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Did you consider Tommy McLean to be a decent manager ? Wee Tam bought and moved on countless dud players in his time. Every team in the league buys and moves on players that don't work out for them for one reason or another and every manager has done it more often than anyone would be able to remember. In the market we're in and the competition for mediocre players, I seriously don't get where you think we should be able to magically find great players for no so great money and have every one we try work out well. The fact that the standard of football in our league is going down is not the fault of our club or anybody who works for them. It's the current economics of the game leaves our manager (and every other Scottish manager apart from the h**s and the Tims and maybe Hearts and Hibs scrabbling around in the same murky pool. Every now and again you unearth a gem and a lot of the time you don't. If you look back to the signing of Moult, he was brought in as 'a project' and the main man was to be a guy who'd played at a higher level (Wes Fletcher). We all know how that turned out. When you deal in that pool, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It's like buying a £500 car. Blaming Motherwell for making the mistakes made by almost every club and manager in the league is pointless.

Looks like a young Carl McHugh!

You've obviously taken that quite personally. You are normally one of the more sensible posters on here so my comment certainly wasnt directed at you. However on this point I happen to disagree with you. Some of what you say is true. But you need to add the context of the circumstances and what SK has been asked to do by the board and what he has had to face. There is much mitigation to be found if anyone cares to look. You also have to add in, what is the chance of getting someone better in at this stage of the season. In response to your specific points, he never threw Gent under the bus at all. Sure you can take his comments out of context and make it sound that way if you like, but it would be disingenuous. Gent clearly hasnt taken the huff and probably had his best game in a Motherwell jersey yesterday in a position he is more suited to. Wilkinson has been moved on, Obika may or may not be shortly, and where would we have been without Theo Bair in the last few weeks? SK did very well last season. This season he has been asked to do the same job with one hand tied behind his back. Yes he has made mistakes and for a long time results and performances werent great. However, he has steadied the ship and our record in the last 8 games isnt actually that bad. He deserves this window to add to the squad and see where we go from here. If he fucks it up and we end up in a relegation battle then his position is back up for discussion.

You want specifics? SK inherited a bloated squad full of players most on here thought were shite and needed moved on. He was clearly under instruction to from the board to get the squad trimmed down as our wage bill was too high. He was quite ruthless and successful in that regard. He then went to try and improve the quality of the squad with new players. He wasnt able to do that. If you listen to the language used at the time his preferred targets all went to clubs where they could earn more and he was left scraping around the bargain basement to get bodies in. If you watch the video I posted with Gary Neville & Roy Kean discussing these very issues, you might accept that its just not as straightforward as fans think. In the first few weeks of the season Wilkinson, Biereth and Obika all got injured forcing him to bring in Ollie Shaw at the last minute. We already had Butcher injured, Casey, Blaney, McGinn, Miller, Souare all followed. So yes. Plenty mitigation in my book. No manager will get all their signings right. Most will have at best a 50/50 success rate. Probably lower for a manager with out budget. The secret for these guys is to recognise it isnt working early and move them on. Failing to do so would be a bigger concern. Re wingers - see trimming of the squad and what players were available to sign. Gent gave a very good impression of a winger at the weekend. Maybe that SK sees him as the solution in that area and maybe thats why he brought Monty in much to everyones surprise. Do you know Davor and Gents personal circumstances? Maybe they had issues and/or werent ready to play? Gent certainly pointing to the sky when he scored on Saturday. Bair is a back up striker. Circumstances have dictated he has been used more than that. I wouldnt have given him a 2 year deal, but then I dont know what money he is on. It may not be costing us that much. However, he is nowhere near as bad as he was made out to be. Really not sure what standard of striker folks think would be happy to sit on the bench for Motherwell? Wilko got injured early doors and I dont know that we ever figured out how to play him. He seemed like a decent finisher when given chances but we were so deep in the shit at the time he was never gonna feature. Probably best for both parties he moved on. As for the last part. Bair didnt miss any sitters. Gent put in some good crosses that a better striker may have gambled on and got on the end of. But given Biereth was recalled we will have to find someone else to do that. That ones been done to death. Its just nonsense. Scoring goals hasnt been our issue this year. Keeping them out has. So KVV no more kept us up than the defence did. Pretty sure SK had an input in both. Total revisionism. Youve picked the 3 games when we were in fact atrocious. During that run we also lost to Celtic Rangers and St Mirren whilst playing what was generally regarded as some of the best football in recent years. We also came form behind to snatch draws in the games against Ross County, St Johnstone (twice) Celtic and Dundee. Not to mention the game at Easter Road where we were seconds away from back to back victories. Now Im not saying we were great in any of those games, but we werent atrocious. Certainly not for 90 minutes. Again just not true. Alexander and Hammell both had bloated squads. Both SK and Derek Weir have gone on record this season about how the playing squad had to be made more sustainable in the long term. I think we had 35 first team players at the end if Hammels reign its now down to 21. Our recent league form up to the Hibs game was 2 defeats in 8. 5 draws, 1 win, 2 defeats. One of those was to Rangers. One of the draws was away to Celtic. Its not great form, but its nowhere near sackable. Overall, you clearly dont like SK and want him gone. You are entitled to your opinion and I have no issue with that. There have been plenty of reasons for fans to be unhappy with him and the team this season and he probably wasnt too many results away from being sacked. But he has steadied the ship, shown that he is able to recognise mistakes and try to fix them. He isnt going to be sacked now so we have to back him and the players for the rest of the season. The 3 signings made so far in the window appear, on paper at least to address some of the weaknesses in the squad. We could do with a couple more though so lets see what the week brings.

