joewarkfanclub

The problem with that is that we couldnt attract the quality of Biereth unless it is on loan. The big clubs mop up all the best quality for their academies. Unless we are lucky enough to develop one of our own. So our options are signing a poorer quality player on a permanent basis or getting the best we can on the understanding its likely to be short term.

Any updates on Alen Ozbolt? Seems like a decent pedigree.....

I presume any fee paid goes towards paying up the players contract to encourage him to move?

Bair is an average player who always seems to be fit.......

I think we have to......

But we only have one fit striker at the moment, so it will have to be one up top and this severely diminishes our options.....

I think SK must have crashed a lorry loaded with mirrors! If he/we didnt have any bad luck we would have none at all! Pressure is seriously on now. This window just got a whole lot tougher......

Thats a good result for us. Dont want Aberdeen getting to far ahead and it keeps St Johnstone behind us for now. Take that!

Jeez guys we have done this one to death. But here goes again. Oli Shaw was a last minute panic buy after Biereth had got injured and we needed someone in sharpish. The management / recruitment team would not have had a huge pool of talent to pick from at that point but needed to get someone in to help out until Biereth was fit again. He has now been moved back to his parent club after 6 months at no loss to Motherwell. How that can in anyway be assessed as a failure or an albatross to hang around Kettlewell / Daws neck beggers belief. Not saying our recruitment couldnt be improved. Of course it could. But please let this one go!

Gannon was an absolute loon ball. He came in and mixed things up a bit and threw a load of talented young boys in and gave them confidence to go and play. He also brought in some very good players. However, he had a much bigger budget than most Motherwell managers since and he alienated the entire senior playing staff to the extent that when the young boys started to falter (as they were always likely to do) he had nowhere to turn. Add in his other rumoured negative personality traits and he was never going to last. The European games were great fun though.

Those decisions are not on Burrows alone though. They require majority board support.

He has managed to get rid of a fair number of the players you thought were shite.....

You want specifics? SK inherited a bloated squad full of players most on here thought were shite and needed moved on. He was clearly under instruction to from the board to get the squad trimmed down as our wage bill was too high. He was quite ruthless and successful in that regard. He then went to try and improve the quality of the squad with new players. He wasnt able to do that. If you listen to the language used at the time his preferred targets all went to clubs where they could earn more and he was left scraping around the bargain basement to get bodies in. If you watch the video I posted with Gary Neville & Roy Kean discussing these very issues, you might accept that its just not as straightforward as fans think. In the first few weeks of the season Wilkinson, Biereth and Obika all got injured forcing him to bring in Ollie Shaw at the last minute. We already had Butcher injured, Casey, Blaney, McGinn, Miller, Souare all followed. So yes. Plenty mitigation in my book. No manager will get all their signings right. Most will have at best a 50/50 success rate. Probably lower for a manager with out budget. The secret for these guys is to recognise it isnt working early and move them on. Failing to do so would be a bigger concern. Re wingers - see trimming of the squad and what players were available to sign. Gent gave a very good impression of a winger at the weekend. Maybe that SK sees him as the solution in that area and maybe thats why he brought Monty in much to everyones surprise. Do you know Davor and Gents personal circumstances? Maybe they had issues and/or werent ready to play? Gent certainly pointing to the sky when he scored on Saturday. Bair is a back up striker. Circumstances have dictated he has been used more than that. I wouldnt have given him a 2 year deal, but then I dont know what money he is on. It may not be costing us that much. However, he is nowhere near as bad as he was made out to be. Really not sure what standard of striker folks think would be happy to sit on the bench for Motherwell? Wilko got injured early doors and I dont know that we ever figured out how to play him. He seemed like a decent finisher when given chances but we were so deep in the shit at the time he was never gonna feature. Probably best for both parties he moved on. As for the last part. Bair didnt miss any sitters. Gent put in some good crosses that a better striker may have gambled on and got on the end of. But given Biereth was recalled we will have to find someone else to do that. That ones been done to death. Its just nonsense. Scoring goals hasnt been our issue this year. Keeping them out has. So KVV no more kept us up than the defence did. Pretty sure SK had an input in both. Total revisionism. Youve picked the 3 games when we were in fact atrocious. During that run we also lost to Celtic Rangers and St Mirren whilst playing what was generally regarded as some of the best football in recent years. We also came form behind to snatch draws in the games against Ross County, St Johnstone (twice) Celtic and Dundee. Not to mention the game at Easter Road where we were seconds away from back to back victories. Now Im not saying we were great in any of those games, but we werent atrocious. Certainly not for 90 minutes. Again just not true. Alexander and Hammell both had bloated squads. Both SK and Derek Weir have gone on record this season about how the playing squad had to be made more sustainable in the long term. I think we had 35 first team players at the end if Hammels reign its now down to 21. Our recent league form up to the Hibs game was 2 defeats in 8. 5 draws, 1 win, 2 defeats. One of those was to Rangers. One of the draws was away to Celtic. Its not great form, but its nowhere near sackable. Overall, you clearly dont like SK and want him gone. You are entitled to your opinion and I have no issue with that. There have been plenty of reasons for fans to be unhappy with him and the team this season and he probably wasnt too many results away from being sacked. But he has steadied the ship, shown that he is able to recognise mistakes and try to fix them. He isnt going to be sacked now so we have to back him and the players for the rest of the season. The 3 signings made so far in the window appear, on paper at least to address some of the weaknesses in the squad. We could do with a couple more though so lets see what the week brings.

