Leaderboard

Welcome back Tony. And good luck with your impending speedy recovery.

1-0 Tony Watt with a kissing the badge celebration 🤣

Really impressed by the current board again tonight. Great energy and a clear ambition to serve positively. Some patience, understanding and support and they can deliver on what we all hoped the society could and should be. add in a bit more experience from a business point of view and some ambition and energy with new board members next week and watch it grow. exciting times ahead I feel after watching that

Really happy getting Tony back. He has an affection for us and as long as he gives his all (which he did before) and scores crucial goals when needed that's all we can ask.

Honestly not surprised. Feel like this signing is a marker for where we are as a team right now. Signing a player that left on the worst of terms, fans hate him, done the square route of fuck all since leaving. We are scrambling around in the dark so hard we have ended up back where we started but its a worse version. If anything screams relegation fodder then its this type of signing. Can we seriously not find a better option than a done Tony Watt? Crawling back to yer ex vibes.

At the end of the day he's better than anything we currently have (at least on paper). I really couldn't give a shit about his past history it's what he does on the park now that counts. Hope it works out for both him and us.

Good on him,he knows the score with the fans,tells u all about his character in taking this opportunity on,no one forced him to come, plays well fickle fans will be singing his name, welcome back tony.

Spot on Grizzly and grasping this fact seems to be beyond our manager.

So am i . But there is no way he will be able to keep his trap shut when he sees SK tactics first hand. Or is he the guy SK has been waiting for to transform us into a top four, attacking , forward thinking free flowing silky team.

If Watt starts scoring for us most fans will forget his history in a few nano-seconds but it does smack a bit of a desperate/high-risk manoeuvre by the manager (does this mean Stama is badly injured?). Some of our support seem reluctant to accept players almost always sign for the best deal they can get and few will have the love/commitment to the club that a 'Well fan has. Frankly, given our injury list and the generally disappointing newbies so far, I would sign Vlad the Impaler if he could start knocking in the goals/linking up play/winning fouls by brazenly falling over, as TW did last time. And as a few have said already, he must have cojones to come back here at all but I'm hoping his gallus nature may be an asset and he may even become influential for us. I find it hard to believe that SK (whatever you may think of him) would invite a stirrer or Big Time Charlie into the dressing room. He's got enough problems already, frankly, so I'm hoping he and TW have come to an understanding. 'Mon The 'Well 🙏 .

Yep. Watt is OOC at the end of the season, meaning he is going to have to work his arse off with us in the hope that it earns him another random but lucrative payday from another club. My rose tinted glasses in this one suggests we've got him at an ideal time.

This i don’t ever get too worked up about players leaving.. he wanted to stay at fir park but didn’t get a good enough offer, took the cash to go to Utd. End of chapter. New slate for me now, go out and replicate the job he previously did for us. i think it’s a decent move for us. We all know he has ability

If I remember correctly (happens less nowadays) Watts strong point was not so much scoring goals as it was in creating chances for others. So he may be signed to create the chances for Robinson/Moses/Stam

Desperation ? more like he rates him and thinks he can do a job.

It's all about hurty feelings.

I get the impression that Watt will be our main striker this season Dave, alongside AVS when/ if he's fit. But given the ability we know he has I reckon that Watt up top alongside Robinson or Ebiye might be a decent shout as well, time will tell.

I believe that group stages don't count, so he's eligible to play.

Watt was already on the slide when he left us. He might be a decent addition but I'd temper my expectations.

Oh god i'v just heard the new🫤 Not really sure how i feel about him coming back, He will be a hero if he pulls it off and a villain if he doesnt 😂

its like an obsession with us, if you played for us before you are guaranteed a second gig.

Maybe going to play in number 10 role, don't know the thought process of boss...hopefully doesn't mean stam out long term though

I always thought we missed Watt's intelligence (I know) up front more than his goals, most of which came in the purple patch that convinced Utd to shell out. He's never a lone striker, but hopefully he can help one of the other guys kick on - as long as that's Kettlewell's plan.

Older posters will doubtless recall signings made in the Bobby Howitt like Jackie McInally (Kilmarnock) Jimmy Wilson (Aberdeen) Billy Campbell (Dundee), Billy Ritchie (Rangers), John Fallon (Celtic). All very much in the “older guys whose best days are behind them” category. So nothing has changed.

Also it's a creative midfielder we need, no point signing strikers when we have no one to create the chances

It just gets more bizarre, he didn't exactly do much at St Mirren last season. Really getting fed up with this let's sign former players. Especially one who left us in the way he did. However nae pressure Tony but if you don't hit the ground running then it will be very uncomfortable. And at same time he will be wearing the claret and amber so will get my support

I think Watt is a good signing clearly he left due to Alexander that happens in football, he was brilliant at times for us so hopefully he hits the ground running. I'm happy to give him a chance

The way Watt left was a disgrace (on his part) However, he is better than what we have and did single handidly drag our team along for large parts of the season. It does show a lack of self awareness on his part and im not sure how our fans will react. I will give him support for no more reason than he is a Motherwell player

He's a rat but if he keeps us up then we'll have to swallow our pride. It shows how bad a job Kettlewell has done.

Watt easily has more quality than the majority of our current squad combined. Although he probably won’t be the same player we had last time, let’s not forget that he’s the player who single-handedly dragged us across the finish line on multiple occasions during his time with us.

