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Andy_P

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Posts posted by Andy_P

  1. 1 hour ago, Kmac said:

    After sleeping on the issue, I'm afraid I'm not jumping on the bandwagon here. 

    Rather than having anything personally against Alexander, my concerns stem from a fundamental disagreement in current approach from the board concerning recent strategic running of the club. 

    Whilst I understand that argument will be met with a flurry of "look at the money that has come in", I am approaching this from the perspective of a fan, who's main aim is to see the best team on the park, have some success and hopefully move along 1 or 2 players from time to time in order to keep things ticking. 

    I don't believe that the appointment of Alexander represents an understanding of either the immediate needs of the playing side of things or indeed shows significant strategic foresight. The vast majority of the mess we find ourselves in stems from recent runnings at the club. Handing out short term contracts to lower league players (often from the English leagues), a lack of investment in senior players and a lack of emergent youth - these factors have all combined to a state where the dressing room is split and we look pretty rudderless.

    I also do not believe that the hiring of Alexander, given his full background is in lower league English football, will offer any sort of departure from the above. As I have said before, I am not against bringing in players from south of the border, but that needs to be met primarily with our own youth talent and a group of senior players to steady the ship. We have had no communication from Burrows et. al. as yet, regarding investment on the playing side from the Turnbull/Scott/Mckinstry/Kipre money, rather we are still talking about offloading to bring in (the fact we have a bloated squad lacking ability shouldn't leave us in a financial situation of having to do that, given recent income).  

    The matter of fact is that we are in a relegation dogfight, at the time of writing, and our main aim for the season is survival. Alexander has neither worked nor played in Scotland and as has been seen in both management and players previously, the demands and expectations are higher than what many imagine - often catching people by surprise. It's a huge risk bringing in this type of profile at this time. It will unquestionably take him time to adapt and I don't believe we have that luxury. 

    From a mentality perspective, I believe it's the wrong approach.  For me, this is not necessarily the move which an established premier league club should be making - I'm afraid it's the kind of appointment I would expect from a club such as St. Mirren or Ross County (no offence).  Whether we care to acknowledge it or not, we haven't been relegated in 34 years, have the 7th/8th largest support in the country and have a supporter engagement and bank balance that the vast majority of clubs in Scotland would envy (That all sounds a wee bit too Sevco, but hopefully you get the point) .

    We're taking unnecessary risks and not realising the cliff side that potential relegation and the subsequent disenfranchisement from the society that it would represent or adjusting our strategic approaching to secure success on the park and our long term future. 

    It's a well made case but much like when we discussed similar the other day, and whilst I'm not a million miles off in terms of hoping to see better on the park, I'm still in disagreement over the current strategy off it. I still think it is pretty clear and not dissimilar from what it has been pretty much from day one.

    Broken right down for me  have a scenario where the club finds itself reliant on running as tight a ship as possible allied largely to player trading to get as close to break even as possible or even generate a profit. We will get the odd Cup Final or European run that will distort things but that's largely the challenge they are going to face every year.   Going by what was said at the last AGM they have raised the playing budget and are fully aware if they don't there is an understanding of where that most likely lead. But that doesn't change the fact that the more that is spent on the playing budget the further away from break even they start off.

    Also contributing to that challenge of breaking even is Fir Park.  Whether we like it or not the clock is ticking and money is required to be spent on it to ensure its fit for purpose for every new season.  And that isn't just niceities like scoreboards that's stuff like getting licences to open stands or making sure the pitch never again gets to the stage it was at a decade ago.

    Then there's training facilities which with each new complex that other clubs open or enter into agreements to use facilities sees us become slightly less attractive and which the club have committed to improve for the development of the players both first team and through the age grades.

    It's a bitter pill to swallow perhaps when you don't have investors with deep pockets, or financial institutions willing to lend at attractive rates and your only way of  ensuring the continued running of the club is through that mixture of cutting your cloth and player sales, then the priority will always, always be securing the club's future present, medium term and where appropriate further into the future.  You could even go so far as to make the argument that the board would not be acting in the best interests of the club if their first thought when having a year like 2020 is to disregard their financial responsibilities and go daft and ramp up the budget considerably.   

