capt_oats

FWIW I'm +1 on the Coyle story making complete sense but unfortunately I've less by way of ITK sources (and by less I mean none). Looking at the timeline it ties everything together pretty well. In an optics sense having that story leaked doesn't do the club that much harm as far as I can see, at the very least it indicates that they had an initial plan in place that fitted in a lot more with what the "fans" would have hoped for by way of an appointment. As far as the Robinson contract goes, all things told it seems he had a small amount of leverage and he's used it to get an additional year on his deal. I'm not going to criticise him for that. By the same token I'd go as far as to say that extra year is probably worth less than the risk of appointing someone like Valakari at this point in time. Edit to add: hearing about the Coyle stuff actually made me feel a bit better about the Robinson appointment in a broader sense. Not that I was sat in the bath reaching for a toaster or anything when they announced it but having some plausible context made the whole thing sit a bit better for me.

Unless I've missed something the only comment I've seen from Flow re: Hughes is him saying he didn't apply for the job. Again, it's semantics but it's a completely different thing saying "he didn't apply" than "we sounded him out and he decided to see out his contract at Raith" especially in the context of having appointed someone else. I've no idea whether we did or didn't but semantics can be quite important in that respect.

As an extension to this I'd suggest taking a bit of perspective and consider the appointments that those clubs around us in the league have made. There's a lot of chat on various social media channels and forums with fans "underwhelmed" having been looking for a fresh appointment etc. Looking back over the past couple of seasons since Baraclough replaced McCall, how many of our contemporaries have been making managerial appointments that suggest they are any more "attractive"? Motherwell: Stuart McCall (resigned) > Ian Baraclough (sacked) > Mark McGhee (sacked) > Stephen Robinson St Mirren: Tommy Craig (sacked) > Gary Teale Accies: Alex Neil (to Norwich) > Martin Canning Kilmarnock: Allan Johnstone (sacked) > Gary Locke (sacked) > Lee Clark (to Bury) > Lee McCulloch (caretaker until end of season) Dundee United: Jackie McNamara (sacked) > Mixu Paatelainen (sacked) > Gordon Young (interim) Celtic: Ronny Deila (resigned) > Brendan Rodgers Inverness Caledonian Thistle: John Hughes (resigned) > Richie Foran Heart of Midlothian: Robbie Neilsen (to MK Dons) > Ian Cathro Rangers: Mark Warburton (sacked) > Pedro Caixinha Strip away sides with bigger budgets like Celtic, Rangers and Hearts and you're looking at Locke, Clark, Paatelainen, McCulloch, Canning, Foran? Even someone like Archibald at Thistle stepped up internally to replace McNamara, Hartley moved to Dundee from Alloa. Some have done good jobs others less so, Paatelainen saw United relegated at Dens for example. Either way I don't really see any of those names or profiles at the time of appointment reconciling with the sort of expectations often displayed by sections of our fanbase.

It seems like stating the obvious but I think it depends how he does in the run in. If he starts picking up points and winning games then I'd imagine he'd be given a crack at it next season, in the knowledge that if it doesn't look like it's working early they can take action early. As they did with Baraclough. If he struggles then yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if we looked at another option in summer. A break clause in the summer could actually suit both parties tbh and give either side an easy way out should they want it. It's a bit of a stretch to say that there willl *definitely* be a change in summer though.

Not quite. McHugh was free. Both Bowman and Frear were 'undisclosed' fees. So we've paid fees for Johnson, Moult, Bowman and Frear. 50% hit rate thus far in terms of fees paid.

