capt_oats

Scott Fox is 6ft and Tomas Cerny is 6ft 1, however I fear the memories of Lee Hollis (6ft) and midget Dan are still fresh in people's minds. For what it's worth, having a browse through Hartlepool's quite convoluted fan forum it seems he's well thought of there. It's worth noting that he was out for the 2nd half of the season with a shoulder injury. He only came back for the last 2 games of their season. He's still under contract and he's someone they thought they'd be able to sell on for profit however their relegation seems to have resulted in something of a fire sale. There's a reasonable amount of seethe at them "only" getting £200k for Nathan Thomas (cue hearty laughter from members of this board) and that they should be looking for £150k for Carson (which clearly won't happen). There are a couple of comments like: "Losing Carson and Amond would kill any hope I have for bouncing straight back up." and that he's one of the few in their squad that they'd keep on post-relegation. It seems that he's one of the (admittedly few) assets in their team. Overall that probably gives you a more rounded view than a YouTube montage (as impressive as some of those saves are).

Surprised those were the ones you clocked and not that he recently followed the official MFC twitter as well.

Fisher scored 8 goals in 1029 minutes of football. Bowman had 11 starts, 13 subs appearances and managed 2. Blyth seems to be a permacrock and has yet to manage a goal. It's been fairly well documented that Fisher dropped out the ICT side because of a dispute with Foran. On that basis alone Fisher's an upgrade on 2 of the 3 first team forwards at the club. Unless for some reason goals he scored against us don't count, in which case he still managed to double Bowman's tally for the season. Is he an "exciting" signing, no...probably not but I don't really see anyone claiming that he is or was meant to be. Last season we had folk banging on about our transfer targets being sourced from non-league in England and how we didn't recruit from Scotland. Now we've signed a player who scored goals in the actual league we're in and was a transfer target for at least one of our direct rivals and yet somehow we've got people moaning about that. The absolute state of some folk btw.

Should be here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p054v0vq It's a good interview.

He's absolutely done and has been for the past couple of seasons. So, aye, let's not.

Craigan seems perfectly happy in the role he has, it doesn't affect his BT work (him being assistant would) and he's doing a good job with the 20s. I can't see why either he or the club would want to disrupt that.

Fair point well made.

If the rumour that we're one of the sides in for Scougall is true then I'd say that would be the area we'd be looking at for creativity. By all accounts St Johnstone are favourites to get him and he has his pick of clubs but if we've looked at him then a creative #10, a Scougall-a-like, to play off a main striker be it Moult, Fisher, Bowman or A.N Other would work quite well with a solid base of McHugh and Bigirimana behind him.

I read Robinson's comments and initially thought the same however reading them back who knows? There's nothing to say that "a change and something a bit different" couldn't be Lasley. All it really means is that it's not McFadden. It could go either way. There's a good argument there for an experienced #2 however equally Lasley has his pro-licence and seems to see coaching as being his next step.

I noticed on Macron's kitbuilder that they've a couple of new templates; Mizar, wezen and kiel https://custom.macron.com/Pages/Category.aspx If you were to throw a claret hoop around the mizar one you'd have a proper throwback 60s era top while the wezen one would look alright with the same done.

I've been checking in on that thread at regular intervals through the afternoon for a laugh. Hugely entertaining to read that he's clearly only moved to Motherwell for the money. Incidentally, Robinson's saying in the video that just went up on the YouTube channel that we're at advanced stages of talks with another 3 players and is hopeful of adding a couple early next week.

2 years

Couple of interesting points about Bigirimana here, he's out of contract so would presumably be available on a free: http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/sport/football/football-news/coventry-city-must-re-sign-12941773

One for Joeboy but the latest twitter rumour has us in for Gael Bigiriamana from Coventry. https://twitter.com/CCFCtalk/status/870568740458463232

Zing

That account has 118 followers and was linking Dom Thomas with Rangers. It's a boy sitting in his bedroom on the wind-up.

I'm kind of +1 on this. Though not necessarily for the same reasons. I can totally see why the club are interested, especially with Ainsworth & McDonald having left. We're looking for a player who has pace and can play off the striker. He's evidently not happy there (though he agitated for the move, I don't know what he expected) and they're clearly looking to get shot of him. Even more so if they're willing to actively pay him off to get him off their books. He's only 26 so in theory has his best years ahead of him. All in all there's a deal there for someone. What I don't really get is why we'd still pursue it after we've had kb's previously. We seemed to be publicly chasing him in January and it didn't happen. Given his situation you'd have thought he'd be into getting a shot at first team football, who knows maybe he thinks he can get a bigger club or maybe he's just genuinely fine with bleeding 8k a week (or whatever it is he's on) from the bigots for the remainder of his 4 year deal. Either of those scenarios are totally fine but us chasing a player who's not that fussed about coming to the club, let's not waste time doing that.

Didn't see it mentioned but that's Chris "Union" Jack reporting in the Evening Times that "Rangers won't pursue Motherwell striker Louis Moult". Good.

Here are his appearance numbers: League (Starts + subs) Total appearances (inc cups): 2013-14 - (22+7) - Total apps = 31 (McCall) 2014-15 - (21+15) - Total apps = 39 (McCall/Baraclough) 2015-16 - (17 + 12) - Total apps = 33 (Baraclough/McGhee) 2016-17 - (10 + 20) - Total apps - 35 (McGhee/Robinson) Obviously the incident at Firhill means that the McGhee "freezing him out" narrative plays quite well but generally speaking players who are being "frozen out" aren't involved in 30+ games a season. FWIW: I don't think McGhee handled him particularly well but it's easy for people to overlook that McCall benched him for a run of games while Baraclough opted to stick Conor Grant at right midfield ahead of him as well. He's been in an out the team at points with every manager during his time at the club.

There were a couple of comments in the interview that seemed notable, especially in the context of "lessons learned". The point about Robinson being willing to put in the miles in terms of going looking at players (including Sheffied, hiya Stefan) seemed relevant especially in the context of a deal like Belic (possibly Blyth and various others). There's also us having promoted our 3rd senior goalkeeper to first choice last season which seemed very much a case of "Ach, you'll do.". I found a lot of the emphasis on the concept of recruitment a bit of a tacit acknowledgement that we got a lot of it wrong last season, which is good, acknowledging mistakes and making sure they're not repeated is a healthy step. Similarly and I realise I'm projecting a bit here but when framed against McGhee's apparent back and forth to Brighton (and possibly his involvement with the national team) Burrows observation about Robinson's willingness to put in the miles and also the comment about him not being under any illusions about the scale of the job seemed pointed, though not quite an outright dig. The biggest positive for me was that there seems to have been something of a reappraisal of the level of player that we need to bring in.

The main interest in Scougall from Scotland seems to have been from St Johnstone (he was apparently at their game vs Thistle as a guest of the club) and ourselves. I seem to remember having read that neither Hearts or Hibs had shown any interest in him (though that may have been on P&B rather than a legit news source).

As much as there's probably a snobbery at play in a few cases, having dipped into the comments on FB (always a bad idea, no matter what page it is), there's a more unfortunate aspect in so much as it's clear that some of the fanbase are just absolute weapons.

Right on cue.

^^^ Pretty much this.