fizoxy

So far we've replaced the injured Mugabi with Blaney, then we've brought in Mandron and Crankshaw for Moult and Aarons. I wouldn't be surprised to see another winger since we still have Efford's spot to fill. I feel we're short in midfield though, and not particularly versatile there.

The other thing Hammell was very clear on was that the player must want to come here. We've seen plenty of premiership and championship loanees completely phoning it in up here, we need folk with something to prove.

Some players might not want to come to Scotland if there's a comparable option in England for them.

I think I'm still paying off my phone bill from using club call.

Falconer was a great signing, from back in the days we're you'd find out about a new signing when they walked into the park! We can't completely abandon our long term strategy either, so if we've done our due diligence and think this guy will make us better, fair enough. Don't know how his height makes a difference.

The problem with being publically desperate to sign folk is that the selling clubs and available players know that, and can use that to try and get extra out of us, or start a bidding thing. As burrows mentioned, we're at the mercy of other clubs making their moves first, and we're hardly in a position to speed things up with more cash. I'd like to hear the sales pitch to join us right now.

Have we figured out what Alexander's philosophy was?

His brother George just left a gig a couple of weeks back

I heard he already stopped doing jokes.

My guess is that Spittal will come back into midfield and some other guy goes into the front 3, probably McKinstry, giving shields another start. Not what we want, but barring any signings or resurrections, what we're likely to get.

I wouldn't argue with any changes to the team, no one is deserving of their place right now. Penney's performance yesterday softened the blow of his potential return to Ipswich. He was more responsible for two of the goals than any of the center backs were. Sol is the weaker of the two, but it is a case of choosing which bollock to be kicked in when choosing between him and lamie.

I wonder what the general success rate is across all teams in our division, and whether we're above or below that line. Hibs must be the worst, they've thrown a whole load of shit at multiple walls to get that first XI, so sometimes moreoney doesn't equal better recruitment. You don't tend to look at other teams dross, instead you see they signed a couple of decent players and assume they're good at signings. I also think there's some rose tinted glasses with Foyle, he signed some good ones, but also some dross squad filler. Daws is the head of recruitment, so he has to be the one accountable for who we sign. I thought the idea of having one of these guys is to ensure there's consistency and forward thinking in our recruitment, and to take the responsibility away from the manager. Unlike Foyle, he hasn't signed anyone good yet. Maybe KVV?

He got sacked because they were adrift at the bottom, then Hughes came in and kept them up.

Kettlewell? The man that nearly got county relegated when he was no longer co-manager, then got sacked for John Hughes?

We don't have the players to play the way Hammel wants. We need to either sign a bunch, which it looks like we're struggling to do, or change the way we play. Shields isn't good, but we're killing him by running him out there every week. There were good bits here and there, I thought Spittal played well in the advanced role, and we did manage to score twice and hit the bar twice, but we make way too many basic mistakes then just shrug the shoulders and move on when they cost us. Hibs brought on two defenders to hang onto the lead, and ended up walking the ball into our net. This is the softest motherwell side I've seen.

For every player we sign, there's a bunch that knocked us back, or deals that have fallen through for some reason. That won't be exclusive to our club either. We can hardly come out and say "we signed this guy because so and so told us where to go, and the other guy we tried to sign got nabbed by another club" Some clubs are better at getting deals over the line than others, and it's hard to tell where we are in that hierarchy since we'll rarely ever know the deals that didn't happen. However, the last couple of windows seem to have been harder for us, which suggest we're either struggling for money or have lost the finishing touch. It could also be that we're trying to abandon the throwing shit at the wall approach that Robinson had. Hopefully we can keep things ticking over and not get left adrift near the bottom while we try to reinforce the squad this month.

I guess I will reply to every single social media post the club makes demanding they announce a signing, just in case they forget. I feel for any player that has a birthday this month.

That van Veen thing seems to be from Twitter gobshites. The Irish league stuff is interesting, better than the boring league one loan shite. Can't see us competing with Rotherham for that guy though.

If we announced that we were singing a 34 year old defender that has been playing in India the last few years, most of us would be furious. The Griffiths talk needs to get in the bin, he was finished last year when he couldn't cut it at Falkirk.

I don't remember much about that period, other than every other team conspiring to give us third :-)

According to Hammell, via the record, we're working on getting at least one striker in before the weekend.

There's no evidence to say that we aren't working on signings. Hammell has said multiple times over the last few weeks that they have been working around the clock to try and get things done, but it takes two to tango. The idea that a bunch of players will just turn up on day one of the window is wishful thinking to say the least. We are rarely a players fist choice, so we often have to wait for other moves to happen before we can make ours.

Did we disturb a burial ground when we upgraded the pitch?

Penney? Before him, maybe Cole?

We've had the same head of recruitment throughout all of this. I sympathize with the timing of hammell coming in with regards to improving the style of play, but this shouldn't have interuppred our recruitment in any way. I agree that Hammel is in danger of losing his job, but surely Daws must be in the firing line too?