Vicki Vale would be a better option than Obika and Shaw!!

I’d be happy to see James Scott back here.

Mcginley and Shaw are offski according to a poster over on p&b.

Zak Rudden is a haddy. Cammy Kerr is another no.

Welcome to Motherwell Callan and congratulations on getting your first cap for New Zealand.

If 15 games without a win resulted in automatic dismissal, we would've waved bye bye to '91 and the best Motherwell side I've ever seen.

16-0 to St Johnstone. We've got shite players and a shite manager and they've got a great manager and even better players. They've also never signed a player who didn't work out. Heavy defeat followed by a special SFA meeting where they make the decision to relegate us immediately after the game. Either that or we might win.... Or maybe draw.

On point!

Is that photo not the young lad Mark Ferrie who's back from a loan spell?

Looks like zero goals a season striker Jack Vale.

We see our own transfer mistakes more than we see others, because most of us don't care about Ross County squad players. With the finances available to us, when we sign a known quantity, they're going to be flawed in some way. Blair Spittal is a good example of this, he has been an ever present for us and a potent threat going forward with a good number of goals and assists, but he isn't fast. There's a reason players drop to our level, and pace is probably his. He will make a good career hovering around mid table in Scotland, and hopefully we can keep him. Despite some of the stick he gets in here, most teams would kill for someone that produces what he does. If we were able to sign 10 players at Spittals level, we'd be in a very good place, but we probably can't afford that. When we sign an unknown, there's that chance that we unearth a gem, but that's less and less likely as every club has access to the same data and analysis as we have, and for the most part they have more money. So, we have to try and be clever and shop in non traditional markets, or bring in someone who we think we can improve, i.e. a project. Because of that, we don't want to out all our eggs in one basket, in case the project doesn't pan out, so we need to bring in a couple and hope that one works out. We already know the pitfalls of loan signings. Then you get to January signings, which at our level is picking up the scraps. We're not prizing a good player from another team that wants to keep them, so we have to rake through the cast offs and see if we can reclaim something. Then, since we don't have the chance to sign anyone again before the end of the season, we naturally panic and stock up on a couple extra just in case. On top of that there's form and injuries. We can't afford to let players hang around in the squad until they are in form, or drop first teamers when they are out of form, so we often have to move player on in the hope that we can bring someone in who can hit the ground running. Some clubs are better at this than others, but I'm sure that if someone did some analysis, the margins would be pretty small.

