weeyin

We paid an undisclosed fee for Rosco too.

EEC? You've been out the country too long, my friend. It's the EU now. There are a few FIFA/UEFA rules that would fall foul of EU laws, but football has been granted some exceptions. I guess this must be one of them.

To be fair, we have been pretty astute at working our way through the loopholes of cross border transfers in the past few seasons, leaving more than a few English clubs ranting about how we ripped them off.

Because, the English FA at least, regards that as an exception to the rule. "An FA spokesman said: ‘Emergency loans don’t count when calculating the number of clubs a player has played for as he remains under contract to his parent club.’"

Whether that is true or not, the board has a long standing philosophy of not paying transfer fees. I can see the logic in that as it frees up more funds to pay wages. Guys like Skippy and Porter have been brought in this way and been very salable, as have players developed by our youth system. So it's difficult to argue against it's effectiveness.

"This rule dictates that a player can be registered with a maximum of three clubs during one season but can only play for two of them — with the sole exception of a move between clubs with overlapping seasons." Does the SPL starting before the EPL not count?

In a nutshell. The reason we have gone for managers who can bring in loans and frees from the English lower leagues is because any decent lower div player in Scotland usually requires a transfer fee.

What I meant was that even if the guy is similar to Murphy, that's hardly an issue.

We have a tiny squad. We could bring in 7 or 8 players and have enough room for them.

It's an AP article, but also made it into the New York Times

That is a story I have seen mentioned on here. I have seen said-same story debunked on here. Both from people 'in-the know'.

Have you not noticed? Every other post from Kmcalpin is about how we need a midfield full of hard-tackling bruisers with good engines

Maybe we don't want to sign him permanently until we see how he shapes up. Or maybe McCall has other targets in his sights for the summer transfer window and doesn't want to tie up funds at this stage of the season.

Intuitively, that makes sense. However, there are a finite number of people who will come to a Motherwell game on any given week, and history has shown that reducing the prices doesn't necessarily attract the necessary increase in crowd to make it worthwhile. I'm all for a drop in price, btw - but realise that it is a tricky balancing act. A more even distribution of revenue would doubtless help in funding such an initiative as the reliance on gate receipts would be reduced.

Indeed. Found these figures on the web: "A holy trinity comprising match-day revenue (€424m), sponsorship receipts (€573m) and broadcast income (€594m) is the main contributor to the Bundesliga's €1.7bn turnover." Over 1 billion EUR from sponsorships and broadcast rights.

Not ever, no.

If you think the Spanish National team is the death of football, I'm not sure you're qualified to comment on a solution to our woes

Is that the truth? It sounded to me like it was certain players that didn't have the balls and went greetin' to the directors.

I doubt either of them will be playing any time soon. Maybe it was managerial weaknesses he was talking about - just a thought.

So the 2 Spanish speaking guys could understand him?

Remember it well. Wee Pat could play a bit.

Do you hate Bobby Graham for playing for Accies for 4 years and Willie Pettigrew for his 3 years at Hearts? The team Black managed aren't our rivals - they are Clydebank with different jerseys.

So it's a step up for him then. And as others have pointed out, he is an ex-Well player.

It's a fair comparison from a weather perspective which, if you believe the proponents of summer football, is going to have the fans coming out in droves to enjoy the sunshine. I don't the weather has nearly as big an impact on attendances than price and quality of product. We don't suffer the same extremes of weather as Russia, so that comparison doesn't hold up.

It's nothing to do with being negative, and everything to do with looking at other countries. For example, when Ireland switched to summer football the attendances didn't change.