    And bringing all that back to the managerial appointment yesterday, I genuinely don't know anything about his managerial merits, but if the guy has a fair reputation in the positions he has held, has impressed in the interview process, has plenty of experience of managing similar sized clubs and knows the  market you primarily expect to buy and sell to then I can understand why he's been attractive to the board.  But we'll see.

     

  2. 9 hours ago, underboyleheating said:

    We reverted back to that kit in  Feb 79 due to the new shirt not being popular.  We also wore claret shorts with it. I think this is from around that time. Possibly one of Pettigrew’s final games? We played them on the 7th April 79 at Tynecastle. 
    image.thumb.jpeg.16f7fa85b5531f8275bd46796896bbd1.jpeg

    Posting an image of Walter Kidd on these pages!!?!?!  May a thousand fleas infest your underwear! :lol:

    • Haha 1
  3. Just now, Kmac said:

    Let’s be honest, from all the drivel of the Foyle era, we’ve have to endure some amount of English non-league shite in relation to the total amount of dross. 

    If Shaka had stopped at that, then fair enough, as I said if someone doesn't rate the DOR then as you allude to there's plenty evidence you can use to back that up without resorting to making stuff up. But no, like the laughable nonsense from someone recently about this team being the worst team in sixty years for some that desire to be that extra wee bit more negative, to twist the knife that wee bit extra, is just irresistible at times and it takes away from what might well be a fair point.

     

  4. 2 minutes ago, Shaka said:

    Theres a big difference between first team players in league 1 & 2, and reserves or players in the Conference & Lower. It looks like this Transfer Guru we have is only able to scout players within a short distance from his Newcastle home. Someone like Alexander would have far better and widespread contacts. 

    Theres also a fair difference between building a team of Academy players, some of the better Scottish players and a handful of decent lower league English players and filling a team with a dozen shiters from the Gateshead League North

    Like Tanner and Taylor-Sinclair who were last playing with Plymouth when we signed them. Or Polworth and Fisher from Inverness.  You don't rate the Director of Recruitment, fair enough.  Making up shite to embelish your point only diminishes it.

    • Like 4
    • Haha 1
  5. 1 hour ago, C&A not the shop said:

    I really don't think St Johnstone pay more than us. If rumours are to be believed we beat them to Gallacher and Polworth, I don't think it was the weather that made the difference...

    It perhaps doesn't fit in with the "what do they do in training" type rants but Gallagher said one of the reasons he chose Motherwell was the fact that Robinson had said he could work him to improve him as a player and his standing in the game.

  6. 1 minute ago, milo said:

    You can’t polish a turd with many of them! lol

    How long would it take to bring Mugabi, Lamie, Chapman, White, Seedorf, Hastie to a competent level? 

    Fair comment, I just thought it an amusing variation on the theme I remember from the Turnbull documentary.  Made me laugh anyway.

  7. On 1/2/2021 at 7:48 PM, milo said:

    New manager needs to be in place by end of the week and he’s going to have to crack the whip like never before. 

    A goalie (if Carson is out), a centre half, a midfielder and a striker minimum are required.

    Cole, Polworth, Gallagher, O’Donnell, Long and anyone else who doesn’t want to be here should fuck off now! Seedorf, Hastie, Chapman, Mugabi, Lamie, McGinley and White who are never good enough for this level need to leave now also.

    None of this “trying to improve players bullshit”. Folk that continually sold the jerseys and let the club down need emptied now. 
     

    And not a chance we’d be having these conversations if Hartley and Tait were still in the building. We fucked up majorly there.

     

    Ha ha, I missed this first look around.

    I look forward to seeing this motivational script on the gym walls in the South Stand in the next social media video.  Sign for the 'Well where you can look forward to "none of this trying to improve players bullshit" :lol:

  8. 11 minutes ago, supermarv said:

    Totally agree here and for most Motherwell fans who are ST holders and WS members like myself, ever since I signed up to the WS away back 2 years ago there is very rarely any updates and dan decisions etc for a so called “fan owned” club and nobody really bothers with decisions off the park when it’s all going well on the park but like at the present when chips are down, serious questions need to be asked. And all fans should have a say no matter if it’s £5, £10, £200 a month etc, 99% of the fans will have the clubs best interests at heart and realise we can’t be spending millions on players of even high hundreds of thousands on players.

