MJC

I don’t know. I’m sure KvV and his agent will be well aware that if for some reason this move doesn’t work out or he suffers a similar misfortune that Moult did with injuries then we will give him a deal. I can just picture it now. August 2025, we are short of striker options and KvV has been touted for a return despite being out injured for months. Every post on the clubs Twitter is replied to with #announcevanVeen. Then finally a video is released, filmed from the top floor of Glassford Tower looking towards Fir Park. We then see a KLM plane is descending towards Glasgow as the tune of “Tulips from Amsterdam” plays over it. Then finally we see what we’ve all been waiting for. It’s the Fir Park pitch with a 34 year old KvV standing there in a Well top and a pair of crutches. The fanboys go wild.

Absolutely nothing. Oxborough hasn’t played a single minute of first team football and Danzaki showed very little when he got his chance and like McKinstry pretty much fell off the scene when Kettlewell took over. Kelly wasn’t great last season, certainly poorer than his previous two, but he also saved us on a number of occasions and more than proved that he is very much a solid, dependable goalkeeper for us. Losing van Veen will be a big blow, losing Kelly at the same time will only add another big blow at the other end of the park.

That would have been a very expensive mistake at a time when we were already well down the road to financial ruin. One ex Rangers player we should have signed during that spell was Ally McCoist when he left Ibrox in 1998 and ended up at Killie. He would have contributed more goals in that team than John Spencer did imo.

It usually is with us, they are something of a speciality of ours.

Nevin being our player/Chief Executive will never not be strange. And I liked him as a player too! His last minute winner against Hearts in a midweek game at FP was a memorable moment. His working relationship with Boyle obviously wasn’t the best, even if they were on good terms to start with. I’m sure he was the biggest vocal opponent to us going into administration in 2002 and he doubled down on that viewpoint last year on the 20th anniversary of that. But, how much of a part did he play in our overspending in the period leading up to that? Who knows? Billy Davies as manager with us was similar to Alex McLeish, albeit without the media darling status. He was an inexperienced manager given a significant amount of cash to spend by our standards and didn’t deliver as much as he should have in the circumstances. That said I was never convinced that the signings of John Spencer and Andy Goram - the two really high profile signings - were completely down to him at that time, even though Spencer was a relative of his.

The club have just tweeted that our partnership with Paycare has ended and that a new front of shirt sponsor will be unveiled in the coming weeks so it looks like we’ll be waiting a while longer to see what our 23/24 kit looks like, and who will sponsor it.

On paper yes and with or without KvV we should have too much for the rest of the sides. But we must be properly prepared and professional when the games come around.

A winnable group in a competition we should be looking to go as far as possible in. Best way to start a season and none of this Europa league pish.

As did I at the time, I was pleased to see him back and glad we gave him the chance, kind of heart ruling head. But unfortunately it quickly became clear that he just wasn’t anywhere near fit enough to make an impact and we rightly cut short his loan.

There’s nothing wrong with having a reputation of being a club that looks after it’s players, but at the same time we are a professional football club, not a charity, so when we have players on the books we need to be getting something in return for us taking care of them. And yes it has worked well for us in the past but over the past decade it has gotten to a ridiculous level of simply signing ex players in the hope that they can somehow recapture their form with us years before and also no doubt with an aim to getting the fans on side. Of the list I mentioned above, the obvious success stories were Scott McDonald, who was still a quality player at our level when he came back, and Stephen Pearson especially during the playoff season. Faddy was excellent in his initial return in 2013 but offered next to nothing afterwards and was clearly done. John Sutton being the other plus point. The rest of them with perhaps the exception of Grimshaw, did nothing for us in their return and three of them (McCormack, Moult & Aarons) barely kicked a ball and were never fit and wouldn’t even have been considered had they not been with us previously. I’ve no issue with us bringing back an ex player if he genuinely still has something to offer us, but I’d like to see us show a bit more vision in our transfer dealings. Instead of bringing back a clearly crocked and finished Louis Moult why not try and find another player who would potentially offer us the same as Moult did when he was younger and fitter? Easier said than done, I am fully aware of that, but surely more productive than our re-signing of Moult last year?

Right so, we DID sign some ex players last season then? Loans count as signings surely? It was actually three if you include Rolando Aarons second ill fated stint with us. If you go back to 2013, in that time we have re-signed (off the top of my head) James McFadden three times, Stephen Pearson twice, Scott McDonald, David Clarkson, Henrik Ojamaa, John Sutton, Ross McCormack, Louis Moult, Rolando Aarons, Liam Grimshaw and Jake Hastie. We also brought back Mark McGhee for a second stint as manager. I don’t know how that compares against other clubs re-signing ex players or employees but that’s quite a list imo.

