weeyin

Being a keeper is a strange life as for most of them most of the time, it's a career consisting of being a backup. So on one hand I can see the attraction of at least being a well paid backup (or in Gillespie's case, a well paid backup to the backup's backup backup). On the other hand, I've never heard a professional footballer ever say at the end of their career "I wished I'd played less games". It must be difficult for a pro to train every week for competition, but never compete. I'd have thought, at least for early-mid career you'd want to get as many appearances as possible at whatever level you could. While Randolph is a bench warmer in recent times, he did get a tilt at the EPL (including his win against Liverpool), had a very good Championship career, has made over 400 first team appearances and won 50 caps for Ireland. So his retirement fund padding at West Ham and recent signing for Bournemouth make more sense. Gillespie has obviously made peace with his wage packet and the fact he won't be near the first team. Presumably working at the club he supports has made it easier.

Agree with that and will also be surprised if he reaches 15 next season at his new club. Higdon has the best tally in recent times managing 14 in the season after he was top scorer with us. Moult managed 2, Sutton managed 3 the first time he left us and 1 the second time he left us. Tommy Coyne managed 1 in the season after he left us. Wullie P managed 12 league goals with Utd in his first season, but did manage another 8 in cup competitions. Which again just shows how good he was.

Not completely convinced about that. He was ready to start when we ended the loan, but there is a good argument that playing a few months at Cove was what got him to that point.

What Danzaki did was sign a contract until 2025.

I think that is needed. We had about 33 players make first team appearances last season, not including the youngsters with their cameos. Not sustainable for a club our size.

Wonder what the headline in the Rancid will be regarding the players leaving us... "Former Celtic forward among Motherwell exits.." Of course!

I doubt there's any footballer who has retired thinking "I wish I played less games" Keepers are a strange breed though and have to prepare for long spells out the game. I suppose it's a nice bonus to be on EPL money, even if it comes from the new wave of Saudi sportswashing cash and sketchy company structures designed to bypass the financial fair play rules. But that is a discussion for a different thread.

I haven't actually looked at it.

TIL; the club has an Instagram account

Once we've spent our 'war chest'

I was thinking more along the lines that the article didn't say we'd accepted their bid, only that KVV had agreed terms. Of course that means we gave permission for him to negotiate, but was unclear if we had agreed the transfer fee terms.

It's not rocket science, however, to figure out our transfer dealings from the end of season accounts.

While I appreciated Ready's frustration at the time, I remember his public complaints making him sound like a spoiled brat. His message seemed to be that footballers were special and shouldn't be treated like other employees in other businesses when administration kicks in. I'd imagine the vast majority of fans in Lanarkshire have been through redundancy at least once and didn't expect the special treatment Mr Ready was expecting.

Bob Malcom's entry in wikipedia is where I tested out the theory "can anyone really edit these things?" Over the course of the years it was edited slightly by moderators, but the basic made-up "fact" is still there. (I promise I haven't made any wiki edits since then).

Not quite a done deal, but sounds like it's heading in that direction.

Be interesting to see if he takes them up on that offer. According to the wiki entry their most recent season makes Dundee Utd's look like a roaring success.

That was the Dundee Utd model that put them into millions of pounds of debt and helped relegate them twice in recent seasons.

It's not so much about fitness as training schedule. In the regular season you are tailoring your training to be in peak form in time for the match. Pre-season you start off with some of the intensive stuff to push you to the limits. It's not designed to get you ready for a match at that point. I remember Robinson talking about one league cup game we played where the team had done double endurance sessions during the day before playing in the evening. The alternative, of course, is to change your training to be less intensive between games, but you run the risk of not being at your peak when the league kicks off. I've heard a few managers say that since the new League Cup format started it can take 2 or 3 weeks into the regular season before the fitness is where they need it to be. Finally, the lower league teams kick-off their season before the Premiership so typically start pre-season earlier too. That means they are usually a week ahead in their programme. Of course, as a Premiership team we should have the better and fitter players, especially compared to League One and League Two. It does mean, however, that the differential can be less this early in the season and if you aren't 100% on it that results can go against you. That is why you see so many "upsets" in the group stages. I don't have any fear that SK will have us well prepared. My bigger concern is what kind of squad we'll have 6 or 7 weeks before the transfer window closes. I'm still not convinced this is the best format for the League Cup, but we're all in the same boat, so just need to deal with it. After seeing many variants over the years my favourite was still the one-leg, straight knockout, decided on the night approach with the final in October.

Cornelius wasn't part of our academy was he? So if there is compensation we'll need to split it with Hibs or whoever else was involved in development.

Davies seems to have lost every job he had by falling out with the board and/or claiming they were in league with the media to conspire against him. So no great surprise there. I don't hate Nevin, but he was definitely responsible for a lot of the issues at that time. He had no business being Chief Exec of any club.

My highly scientific back-of-a-fag-packet statistical analysis predicts that young players who leave us have more success if they have at least 50 appearances under their belt. According to soccerbase, Cornelius has 53, so he has a chance. He's the kind of player I would have been happy to see stay, but not overly concerned about leaving. More easily replaced than a midfielder like Campbell.

As well as the interest free loan, I believe in prior years we've also taken advantage of various grants there were available to fund improvements.

Most teams don't get all those sorted until the league starts - or even a few weeks after that.

That's certainly how it turned out, but I think ourselves, Aberdeen and even St Mirren were looking for a better goal return from him.

If it's like last season's, it's being made in China.