    You get a say.  If you want a seat on the Well Society board you can put yourself forward for nomination and thereafter one of the other boards until the point where the WS are represented on the club board if you are elected.

    You get an opportunity to every month or whatever it is to ask questions of the Well Society online and before Covid-19 had the opportunity to do it in person, as you did with the AGM every year.

    You get email every Friday from the Well Society with any items of note.

    To suggest fans don't get a say is incorrect.

    • Like 2
  9. 33 minutes ago, Kmac said:

    I’ll try to answer some of Yorky’s here too.

    Perhaps signaling solely English clubs wasn’t correct of me. However, a very quick snapshot of livi or ICT would’ve also hinted that there were severe doubts regarding both Polworth and Lamie (more so the later). White has never played at the top level and Hastie had a purple patch with us before doing nothing for a full season. Basing our entire strategy on ‘punts’ has come home to roost like it was always going to with short contracts and loan deals serving as the base with no youth crop on the horizon. 
    We’re a selling club, yes (like everyone bar about 10 clubs in Europe) but I’ve always maintained that our strategy should be a solid 6/7 senior pros with proven pedigree and experience at this level supplemented by the youth, both to secure our positioning and the procession line. At the moment, we have neither.

    I completely understand that we have to be prudent. Again I have no qualms over investing in training facilities or keeping cash reserves, but the reality is, we have reinvested nothing to note. Neither burrows or the board came forward following two of our largest player sales in our history with the space of 6 months and said “this is the plan”. 
    I’ll repeat it again, we are fan owned, Thus the raison d’etre for us as a club should be maximum fan value which basically means the best possible product  on the park. Neither myself or others who have purchased shares or contribute to the society do so because we feel that there will one day be a buyout and we will make a few quid or indeed, the bank balance is healthy, we just want the team to do well. We are not and have not been strategically acting to the core principals of fan ownership.

    Nothing I would take much issue with at all up to the point where you move on to Fan Ownership, at that point our views differ slightly.   We want the team to do as well as it possibly can, of course we all do. But for me the primary responsibility of any board of Motherwell FC is to ensure the ability to trade, with the natural follow on from that the better position we are in financially the better placed we should be to give the resources to the manager to get that that best possible product on the park.

    If we do it the way around by then could very quickly be back in a position where you are reliant on punting somebody in January for fear that they leave on  a free just to balance the books until the summer.

  10. 1 hour ago, Kmac said:

    Wrong. Investing 1m is similar to what I also posted. That doesn’t necessarily mean spunking 1 m on fees, it means using a mil on a combination of fees and salary rather than using presumably having an even lower player budget than last season (at least I pray McGinley and Lamie aren’t earning anywhere near the same as Hartley and Tait). There has been absolutely no visible squad investment which considering we must’ve raked in about 5million in player sales during 2020 is a bit of a piss take for a fan owned club.

    short term contracts on punts from English lower leagues is exactly what has got us into this mess. 

    There's a balance to be struck. 

    I certainly agree there there should have been more investment in the team, but not necessarily massive investment in the team.

    It's because we are fan owned which exactly the reason why they have to show a degree of prudence and not get carried away when they do get a windfall because when tough financial times do come there is no benefactor going to bail them out. They have to be prepared for it with finance in reserve.

    They were also pretty clear that some of the money taken in was going towards infrastructure projects. I'll pre-empt that the "the nice new PA system is going to sound lovely in the Championship" responses such talk usually brings but bringing the training facilities up to standard is surely to be welcomed.  I wonder for example where we've been training the last week or so with temperatures barely getting above freezing.

  11. 50 minutes ago, middleeastdave said:

    I would hope that the board will make a quick move as boy we are in trouble, the problem the confidence is rank rotten at the moment.

    This is the concern for me.

    So disastrous has today been that it ramps up the pressure on the board. If they had aspirations of leaving things in Keith Lasley's hands to keep things ticking until things naturally ran their course to the new manager's appointment then that might well be under question following today.  The danger is that they panic and get hurried into making the wrong appointment. 