I'm fairly non-plussed about Robinson tbh. Certainly given the stage of the season we're at he seems less of a risk than hoping Valakari turned up after nearly 20 years away from the club and hit the ground running. Similarly Hughes couldn't even sort out a goalkeeper for Raith the other week and ended up having to play Ryan Stevenson in goals before resorting to publicly slating his players to try and get a reaction after what? 4 games in charge? Onthefringes post earlier about Coyle actually puts the whole thing into some context and in hindsight it makes a lot more sense when framed with that information. Not that it matters much but it's a bit more reassuring knowing that there was a specific plan of action that they've tried to work out and it's not been this weird scenario of waiting a fortnight before eventually appointing the "least worst" option. The club had their #1 target, he was into it but for reasons outwith MFC's control that fell through. Who knows it could be something as simple as he's seen the Norwich, Derby & Forest jobs come up and he's had 2nd thoughts and decided that he may be in with a shout of a better paid gig down there if not at those clubs then as part of a domino effect. That's obviously just speculation on my part but it doesn't seem like such a massive leap that a scenario like that would be improbable. Managers are getting emptied left, right and centre down there at the moment. Average tenure in the Championship is something like 9 months just now. Ultimately that still leaves Motherwell looking to make an appointment, it's not something that could have dragged out much longer and it's difficult not to feel that given the circumstances we find ourselves in there can't have been too many "outstanding" candidates for the job. While he's still got the recent failure at Oldham very clearly on his CV Robinson's at the club, knows the players, has been working with them for the past few weeks. Short term at least he seems a more realistic option than hoping someone comes in from outside and hits the ground running. Like a few on this thread I've been broadly supportive of McGhee but it's doubtful that any manager, maybe Canning excepted, would have been able to keep their job after that run of results and performances. He looked like he was ready to chuck it after the Rangers game and the players looked like they'd chucked it in more than a few since then. There was no way we could realistically have stuck with him after the Dundee game. Poor performances, results, erratic discipline and impending suspension McGhee was utterly toxic by that point.

Correct. He's never been called up once at any level.

Ha! I just saw a tweet pointing out that Lindsay is too old for the squad. Consider me unbaffled.

That decision is mental. Absolutely baffling that Lindsay isn't in that squad.

Sacked after 29 games at Hartlepool. Win % of 27.59%.

Oooooft!?

Noticed this from Scott Mullen in the Evening Times: http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/sport/15156008.Motherwell_set_to_have_new_manager_in_place_for_Saturday_s_visit_of_St_Johnstone/ Doesn't really say anything that's not already known. Names Robinson and Valikari, 3 interviews done, 2 still to go and only mentions Hughes in terms of the bookies market. However one thing that's referenced that I didn't realise was that Hughes applied for the job prior to McGhee being appointed in 2015, he'd obviously still have been at ICT at that point. You can look at that a couple of ways I suppose. Firstly, he was overlooked in favour of McGhee which I guess could have been down to compensation that would have been due to ICT or maybe he didn't fit what we were looking for and secondly it was a job that was of interest to him while he was already at another club.

Absolutely. The Motherwell Times has run a couple of articles now that seem to have been based solely on bookies odds that people have mis-read as actual fact. Last week we had folk on here going on about how the "shortlist" was Robinson, Duffy, Coyle, Davies and Hughes based on this article that lifted the names from the bookies markets; http://www.motherwelltimes.co.uk/sport/football/motherwell-fc/italian-superstar-ravanelli-ruled-out-of-motherwell-manager-s-job-1-4386526

Except it only tells part of the story, if you look at Falkirk forums there's a generally held view that his management caused "long lasting damage" to the club while ICT fans aren't exactly enamoured with him given the way he left them with toys strewn all over the place and in a worse place than when he started, having fallen out with the board about the United job, taken the huff about budgets and by all accounts having shown how key Latapy was to their success. With Motherwell's much heralded focus on youth development he hardly strikes as being a good fit in that respect either.

Unless I've missed something, and that's totally possible, the only thing connecting Hughes to the job are bookies odds. There's been no report that we've asked for permission to speak to him as far as I'm aware.

Absolutely hilarious attempt at playing a back 3. Complete shambles. Thistle are taking them to bits with every attack.

I'd have thought we'd need Raith's permission to speak to Hughes and either way it would have been reported if we had made an approach tbh. It probably wouldn't be that wild a shout for him to have some sort of release clause in there if a permanent offer came along given the short term nature of his deal with Raith.