I think the championship is more likely.

You can be vague about context of circumstances and mitigation all you like but you cannot deny the fact that in the modern game going 15 games without a win is indefensible. Wilkinson has moved on? That makes up for signing him? He was god awful. Obika might be away soon? That again makes up for extending his deal? Having zero wingers in our squad to give us any form of plan B, who's idea was that? When he gets rid of Olli Shaw in this window does that make it a good signing coz he only lasted 6 months as well? I really can't quite fathom why it's okay to sign these players so long as they get "moved on" just a few months later. The only decent signings he made he waited until it was absolutely necessary to play them and when they come in and do extremely well he has the nerve to say it was a masterplan to wait until they were "ready". As for Bair's form in the last 2 weeks, everyone in the SPFL was howling for signing him on a 2 year deal, even the St Johnstone fans couldn't believe it. Delighted he scored 2 goals against Livingston but other than that he's barely been better than Wilkinson who was so bad he got shipped out 6 months later. I didn't see the 2nd half vs Alloa but apparently he missed 4 good chances that he should have buried. If we're "hanging our hat" on Bair to push us up the table we're in big trouble. For the most part it was KVV that kept us up last year. I don't doubt that SK came in and rejuvinated the squad with enthusiasm and what not, which was exactly what we needed at the time, but that only takes you so far. His tactics are awful, and a 3-1 and a 2-2 draw in recent games are blinding folk to some of the worst performances in recent memory. Remember Ross County, Aberdeen & St Johnstone when we were absolutely fucking atrocious, those were regular occurrences. We have been SO bad in so many games during that 15 game spell, all down to the way the players were being made play. Granted we aren't rolling in it, but I doubt SK's budget is any worse than Hammell's or Alexander before him, and even if it is, it makes it worse he signed Soare, Wilkinson, Bair & Obika with that budget that is allegedly "tying one hand behind his back". Is that what we are settling for now, having "not actually THAT bad" results in 8 game spells whilst the real form guide tells you we went FIFTEEN games without a win. You cannot dodge that, dress it up, skirt around it or avoid it, it is an indefensible run of form. Fifteen games without a win + some howling performances along the way + fucking up the last window means giving him this window will be disastrous.

Thankfully you can't hear me before he stepped up!! 🤣🤣🤣

We need a lot, but we don't neccessarily need to sign them in order.

Thought it was a competent enough performance yesterday, given the circumstances. Threadbare squad with injuries and departures. Alloa played tidy football in spells, but didnt threaten us as much as I thought they would and at no stage did I think we were at risk of losing the game. Got off to a great start first half and if we had a more instinctive striker available we could have been out of sight before they scored. Their goal is definitely on Butcher. Poor mistake to give Sammon so much space and then show him inside. That said, it was still a great finish. Second half was much better, especially after Miller came on. Boy is a class act and Davor is gonna love playing alongside him. He just brings a calmness to everything we do. Loved the partnership between Montgomery and Gent. Both young guys with bags of talent and potential. If we can find a way to replicate that on the other side of the pitch we should be able to hurt teams in the second half of the season. Someone mentioned Luca Ross in the advanced position and that could work, but we still need a more dynamic RWB than SOD, albeit he has been absolutely fine at RCB and Id be happy enough with him in a flat four. To those slaughtering Spittal, I really do wonder what your expectation levels are for a Motherwell midfielder? Without his assists and goals this season we would be in deep shit! The guy isnt perfect, and his corners frustrate me as much as everyone else, but he is one of our most important players. Theres 4 or 5 clubs in our league that would be happy to take him off our hands. Yes, I was annoyed about the penalty miss and I did think the free kick was more suited to a left footer, but then he does that! I guess some folk are just happier being miserable! Anyway, comfortable passage into the next round. Another cup tie to look forward to and fingers crossed for another couple of decent signings before the window closes. Up The 'Well!