fizoxy

The problem right now is there isn't anyone to play in their place.

And of them, how many were we actually sad to see go? When Carson left it looked like he was a perma-crock, the same with Dunne and ohara. Most of us were happy to see the back of Gallagher, and Main was hopeless for us before he somehow got a gig at Aberdeen. Then there's tait, who lost his place to Liam Grimshaw. I like Ryan Bowman too, but no one cared when he left either. Doesn't mean they wouldn't walk into our team now, but would we have waited two years for these players to turn things around? No chance. I'm more concerned with the rate of injuries at our club. Are we training on an ash park?

I think our development team is a bit on the younger side compared to others.

The club doesn't miss much with player announcements, with posts across all social media and on the website, so not sure what else can be expected there. It has been discussed previously regarding injuries, this looks like a deliberate stance from the club, and could be related to player privacy and not telegraphing our lineups. Return dates aren't guaranteed either, so you'd get folk whining regardless. Not sure what other clubs do in that regard. I don't think the social media and marketing stuff needs to be at the expense of anything else, it's a different department from the football side and will have a budget that is dwarfed by that. Marketing the club and players well is imperative to any club, and fan engagement is just as important. Having some connection the players outside of the match day can help ease tensions and also build anticipation for games. Every now and then it gets us recognition from outside of our bubble, which may just entice a few more people to fir park. Our previous media team did end up getting carried away with themselves and became insufferable. It became more about them than the club, and they became disconnected from the fans, and more interested in their CV than serving the club. The current group seem to be delivering the bare bones, probably due to lack of numbers. There's no engagement at the minute, and I can't remember the last time we had any content about the players that isn't a pre match interview. That can add to the feeling of being disconnected. However, when results aren't going our way, everything gets picked at. No one would care less about the media output if we were winning.

Giving our injury history, we're the last place he needs to be.

He's having coffee with our new defender.

No one is taking this job

St Johnstones tactic of "move slightly to the side" when they are on the ball is really causing us trouble.

This is the worst we've been yet. Absolutely clueless.

Googling league two midfielders named aragorn.

Oh man, you've just enraged 90% of motherwell twitter. Tierney is the current beneficiary of the "less you play the better you get" rule :-) Not saying I don't like him, but we will struggle to carry a physical lightweight in a team of mental lightweights. If we can get a midfielder with a set of nuts, it would probably allow Tierney to play.

If we get Morris and Sol off the books, and considering we also have the wages for Penney to use, I'm expecting at least two signings by the end of the window, if not three. I seriously doubt that we are paying all of Maguire's wages, and the same will go for shields if we put him out on loan as well, (as there is absolutely not benefit to us putting them out on loan otherwise) so we should have the funds available. Longer term, with carroll, Goss, Mcginn and sod's contracts being up in the summer, at least we won't be stuck with a bunch of bad contracts should the worst happen.

I'm sure at the AGM they said that the annual cost of maintenance will drop from 125k to 20k. As for spending money on players to keep us up, I'm all for us having better players, but look at what hibs, Utd, and Aberdeen are paying, it guarantees nothing.

I have an armchair I'm not using.

If we get money for Sol, maybe the gods haven't abandoned us after all.

Only thing I can think of is that we had a plan for KVV and Mandron playing together, so we've just slotted shields into mandron's spot.

Well, that's a depressing lineup. As per the clubs tweet: -Danzaki still awaiting clearance so misses out - Mandron unavailable after picking up an injury in training on Friday - Miller out after picking up an injury in the reserve match - McGinley, Carroll, Mugabi and Efford still ou

That's a fair point, I'll pull something together that's more constructive.

The well society website is poor, and they hardly make it easy to sign up or increase your membership. The incentives should be a no-brainer. I would increase my donation, but I'd rather see a professional effort to improve things first. It also worries me that the current stewards of the club are taking on the job of finding big donors, and we don't seem to have someone in charge of that who knows what they're doing. I work for a large non-profit, and we have teams of folk that cultivate and engage with donors and work on large donations and bequests and the like. I'm concerned that we might be just sending out letters.

I don't normally buy lottery tickets, but I'll go ahead and get one today. I'll also put a bet on the royal rumble.

Non of this is a surprise and, while not ideal, it's nowhere near as perilous as some are making out. We're a selling club, so you have to imagine that player sales will make up for the shortfall most seasons, as well as a half decent run in the cups. What does a normal home game earn us? How much of a "cup run" moves the needle financially? As for the ground. If we've taken our maintenance costs from 120k per season down to 20k ish, then it was totally the right decision. We can also hold home friendlies and internationals again now that the pitch is more reliable. I'd rather be in our position where we don't need to pray that Mr Moneybags doesn't change his mind or get bored. Mind John Boyle? Hopefully we actually get our finger out with the work to secure other income sources though.

Flow confirmed on twitter that we're waiting on the work permit, and it should be resolved by tomorrow.

The club learned their lesson a long time ago about not announcing a signing until it's complete. Medicals can fail, visas can be refused, etc. I'm sure other clubs are the same but you won't be refreshing twitter every minute to see the progress of a Celtic signing. The "announce" patter gets right on my tits.

With no real footage or reports on our youth and reserve teams, it's hard to gauge what our current crop of prospects are like. Anyone have any insight? I saw a hammell quote about Ewan Wilson (left back) being close to the first team.

Can Brazilians play for England C?