As a few have posted on here, they're essentially looking at a choice between 2 jobs here; - Robinson short term until summer then re-evaluate in the hope that league status being secure along with an almost blank canvas to work with will attract a better response in terms of quality of applicant with regards the "ideal" candidate. or - Valakari as a longer term option, we'd not be looking at bringing him in to just see how it goes until summer after all. If he comes in and he's a disaster then we'd be stuck with him. I'd guess that his interview would have been to convince them that it'd be worth going with a more risky appointment. I'd have thought the direct questions would be, amongst other things: - what would his approach to the Motherwell job be right now? - what's his knowledge of the Scottish game and direct opposition? He's not been involved in the game up here for 17 years. - would he be willing to work with the current coaching staff or would he need to bring in his own people? - what's his track record like with player development? - what's his track record like with youth development? - what does he look for in recruiting players? So on and so forth. Barring the first point, little of that necessarily applies to the job that Robinson will be asked to do if he's given it until summer. He's being asked to get the team organised, grind out wins and try to keep us in the league. End of. Valakari would be required to do that and present his overall approach to management. The idea that they shouldn't have spoken to Valakari or that it's somehow disrespectful simply because they had/have a preferred candidate and are erring on a path that's presenting less risk is pretty daft tbqhwu. It's just seething for the sake of it. I'd have thought he'd have been interviewed to give him an opportunity to convince them that he was the right man for the job and give them confidence to move away from their preferred option.

Nope. Mitch's post indicated close of business on Tuesday at the latest.

He discussed his thoughts (largely positive) on the whole DOF thing quite extensively on Twitter a while back.

^^^^ This. 100%. You could conclude that they've opened the application process, spoken to people they may have earmarked and the upshot has been that those who have put in applications possibly don't offer any more than Robinson or they weren't the sort of manager who fitted the bill in a long term sense (as a few have said on here there's a considerable difference between what we need now and what we'd ideally like going forward). Those who may have been specific targets may not fancy the risk of having a relegation on their CV especially with a side who have 7-2 and 5-1 defeats on their recent run of results. You can't really blame people if they're hesitant about taking the job on. Meanwhile in his 2 games in charge Robinson's won one game against a side we'd have hoped to win against and a narrow loss against a team that put 7 past us a couple of weeks ago. When it was announced Robinson would take the job as a caretaker the club presumably had no idea who might (realistically) be interested or how Robinson would fare. It seems pretty reasonable to allow everyone involved to take a breath and see how things panned out, especially since Robinson was only back in the door the week before.

^^^^ 100% this. Worth mentioning that there are no quotes to back up the story. At best it suggests that we asked him (along with others I assume) if they'd be interested in interviewing for the job. He's said "no thanks". There's zero there to say he'd have been offered it, only that we may have asked him if he'd be interested. To go further there's actually nothing to say he'd have been shortlisted even if he'd said "aye". The whole thing is a total non-story really; nothing to corroborate it, the only detail there is that Robinson and Valakari are likely to be on the shortlist which is somethings everyone knows, the only interesting aspect (if true) is that we've been approaching people who hadn't applied.

He actually gave quite a revealing interview last year and was pretty candid about his move from Palace to Bolton and how it was a "mistake": https://www.holmesdale.net/page.php?id=82&story=6643 I wouldn't be surprised is that, along with his no doubt "interesting" experience at the basketcase that is Forest will have played a part.

I kind of have a hard time working out how realistically attractive the club is to a manager/coach. I don't mean that disparagingly just genuinely the stumbling block I have is "would that person actually want to manage Motherwell?" Going by the appointments that have for the most part worked IMO it's been the ones who have had a reasonable amount of experience and who know the league but have been out of work for a while. If you were to build a profile then it'd be the characteristics of McGhee, Brown, McCall etc. Looking at something like Transfermarkt there are actually quite a few options that probably fit that sort of description; take someone like Steve Clarke neither managerial position he's had (WBA & Reading) worked out particularly well, he's got years of coaching experience but I'm not particularly sure he'll be getting a call from Championship clubs any time soon, he was being quoted for the Celtic job but that obvs didn't happen and I think he was largely viewed as a pretty underwhelming option by Celtic fans. You'd have thought someone like that would have markedly more coaching experience than say a Robinson which would be attractive to us but then you flip it and think would someone whose coaching career has been Newcastle, Chelsea, West Ham, Liverpool & Villa rule him out of having any interest in a job like Motherwell? Though again, is Motherwell that much of a step down from being emptied by Reading on a run of 1 win in 9? I'm not actually sure it is. I'm not suggesting that someone like Clarke would/wouldn't be interested but I'd have thought the people we're looking to speak to would have to clearly offer something (clearly) different to Robinson. I'm genuinely interested to see who else is in the running.