fizoxy

I'm not sure there was an attitude problem there, and he did say this wasn't a slight on the players involved. Instead he said he needed a squad of players that all think they can get into the first team. When players aren't fitting into a system or are clearly out of contention for a place, they're not going to be as motivated, and that's natural. I'm not good with the level of vitriol the likes of Danzaki, Shields and Maguire are getting. I dont know why some folk take it personally, the players didnt put the contracts in front of us. The didn't join us or re-sign just to piss about the place, or "steal a wage", they have been unable to force their way into the managers plans for one reason or another, and they'll move on and find their level somewhere else.

One thing I think we can be sure of, based on what we've seen from Kettlewell so far, is that our attitude will be spot on and we will be going out to win. Shit can still happen, but I'm not expecting the GA "treat it like a friendly" approach. I assume this isn't available to view anywhere because of the viaplay shambles?

I understand the approach of scouring the planet for signings to try and find bargains, and that sometimes these guys can be projects that may not pay off. Getting one or two right could bring serious money and mitigate the failures. However, if we're going to sign project players, we probably need a better coaching infrastructure than we have. At least in this case we identified the mistake and cut our losses. The money was spent the day he signed, so once we realized he wasn't up to snuff it was about recouping whatever we could.

We can negotiate the development fee, i.e. take a smaller fee with an add on instead. Pretty sure that's what we did with Campbell.

They need to agree to go to start with. If they genuinely feel that they can work their way into first teams plans they'll want to hang around.

Don't think anyone is going to take the 10, is it not retired?

Goss was very good under SK, and wasn't as bad as made out before, albeit still bad. He found form at the right time (funny that), which probably priced him out of a return to us. I'm not losing sleep over him not returning, partly because him and Slattery can't play together, and we still have Slattery under contract. I think we will still sign another midfielder, but we need to be looking to give Miller more minutes too.

Not our best season signings-wise: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997–98_Motherwell_F.C._season

Our level is so weird that it's hard to predict how players from outside of Scotland will fare regardless of their history. If our top flight was immediately absorbed into the English leagues today based on their level, we'd probably have teams in each division. The style up here is it's own thing too, so sometimes it can undo good players (or known names at least), and others with less glamorous backgrounds can thrive. Wilkinson looks like a number 9, which was what we needed, and he has some moments in his highlight reel that remind me of KVVs. However, I'm a bit wary of the 6'3" guy stating that he's not a target man, which I hope is because he thinks he has more to his skill set, rather than that he can't hack the physical stuff. The recent long term injury is a concern, but he did get 20+ games last season, so maybe not as risky as Moult was.

We found Casey, we'll find Casey's replacement. Same goes for Goss. Time to move on.

He hasn't appeared in any of the pics, and didn't offer his opinion on who had the worst patter.

What can the club realistically say about those 4 other than what's been said already?

Don't really see the need to announce that some sports scientists have left, we expanded that department when Alexander restructured just before we punted him, so maybe were going back to how it was? Did we announce when we brought them in? We seemed to have a few sports science-y folk there when they were doing the pre season testing and stuff, so I'm sure we'll be fine. The club communicated when alan Archibald left, and I'm sure they'll communicate when his replacement is in place. We've also been announcing signings and reporting on the ore season trip, so maybe some of you have been deafened by previous silences and not noticed this stuff? Our recruitment team is still intact and the board is still there, with a highly experienced person handling ceo duties for now, so I'm not panicking about direction or managing things in the short to medium term. I'm sure we could hire a body to fill the CEO position any time we wanted, but I wouldn't be surprised if we go back to a COO instead, either way, difficult positions to fill with our budget. Our recruitment follows a similar pattern each season, with the bigger signings coming towards the end once a lot of the bigger clubs have sorted things out. With us changing our manager at the turn of the year I think that killed our chances at PCAs, especially when we've been trying to keep some of our out of contract folk, but we still made a few early singings, so we're hardly stagnant. If the season was starting tomorrow I'd be concerned, but it doesn't, so I'm happy to see how things go over the next few weeks.

I think it's a bit of a myth that Goss doesn't work hard or tackle.

I think any club that has contributed to his development up to the age of 23 gets training compensation of some kind.

Was Josh Morris the only player Graham Alexander signed more than once? I don't think it's fair to compare Paton to a one footed shitebag, we should at least give him a few games. Obika, Paton and Maguire in for KVV, Goss and Cornelius isn't sexy at all, but I seriously doubt we're done with our transfer business.

His legs are made of weetabix?

I legit didn't know Harrogate town was a team.

What has Danzaki and Oxborough done to justify being kept over Tierney and kelly? I'd like to think we're working on moving on maguire and shields.

Undisclosed fees are pretty much the norm for most teams now.

No one knows how much we paid for moult, so that's just speculation. Signing Moult and Aaron's was plain wrong, and was a result of our indecision over GA in the summer and not either committing and letting him sign folk, or sacking him after the poor, but jammy, run in. I can sympathize a little with hammell over the timing, but I have to imagine the recruitment team presented other signing options, but he went with three players that he knew and Penney. Most of us were happy to see what moult could offer at the time, but it was clear very early on that we signed him with known injury issues, more than just a case of him lacking sharpness.

We can't have Carroll or McGinley fighting for anything, their bodies are made of wet cardboard.

Yeah, normally we're clear about who we're trying to keep and who have been let go. We'll have offered Cornelius and Max deals to protect our training compensation, and SK mentioned trying to keep as much of this team together as possible, so have to assume Goss and Casey are under offer too, but who knows.

Maguire had a good spell when Alexander had him doing all the donkey work, but I don't think that position exists in our current system. I could see him being a backup/bench option if he diesnt move on, which is also something we need to be fair. I can't see Shields staying, it could be another loan if we can't find a permanent move for him. I thought Mahon was only a 2 year deal, so surprised to see him still around. I have to assume that Efford, SOD and McGinn were extended based on clauses of some kind, as it's unusual to extend them without mentioning it.

I'd be reluctant to let go a solid goalkeeper after seeing how quickly a goalkeeping crisis can send a club down. We will have our price, but I'd rather we kept Kelly for now. As for the other contracted players, I don't see them leaving money on the table, and I don't blame them. If they're as shite as we think they are, the only way is down for them, so they may as well run out their contract. I'm not sure what percentage of expected pay that "mutualed" players get, but we'd need to pay that on top of what it costs to get their replacement, and weve only just paid off two managers, so id be surprised if we did a bunch of these. We need backup players too, so I don't see the harm in keeping some of them. I suspect Morris is off though. It sounds like we've imposed a deadline for players to make a decision on their contract offers, which is good, we need time to go for other options before it's too late. Hopefully we can keep hold of Casey and McGinn.