You don’t say? As I think I mentioned earlier in the thread the people who are going to buy the kits will buy them regardless of what they look like. I just don’t get why we can’t just stick to our classic and traditional kit, obviously with some tweaks here and there with every new kit. You don’t see Real Madrid or Leeds Utd, both clubs with a predominantly white kit, always trying to be out the box and different. They have their identify and they stick to it. I wish we would take a leaf out of their book.

Maybe it is, but it surely can’t be denied that we have re-signed a fair amount of ex players over the last 10/15/20 years, with the last decade and a bit being particularly notorious for it?

I wouldn’t be completely against Steven Hammell coming back in some sort of role in the future, but as a club we really, REALLY need to move away from this culture of re-signing or re-hiring ex players or staff members. It just screams out a lack of vision and forward looking and instead just makes us look like mugs for sentiment. We’ve seen it in the past with Faddy in the several times he re-signed for us. It gets suggested on here and Twitter etc and it ends up happening. You get the impression that we could end up seeing Louis Moult re-join again this summer inspite of his injury issues and failed loan earlier last season. It must be the easiest job advert for scouts. ”The successful candidate will ideally have a sound knowledge of football and scouting operations as well as previous experience of sourcing and identifying potential signing targets, but this is not required as full training will be given. An ability to read social media platforms and identify which popular former player or employee would be most desirable to the support is essential.“

We won’t be moving from Fir Park any time soon unless something drastic happens like a serious fire or an earthquake which swallows the entire ground up. In fairness given our record and luck with things going wrong with the stadium over the years then you wouldn’t rule either out. I love Fir Park to bits and would hate to see us leave it for some soulless Lego style new stadium like Livingston or New St.Mirren Park but it’s been more than showing it’s age for the last 10-15 years now and you wonder how much longer it will/can go on for without serious money being spent on it. Serious money that we don’t have at that.

I think I'm right in saying that it's now over ten years since we last kept the same home kit for two seasons, the 2011 - 2013 kit we had when Michael Higdon was here? I would be more than happy for us to go back to keeping the kit for 2 years as opposed to just 1 but I suspect that the money the club and the manufacturer makes from changing it every year would make that unlikely.

Not really, I’ve liked most of the kits Macron have produced for us. I just know that we have this obsession with trying to do something ‘different’ instead of just sticking to our classic and traditional kit.

Nothing would surprise me tbh. I’m half expecting an all claret top with an Amber drawing of Faddy in in the middle and “A great wee club” written on the inside of the collar. No doubt such a kit would be met with comments on here and other social media platforms of “mmmm, that’s braw, a thing of beauty” etc.

And Partick Thistle stay down after a penalty loss. I wasn’t particularly bothered either way but after listening to BBC Radio Scotland’s commentary which was basically willing Thistle to win then I’m pretty chuffed to see one of their ‘darling’ clubs fall flat.

It might not have any bearing this year, but last years was unveiled on the 14th June, so perhaps next week? Edit: Checking back further, in 2021 it was the 9th June and in 2020 it was 11th June that we introduced the up coming seasons kits. Going by that then we can expect it soon. Just hope it’s a proper, no nonsense Motherwell kit this time.

I like Cornelius and would love to see him properly make his mark for us, but as said he is on the lightweight side which hampers him. A lot will depend on our transfer business this summer and if or where he fits into Kettlewell’s plans after that.

That Rangers team was absolutely bang average, or rank rotten by their standards. But I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that had Stuart McCall been in charge of us instead of them for those games then we would not have beaten them.

Yes of course they could do that without the armband, but that would make the man who actually has the armband captain in name only? Like I said earlier, maybe it is just the way I see it but the goalkeeper being captain just doesn't seem right. The captain should be a focal point of the team, heavily involved in the play and where necessary talk to teammates and officials. Can a goalkeeper really do this if something occurs up the other end of the park? Obviously I take your point about other players also being vocal and leading on the pitch and it's always good when you have more than one leader in the team, but I just think there should be that man who is the focal point and he should, imo, be an outfield player.

Exactly, there was none of the subservient fear of them that'd we'd seen all to often in previous games against them, especially under the man in their dugout for those games. For once we went out and showed them no respect instead of 'playing the name' of Rangers and we got the job done.

Not a specific former player but it is eight years to the day since the playoff 2nd leg, part two of the most important result for the club in the last decade and more. The players on that day really stepped up to the plate after failing to do so all season. Ainsworth, Pearson, Johnston, McManus and of course Lee Erwin are the names you instantly think of when remembering those games.