weeyin

Great news for Gallagher and another great advert for our club when we show potential signings how it can boost their career.

It's not just about playing minutes (although they all had some I think). It's about the travel and the training too. Plus being away from Fir Park means that aren't available for learning the tactics for particular opponents.

Playing in an advanced role is something Campbell started in the Toulon Tournament a couple of seasons ago. It worked pretty well there, which is why I imagine it continued. It's been to our advantage as well this season, as Donnelly in the holding position has allowed Campbell to play further up the park for us.

Scott, Maguire, Gallagher and Mugabi were all on international duty too.

I remember that chant at Pittodrie the last day of the season: "You're not much better than Levein. You're not much better than Levein!" I wouldn't ever read anything into the "favourite" tag the media loves throwing around - it is completely meaningless. Hearts would not be doing their due diligence, however, if McCall had applied for that job and they didn't follow-up. There's no disputing he had sustained success with us and, even more importantly, his personality and style is the opposite of Levein - which is often what's needed when you need to rebuild morale. I also suspect Hearts might struggle to attract some of the better candidates while the ghost of Levein is floating around the board room. Rank stupidity to not just pay him off and get him out the door.

Fantastic contribution since he started in the first team. Like Cadden before him, it's often easy to forget how young he is when assessing the odd dip in performance. Another poster child for our youth system.

"Wealthy Benefactor" is the financial model we just spent a few years trying to move away from.

Fans say a lot of ill-informed things, but I'd be amazed if there was a single Motherwell player today who didn't play to win that game today.

You can, however, hold more than one thought - even if you're a footballer. It's perfectly fine to hate losing a game, but identify what went well (so you can replicate that positive) and identify the weak points (so you can work on eliminating the negative).

For whatever reason he's been poor since that Hearts cup game.

The Poppy Police will still be investigating, no doubt.

That would basically require buying him out of his full remaining contract - which isn't really the point of that kind of clause. It's usually more of a bargaining tool to let the manager know they won't stand his in his way for serious suitors, while discouraging the chancers who want to poach him for free.

I imagine the buyout clause was part of his contract extension negotiations. A "quid pro quo" to use the popular term of the day. So extending his contract until 2022, but allowing a buy out of 1 year's salary, seems like a decent compromise.

For those that are wondering why O'Neill took the Stoke job: If Robinson is taking over, that gives us plenty of time to find a replacement.

It was a joke. Robinson was Baraclough's assistant at Fir Park. Then Baraclough was Robinson's assistant at Oldham. Now they are both linked to the NI job, it would be mildly amusing if they switched roles again.

So NI Under-21 manager Ian Baraclough to ultimately take over the senior squad with Robinson as his assistant?

Robinson served his apprenticeship with the NI youth squads and assisted O'Neill with the senior squad that qualified for Euro 2016.

Martin Foyle and the structure and resources he was given (not to mention the changed model where we pay fees for players) were all part of the processes Les put in place. When you restructure a business, it's not a one time deal. It's about putting in process and structures that evolve.

Not as bad as Terry Butcher's story about just "taking a holiday to Australia" during the latter part of the season.

Celtic are one of those teams where, if you get your tactics right, you can make a good game of it. Get them wrong, and they can take 4 or 5 of you for fun. So we need to be aggressive, focused and disciplined.

I think the smartest thing the Society did was to encourage monthly direct debits. It's a much easier and more predictable way to bring in funds and reduces the need for regular "please give us a donation" pleas. I'm assuming most people will be happy to let their contributions continue if they can, so that should help keep things ticking over.

Depends why they wanted to invest. A look across to New Douglas Park shows how weird and sketchy some of these deals can be.

I agree about the admin threat. I expect we'd have found a away to keep afloat without that, probably with Boyle's assistance. Although it does seem we were operating on a business model that was 100% reliant on JB propping us up which, as Gretna and others found out, is unsustainable and dangerous. I was dubious about the consortium, but given some of the stranger developments down south and at clubs like Partick Thistle, it might not have been as wide of the mark as I thought.

I suspect that this week the clubs will be reviewing applications and drawing up lists of targets, but hold off interviewing until the international break.

I've never met Les, had any dealings with Les and not even sure I've listened to any of his interviews so I can't comment on his likability. There is no doubt, however, that he imposed a structure on our club that even the Directors admitted had become so lax that we were losing money when we were doing well in the league, and had no contingency for poor seasons or relegation. The scouting model, transfer model and governance model have all been dramatically improved and Les is responsible for all of that. We need to make sure we don't slowly fall back into our old habits and get carried away when we have relative success, or start spewing transfer income on wasteful projects. First point of order should be building a cash reserve that won't be touched except in emergencies.