weeyin

In playing style? Absolutely. And when I first started watching Hansen he was at Partick Thistle and only won the First Division title. One title less than Gallagher.

Every time I see him he reminds me more and more of Alan Hansen, another defender that made the game look easy.

Official site says he's contracted until May 2021.

People are overthinking this. When someone's contract is running down and you want to keep them, you offer a new contract - otherwise they likely leave. As a club, we tend not to stand in the way of people who want to leave - players or managers. (Most businesses are the same way, as it doesn't make sense to keep someone who is unhappy, and slavery has been illegal for quite some time). The compensation thing is a bit of a red herring. If Robinson just walked out today, breaking his contract, there's not much we could do except sue him personally - and I'd be surprised if we would get a year's salary from a case like that as it's not like we paid him the money up front. As far as Preston are concerned, if they get promoted and finish bottom of the EPL, they earn about £100 million then receive around another £42 million in parachute payments. Of course, if they stay in the EPL they earn a lot more. So that £3 million payment is 2% of 1 season's minimum potential earnings should Alex Neil succeed. If we asked clubs to pay 2% of one season's of Motherwell's potential earnings should Robinson succeed, we'd probably get a lot less than we are asking now.

Great news for Gallagher and another great advert for our club when we show potential signings how it can boost their career.

It's not just about playing minutes (although they all had some I think). It's about the travel and the training too. Plus being away from Fir Park means that aren't available for learning the tactics for particular opponents.

Playing in an advanced role is something Campbell started in the Toulon Tournament a couple of seasons ago. It worked pretty well there, which is why I imagine it continued. It's been to our advantage as well this season, as Donnelly in the holding position has allowed Campbell to play further up the park for us.

Scott, Maguire, Gallagher and Mugabi were all on international duty too.

I remember that chant at Pittodrie the last day of the season: "You're not much better than Levein. You're not much better than Levein!" I wouldn't ever read anything into the "favourite" tag the media loves throwing around - it is completely meaningless. Hearts would not be doing their due diligence, however, if McCall had applied for that job and they didn't follow-up. There's no disputing he had sustained success with us and, even more importantly, his personality and style is the opposite of Levein - which is often what's needed when you need to rebuild morale. I also suspect Hearts might struggle to attract some of the better candidates while the ghost of Levein is floating around the board room. Rank stupidity to not just pay him off and get him out the door.

Fantastic contribution since he started in the first team. Like Cadden before him, it's often easy to forget how young he is when assessing the odd dip in performance. Another poster child for our youth system.

"Wealthy Benefactor" is the financial model we just spent a few years trying to move away from.

Fans say a lot of ill-informed things, but I'd be amazed if there was a single Motherwell player today who didn't play to win that game today.

You can, however, hold more than one thought - even if you're a footballer. It's perfectly fine to hate losing a game, but identify what went well (so you can replicate that positive) and identify the weak points (so you can work on eliminating the negative).

For whatever reason he's been poor since that Hearts cup game.

The Poppy Police will still be investigating, no doubt.

That would basically require buying him out of his full remaining contract - which isn't really the point of that kind of clause. It's usually more of a bargaining tool to let the manager know they won't stand his in his way for serious suitors, while discouraging the chancers who want to poach him for free.

I imagine the buyout clause was part of his contract extension negotiations. A "quid pro quo" to use the popular term of the day. So extending his contract until 2022, but allowing a buy out of 1 year's salary, seems like a decent compromise.

For those that are wondering why O'Neill took the Stoke job: If Robinson is taking over, that gives us plenty of time to find a replacement.

It was a joke. Robinson was Baraclough's assistant at Fir Park. Then Baraclough was Robinson's assistant at Oldham. Now they are both linked to the NI job, it would be mildly amusing if they switched roles again.

So NI Under-21 manager Ian Baraclough to ultimately take over the senior squad with Robinson as his assistant?

Robinson served his apprenticeship with the NI youth squads and assisted O'Neill with the senior squad that qualified for Euro 2016.

Martin Foyle and the structure and resources he was given (not to mention the changed model where we pay fees for players) were all part of the processes Les put in place. When you restructure a business, it's not a one time deal. It's about putting in process and structures that evolve.

Not as bad as Terry Butcher's story about just "taking a holiday to Australia" during the latter part of the season.

Celtic are one of those teams where, if you get your tactics right, you can make a good game of it. Get them wrong, and they can take 4 or 5 of you for fun. So we need to be aggressive, focused and disciplined.

I think the smartest thing the Society did was to encourage monthly direct debits. It's a much easier and more predictable way to bring in funds and reduces the need for regular "please give us a donation" pleas. I'm assuming most people will be happy to let their contributions continue if they can, so that should help keep things ticking over.