Tony Watt? According to someone on pie and bov who said they had "sources"

I understand Callachan had not played for 18 months due to serious injury. And here we are, he is injured yet again. The first time he takes to the field in earnest. Are we surprised he is injured again? Is it just bad luck? Halliday was injured for much of his later time at Hearts and at Rangers. He did little to provide encouragement in his loan spell with us and looked far from fit. Well off the pace. He needed game time we were told. After a full pre season and regular game time how do you think he is performing and does he look fit to you? Is he just unlucky? Nicholson at least provided some hope during his loan/trial period despite injuries which had sidelined him for a lengthy spell. So I can understand his signing. More bad luck though? My point is about minimising risk when signing players and thus giving a greater chance of success. Giving that bad luck less of a chance. Following Spittal's departure and knowing that Slattery would be absent for several months I think it was reckless to bring in three midfielders each with serious injury concerns and with little or no game time amongst them. Risk was not minimised. And so we are now relying on a 17 year old to save the day. And will likely have to use a good deal of the Bair money to shore things up. Maybe SK has just been unlucky as you suggest (Paton injury being an example). But he has previous with regard to injury punts not working out. I hoped he was learning from previous experiences but the signs so far are hardly encouraging. Setting the midfield aside, there are other new recruits with injury concerns. More bad luck? Genuine question. Can you name me any player with a poor injury record immediately prior to joining us that Kettlewell has turned into a success? I am seriously struggling to come up with one. But several failures spring to mind. Basically, I think SK and Motherwell need to have a close look at the signing strategy. Perhaps the desire to get deals done early doors has been more of a driver than it should have been. And resulted in too many risks being taken.

Done nothing? , another speculation as fact post.

Thanks for that link mate. I think I prefer her than her dad 🤔

Not all candidates submitted video clips. PDF link to candidate statements You'll probably remember her father...

Looking at the three players causing most of the debate. Halliday - Age 33 in a couple of months. We are his tenth senior Club, including loans. A decent player in his day but who hardly featured for Hearts latterly due to injury and was unable to force his way back into the team, prior to joining us on loan. Previously left Rangers following a similar injury record. Failed to impress when he came to us in last years' January window. Apparently we were committed to signing him on a permanent basis as part of that Loan deal. Apart from a decent performance against Clyde he has failed to impress this season and looks even more cumbersome and slow than he did last season. Every tackle he receives seems to cause him injury. As a positive, takes a decent corner. Callachan - At age 30 has played for six clubs plus a couple of loan placements. Suffered a broken leg in January 2020 and more recently an ACL injury which ruled him out for all of last season. Featured briefly against Ross County, suffered a hamstring injury and is once again out for an 'extended period'. Nicholson - Age 29 and broke into the Hearts team at age 18. Averaged around 30 games a season until leaving under freedom of contract for the US. Fairly successful in the States prompting a move to England where he featured for two seasons before suffering a hip injury and subsequently returned to the States. Picked up a serious ankle injury and released by his Club. Joined us last season and, after a quiet start, earned himself a two year contract. Scored excellent goals against Livi. Featured in pre season matches but now injured and out for an 'extended period'. Looking at the history I can just about see a case for signing Nicholson, although a two year deal seems generous given recent injuries. I cannot come up with any sane argument as to why we signed Halliday or Callachan. Both were massive risks, eating up precious funds. And risks which have come back to bite us on the backside. Is anybody seriously surprised at how things have worked out so far? I think that inevitability is what frustrates me most. The knock on effect of signing these three players plus other injuries is that a 17 year old kid is expected to carry the midfield on his young back. No wonder he is struggling and looks knackered. And there is no prospect of things improving soon. How long until Miller will be unavailable through injury or exhaustion? It also looks like we will once again be carrying a bloated squad with a good number injured or not considered good enough to feature. The jury is still out on most of the other new recruits as well as the youth players who stepped up. Early days some will say, but we are up and running and the 'getting the business done early' has hardly reaped rewards. Kettlewell and the recruitment team could certainly not have foreseen injuries to Blaney, Slattery, McGinn and Paton each of whom had enjoyed lengthy spells injury free. But for those other three the buck stops entirely with Kettlewell and his team. I just hope Koutroumbis is not another one with a dubious injury history that will be added to their questionable recruitment policy. I have stood by Kettlewell throughout but the start to this season and the repetition of a speculative recruitment policy is proving me wrong. And that is setting aside performance on the pitch. Match day atmosphere could turn very toxic very soon. The signs are already there.

I genuinely can't believe there are people on here openly suggesting that they believe we only signed injury prone players because there were no other players available to sign due to competition from other teams. The reality, that some seem unwilling to concede or even entertain the possibility, is that we seem to have an issue with our signing policy, and it's not just this window. It can't all be bad luck.

Indigestion perhaps?

Would a player with no preseason be more susceptible to muscle injuries? Of course they would be. In Stamas case it was a risk that should not have been taken. In terms of Callachan, playing him 20 minutes given his injury history and lack of any match fitness proved to be too much for him. I am not blaming Kettlewell for all of our injuries. That would be ridiculous. However, his decision making yesterday has left him open to justified criticism. Other opinions are allowed holier than thou’ David. 😂

Proof is in the pudding. Another 6 weeks out 👍🏼

Just my opinion bud. I don't think Callachan was anywhere near ready first team action so I don't understand why he even brought him on. If you think strange comment then fair enough, that's your opinion which I respect