincts" and having a checklist that consists of him being "an honest professional" and "running his socks off" we likely won't see much improvement. Well, I said that his stats and career average suggested anywhere between 3-5 goals for us. So, he's hit that. Hopefully he can do above average numbers for us. He's been a halfway decent player, who has done more than the extremely low bar we all set for him, in a very poor Motherwell team. Credit where it's due I guess?
  20. Okay, a footballer at the level we should be signing and playing. I feel many think he's done relatively well based on the fact that the bar was so low with him to begin with. Basically, he's done okay-ish in possibly the worst Motherwell team I've seen in many a year. If that's good enough for you then that's perfectly fine. I still don't rate him, and definitely not enough to warrant a two-year contract. It'll take more than two or so games where he looks decent to change my mind on that front.
  21. It hasn't changed much really. I said before a ball was kicked that I reckoned he'd get us around 4-5 goals this season. He's played a couple of good games, and hopefully he kicks on from that. I doubt he will, but you never know. From almost the start of the season until the Livi game he looked like someone who tries really hard but doesn't actually accomplish much. And that's in a terrible team. But again, hopefully he confounds all the stats and miraculously becomes a footballer at the age of 24.
  22. Kettlewell is known for his love of Canadian amateur-level players. He hangs his hat on those kinds of signings.
  23. Like Biereth, who had played 13 games and is only 20?
  24. He didn't mention in his statement specifics about the YouTube video either, did he? It will be a multi-faceted approach. I pretty much guarantee this to be the case, because for it not to be would be a complete farce. And as much as our board maybe doesn't have the best track record of late, they're not absolute morons. Yes, but how do you get the word out that the club is seeking additional investment? The Chairman and CEO making a statement isn't going to do anything to get said statement in front of people, is it? As I've said already, it will more than likely be a multi-faceted approach. The social media campaign is designed to get the club and our message in front of people. The video has been seen almost 2.5 million times on Twitter, which is an excellent return considering the club account has 60,000 followers. It has also been retweeted by Tom Green, bizarrely. An actor, director and comedian from Canada with a Twitter reach of around 300,000 of his own. So, despite criticism of the video itself, we cannot deny that it's doing what it was created to do. Draw attention. It's then the job of those who run the club to turn any interested parties drawn from that attention into a potential investor. That's where the written business plan and strategy document you mention would come into play. None of the above can exist on an island. They all have to co-exist for the campaign to be successful.
  25. Or at least sponsor us. Imagine that? Tesla on the shirts, Kettlewell, O'Donnell and Mugabi cutting about North Lan in those horrific Tesla trucks?
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