    Equally though warning signals must surely have been flashing today that they cannot afford dally unnecessarily as it is evidently vital any new manager gets as much time as possible to work with the team, and make use of whatever budget and time that remains in the transfer window following their appointment.

     

  12. 4 minutes ago, steelboy said:

    Only when we are shot of all the dross he signed. 

    As long as White, Mugabi, Lamie and Grimmy are around Robinson will linger. 

     

    3 minutes ago, Yodo said:

    Yer right Robinson is in the past so is the 3rd place finish and the two cup finals . However what is remaining with us at the moment is the legacy Robinson has left us which is a team full of shite 

     

    2 minutes ago, smiddy said:

    i dont see eye to eye with yodo  but ffs he possibly has a point were still talking about robbo cause were still getting pumped with the players he signed 

    Note the smiley Gentlemen, note the smiley! Tongue in cheek on my part based on numerous past exchanges.

    I supported Robinson to the bitter end, I thought he could turn it around. I still think he could have improved the squad and sorted things out to a degree,  That he didn't have confidence in his abilities suggests that my faith was misplaced. 

    I think when our first best eleven is on the park we are better than what we are showing, and I believe with two or three good additions we will show that, but I couldn't possibly argue against the point first game post Robinson our team looked weak both in quality and mentality.

    • Like 1
  13. 1 minute ago, Yodo said:

    When  is the light coming on for u ,look your farewell banners were a nice tribute to your God but this shitfest is all down to him and his signings 

    Robinson is in the past. He's been gone what, 72 hours now.  Just how long are you going to keep harking back to events that have been and gone.  It's all about the here and now.

    That's how it works right? :P

    • Like 1
  14. Utterly abject.

    Whether you have  a day or a month to prepare for a game if you have a goalkeeper who gets beaten at his near post with a fairly routine shot, and almost jumps out the way of a shot hit virtually straight at him, you are on to a hiding to nothing. And that's before you get to defenders losing the ball in the air and strikers that have gone 180 minutes without finding the net against the worst defence in the league.

    If Accies had anything about them they could have easily matched or surpassed that 5-0 from a couple of seasons ago.

    There have been a number of games where we've shot ourselves in the foot, spells in games where we've looked a bit sorry for themselves when it hasn't gone our way, but that was a perfect storm showing virtually nothing, gifting goals and just looking like they didn't want to be there. Piss, piss poor!

    • Like 3
  15. 14 minutes ago, Kmcalpin said:

    They might be , I've no idea, but I can't see them paying up now or in the summer for Campbell. They'd need to shell out £400-500K for him in any event.

    Dave, the guy reckoned that the arrival of Campbell would in his eyes mean the inevitable departure of Lewis Ferguson. So that suggests they would need to confirm their outgoings first. 

    I personally think England rather than another Scottish side is the best route for Campbell's development but that might well stem from the fact he's another of our own I'd rather not see line up against us. 

  16. Who'd have thought almost ten years to the day we'd be pitching up at New Douglas Park seeking a change of fortune and having someone new (albeit caretaker this time) in the dugout.  

    It would be going something from this stage though to replicate that season finish where we ended up in the top six and eached a Cup Final.

    Fair chance we might replicate the shitty nil-nil though.

  17. Horrendous.

    Result. Performance. Carson's injury.  Just horrendous.

    I thought we actually started not too bad.  But like many of our home games this season we've been the better side, even if only marginally, but done nothing with the opportunities that we've had during that spell and all the opposition have to do is wait because sooner or later they'll get a chance which inevitably they take.  At worst we should have gone in level at half-time.

    But it was just disastrous from there on in.  Madness from O'Hara which killed it there and then. Carson eventually going off is of course a major worry and in the end it could quite easily have been four or five. 

    I don't know who Robinson has lined up but I very much hope they are lined and ready to be involved pretty much immediately for a revitalisation of that team is pretty desperately required.

  18. 44 minutes ago, Jumbomuir said:

    Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but in Trevs interview in Mondays newspaper, did he not say that he played due to Archer picking up an injury. Would have thought a brainy guy like you would have picked that up

    I didn't. That's why I speculated at what the reason was  and used words like "I imagine" and "probably". 

    Maybe you didn't pick that up.

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