weeyin

I don't disagree with that, but the question then becomes if we lower the quality - which would be inevitable if we lowered our annual income as a club - would that attract any more fans? Or would our reduced competitiveness and almost certainly shorter cup runs end up lowering attendances even more? The Board does a great job trying to balance the books, and a significant portion of our income is gate money. Drop our prices to 15 quid a head and that means we need to pull in about 1500 extra fans every week to make up the shortfall. The obvious way to reduce prices would be an improved sponsorship/TV deal, but the eejits in charge of our game continue to undersell it on a regular basis.

It's all a bit Secret Squirrel. Earlier, the story I read was the Viking wanted Anier off the wage bill, but because he still had a fair chunk of his contract left they didn't want to let him go for free. But you never know what is posturing/bargaining and what is actual intent.

I wonder what his wage bump was from his 300 quid a week.

Like Sutton and Hammell and Lasley. I'd still prefer Cummins (or even Ramsden with Kerr filling RB - or vice versa) though.

Clancy seemed to leave the club with no hard feelings on our part, so if he was an option, I don't think the gaffer or the Board would object to bringing him back. If Hutch does leave though, I'd prefer to see Cummins step in.

I see it's time to ignore this thread until the transfer window closes. I'm giving the Casagolda etc. hilarity a miss this time around.

The estimates being bandied around are something like: 1: £2,405,514 (13.39%, -£314,487) 2: £1,717,454 (9.56%, -£682,546) 3: £1,460,555 (8.13%, -£59,446) 4: £1,288,629 (7.17%, -£71,371) 5: £1,202,757 (6.7%, -£77,243) 6: £1,116,884 (6.22%, -£83,116) 7: £1,056,701 (5.88%, -£63,299) 8: £1,005,142 (5.6%, -£34,858) 9: £987,895 (5.5%, +£27,895) 10: £902,023 (5.02%, +£22,023) 11: £816,150 (4.54%, +£16,150) 12: £730,277 (4.07%, +£10,277) So, the difference between places can be as much as 83k. If the above is accurate, the difference between 2nd and 5th is over half a million, so it's certainly something to think about. But, like you say, we also need cash at this stage of a season, so short-termism sometimes needs to be applied.

In the case of Goodwillie, selling to an EPL team with a clueless owner helped.

"Anyone who knows anything about football". I see what you did there. You should start a blog.

Hopefully been replaced permanently by Gary McAllister! Craigan, unfortunately, comes across like an OF employee sometimes. I much prefer McAllister's contributions these days.

They get a better deal simply because they are a Glasgow team in the middle of a Glasgow-centric emdia.

I heard he was going to trade school over there and hopes to qualify as a plumber.

Last time we had any decent coverage on the radio was when Richard Park and Jimmy Sanderson were presenting Super Scoreboard on Radio Clyde. Even when we were in the 1st Division we had a fair shout.

The problem we face is that journalists exist for 2 reasons these days: 1) To sell papers/attract audience 2) Inform the public 1) is the main focus, and because we don't have as big as fan base as an Aberdeen or a Hearts or whatever, we don't buy as many papers or contribute as much to viewing figures. Result? Coverage is less. EDIT: Forgot to add, the one place we seem to get good coverage is the Evening Times. Seems like there is at least one MFC article a day in there.

Do you think he was responsible for Faddy's performance against Thistle and Vigur's & Ainsworth performance against St. Johnstone too? I think Dan did a good job for us when he came in, but he benefited from a turnaround in our form more than we benefited from him. Once or midfield finally decided to turn up that made a huge difference and took pressure of both our strikers and our defence. Depending on the extent of his injury, I'm in the "keep Hollis" camp to see how this season plays out for him. He was far from the weakest link when we were patchy earlier in the season.

In one of his interviews, McCall said that's exactly the calculation the Board will be looking at when it comes to Hutch if they can't extend him.

As poor as they have been, only Celtic have really hammered them at Tynecastle. Killie gave them a minor beating, but Aberdeen lost, Dundee Utd. drew 0 - 0 and ICT only won 2 - 0. I think we can beat them, but I expect a park-the-bus effort from Hearts that will make it hard work.

I'm sure he knows he is scaring off visiting fans. I guess that is more than made up for by the home fans willing to keep putting money in the clubs coffers. I imagine if he reduced the price by a fiver, because he'd have to equal that for (at least some of) the home fans, the overall effect would be less money through the gate every week.

More details on Anier's club playing hardball

You are 100% entitled to your opinions but, as for all customers of any business, you have no legal right to be giving dogs abuse to anyone or upset fellow customers. The club may choose to accept it for most fans most of the time, but it is not an entitlement. As a business, Motherwell Football Club is perfectly entitled to refuse any fan entry if they don't like their behaviour.

He predicted a loss to Aberdeen, and thanks to some results 10 years ago, a loss to Thistle.

Exactly. It's a free market and he decided to take his chances elsewhere. And he was of sufficient quality (regardless of what any of us think) to hold down a regular first team slot for a number of managers - all of whom had options in that position, but chose not to use them. Maybe they were all wrong, but one of our most successful teams ever accommodated him at right back. If he wasn't Mark's son, I doubt this thread would exist. For me, Quinn was much more of an embarrassment to the club with his neddish off-field antics.

What are the figures for call offs in the last 2 seasons compared to the rest of the league? I don't remember many since our last round of pitch updates. I'd be interested to the pitch at 3pm today because playing ICT at lunchtime meant no chances would be taken by the officials. Regardless, we won't be the only game off today.

After the recent run of good form I'm just glad the club found something for the regulars to moan about.

From what McCall was saying in his press conference, it sounds like Anier's club are trying to get us to take him off their hands, rather than extend his loan to end of season.