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A pertinent reminder to all that loan players brought in are not our players and, if successful with us, only likely to price themselves out of our budget in the longer term. Unfortunately the disparity in finance between the likes of Arsenal and ourselves means that they hold all the aces and they can use us to develop their young talent with our only benefit being possible short term gain from half a season of appearances. As these bigger clubs continue to hoover up all the best young players, it looks like a situation that is unlikely to change any time soon. Throw in the fact that any talk of financial FairPlay in football is a joke and we need to perhaps look closer at developing our own young players for any longer term progress. No point getting too upset about it, but just another example of how managing a club like ours is getting progressively harder.

2 wins in 18 games. I think I can manage it.

The opportunity presented by successful loanees, such as we’ve seen with Spencer, Gent, and Biereth, should only ever be seen as a bonus and not the solution for a club of our financial stature. This doesn't mean we should stop seeking more Biereth’s. However, once we start to rely on loanees to get us over the finish line, which I think is what we’ve had to do recently because a lot of our permanent signings and youth players have not been good enough, we will find ourselves in trouble and in need of a continual rebuild every window, as we do right now. History is repeating itself this January, which again calls into question our recruitment and youth development strategies. We can't go on like this.

young striker from blackburn rovers ????? watch this space i did say mika was not going to sheffield,

he could be if i knew who the feck MJC was, come on MJC take the mask off, take it off , take it off , aw FFS man it YOU :):):):)

As is the case with every player we sign, I'll judge him on how he represents the club off the field and what he does on the park in a Motherwell strip and nothing else. Every player starts with a clean slate, I don't care what their history/reputation is or what previous clubs they've played for.

Why don't you go and do better then eh? Go and do Kettlewells job with the amount of money he has at his disposal. Its quite clear that Motherwell don't have a lot of money to spend and from what I've seen on Facebook tonight most fans are happy with the signing. Of course you wouldn't be. No surprise there.

Bags of experience and isnt an untried youngster. I thinks its a decent signing.

And let the songs begin with this Boney M number "Hooray..... Hooray.......It's A Hali...Halliday" I'll get me coat

You're not wrong regarding the youth development issue; perhaps the financial compensation scheme, as alluded to by our leaders, needs to be looked at again. Additionally, as I said in my reply above, perhaps we should try to move to a position where we allocate more money to invest in youth development and retention instead of having no money for that due to blowing our load on panic signings every January window. It's not a 1-2 year fix; it requires a reset aligned with an appropriately costed strategy, which will also have risks. I suppose it doesn't have to be one or the other, but the balance is way off right now, and that cannot go on.

I'd start Luca Ross tomorrow. Kelly O'Donnell McGinn Bevis Montgomery Spittal Davor Paton Ross Bair Gent

If we're looking for an experienced centre-forward who can also inspire and encourage the younger players then Troy Deeney is available I believe. Or maybe not.

Great post. Loans can be a short term solution to a short term problem but thats the extent of it. I think our club will have learnt this lesson now.

Naebody liked your post.

We just need to be determined and make sure we get the right players in. Look at Dundee, they have just signed Astley on a 2 1/2 year deal from Everton. They were never gonna give up on that transfer!!

Mika Biereth is offski, just have to move on. He turned out to be a great signing by the club - a bright spark in a difficult first half of the season. When you look at the real outstanding players that have departed during Stuart Kettlewell's reign to date (Max Johnston, Kevin Van Veen and Mika Biereth) - he's had a tough job on his hands. Always going to be difficult to replace players like these on our limited funds compared to many, if not most of the clubs in our league. It was great to watch them while we could. If you take the past season or 2 for example, I don't think many of the comparible teams have been fortunate enough to see players of this quality turning out for them and equally have not had to deal with the loss of such influential players (off the top of my head Regan Charles-Cook at RC, maybe Nicky Devlin at Livi). Hopefully there's another gem out there to be had..!

I'm more than happy to deal in reality. We're a poor side, we didn't sign much quality in the summer, we look unlikely to bring much in during this window and our run without a win was the worst since Tommy McLean. I don't ignore or need to defend any of that. However, when folk claim we can't score, reality shows otherwise. Reality shows the non footballer Theo Bair's goal return has been on a par with or better than anyone else signed by any of our potential relegation rivals. And here's the bigger picture - all the pissing and moaning in the world won't change the fact Kettlewell is not getting sacked. We got that straight from the top a week ago, but it clearly didn't register with everyone.

Feck me. Been away for a few days and had a quick look in here. Thought we had maybe been relegated to the Lowland League for financial mismanagement, our entire first team squad had emigrated to Australia or some Nigerian had emptied the Well Society bank account. Think I'll go away again.

Only the 30? You've not seen bad teams

It's not necessarily our fault, but if we were 5th in the league playing free flowing football and he was developing he'd still more than likely be here. As it is we have 1 win in however many games and he spends half the game chasing trademark Stephen O'Donnell floaters into the channel all alone with minimal help. It's no wonder Arsenal recalled him. I can't believe I'm saying this, but our top flight status hangs on Theo Bair continuing his two match good form for the rest of the season. All the while we have a CEO or whatever he is focusing on a fucking YouTube video where some wee kid begs Taylor Swift for money. We've also got a great young left back really coming onto a game, and our young right back departs. What do we do? Sign another right back to fill that slot? Nope sign an identical left back to the one we already have. We are a fucking shambles. A fucking shambles.

Of the teams sitting 12th to 5th, only Aberdeen have a better 'last 5 games' points tally than us. You can't just look at us in isolation. I happened to be sitting next to a senior SFA official on a flight yesterday and he told me we're going to a 14 team league with an 8/6 split 'sooner rather thn later'.

We are a mess, on and off the park. Going all the way back to July 2022 we have been operating in a shambolic manner with ridiculous recruitment and managerial appointment decisions. Alan Burrows jumping ship when he did is now starting to look like he very much saw the writing on the wall and got out before the shit well and truly hit the fan and a year on we are nowhere nearer to finding a replacement for him. On the park we have been dreadful this season and that lies at the door of the manager and head of recruitment. That, along with our horrendous luck with injuries this season and now the loss of our only good player definitely looks like the die is cast for us and we are going down this season.

If he's away no point getting our knickers in a twist about it. Thems the breaks. Kettlewell certainly getting the chance to rebuild , is he up to it? Who knows time will tell , certainly his signings in the summer don't fill me with much hope.

Never bothered me who our signings used to play for, but I'm not overly keen on us bringing in someone who seems to have spent more time talking about who he used to play for than actually playing.