Agree with that. A quick right back and a couple of strikers would be most welcome. Ideally another midfielder, but we can get by there and at centre half with what we have if needs be. Still be a difficult game.regardless of who we bring in.

Dougie Imrie away. What could possibly go wrong? 😆

Dougie Imrie away. What could possibly go wrong! 😆

You've obviously taken that quite personally. You are normally one of the more sensible posters on here so my comment certainly wasnt directed at you. However on this point I happen to disagree with you. Some of what you say is true. But you need to add the context of the circumstances and what SK has been asked to do by the board and what he has had to face. There is much mitigation to be found if anyone cares to look. You also have to add in, what is the chance of getting someone better in at this stage of the season. In response to your specific points, he never threw Gent under the bus at all. Sure you can take his comments out of context and make it sound that way if you like, but it would be disingenuous. Gent clearly hasnt taken the huff and probably had his best game in a Motherwell jersey yesterday in a position he is more suited to. Wilkinson has been moved on, Obika may or may not be shortly, and where would we have been without Theo Bair in the last few weeks? SK did very well last season. This season he has been asked to do the same job with one hand tied behind his back. Yes he has made mistakes and for a long time results and performances werent great. However, he has steadied the ship and our record in the last 8 games isnt actually that bad. He deserves this window to add to the squad and see where we go from here. If he fucks it up and we end up in a relegation battle then his position is back up for discussion.

I agree. Theo did the best he could yesterday in the circumstances. There were times where the gap between him and the nearest support was about 30 yards. Thats just no good when your job is to hold it up and bring others into play. He also doesnt have the natural strikers instinct to gamble on the ball arriving in good areas. Some of Gents crosses were just begging to be knocked in the net. Its no criticism of the big man. We know what he is and what he isnt. He is a decent back up steiker at our level probably best suited in a 2. As you say, play to his strengths. Hopefully have someone in to play alongside him for St Johnstone.

Thought there were some tidy performances today. Montgomery had a very good first half. Quieter second. Paton and Davor both had decent games. Spittal gave the ball away a few times, his corners were rank and he missed a pen, but he scored 2 absolute rakers. Lennon Miller was excellent when he came on and McGinn probably the pick of the defenders. MOTM though is Georgie Gent by a distance. Looked far more comfortable in a forward role. Has pace to burn, scored a peach of a goal and put some really tasty balls across the 6 yard box that a better striker (lets call him Mika Biereth) would have gobbled up. Really pleased for the young man. Seemed pretty emotional at the end, so well done!

Derek Adams is an absolute bombscare. His implosion is as funny as it was predictible. It should act as a warning for those still advocating us binning Kettlewell. But obviously it wont.

That would be sweet for him and us! Its about time we had a former player that loved getting one over on their old club! Seems to happen to us all the time! Connor Sammon and PJ Morrison just being the latest!

Exactly! Folk think its easy to turn a squad around. But there are so many variables. If Gary Neville was struggling at Salford City with his cash and Roy Keane at Sunderland and Ipswich, then how much harder is it on our budget?

Thought it was a competent enough performance yesterday, given the circumstances. Threadbare squad with injuries and departures. Alloa played tidy football in spells, but didnt threaten us as much as I thought they would and at no stage did I think we were at risk of losing the game. Got off to a great start first half and if we had a more instinctive striker available we could have been out of sight before they scored. Their goal is definitely on Butcher. Poor mistake to give Sammon so much space and then show him inside. That said, it was still a great finish. Second half was much better, especially after Miller came on. Boy is a class act and Davor is gonna love playing alongside him. He just brings a calmness to everything we do. Loved the partnership between Montgomery and Gent. Both young guys with bags of talent and potential. If we can find a way to replicate that on the other side of the pitch we should be able to hurt teams in the second half of the season. Someone mentioned Luca Ross in the advanced position and that could work, but we still need a more dynamic RWB than SOD, albeit he has been absolutely fine at RCB and Id be happy enough with him in a flat four. To those slaughtering Spittal, I really do wonder what your expectation levels are for a Motherwell midfielder? Without his assists and goals this season we would be in deep shit! The guy isnt perfect, and his corners frustrate me as much as everyone else, but he is one of our most important players. Theres 4 or 5 clubs in our league that would be happy to take him off our hands. Yes, I was annoyed about the penalty miss and I did think the free kick was more suited to a left footer, but then he does that! I guess some folk are just happier being miserable! Anyway, comfortable passage into the next round. Another cup tie to look forward to and fingers crossed for another couple of decent signings before the window closes. Up The 'Well!

Some of our fans might want to watch this and consider adjusting their expectations...... https://www.facebook.com/share/r/bNoL1YiQHuUMFuF2/

He wouldnt be with the right player alongside him. Unfortunately the right player just signed for Sturm Graz. Playing him alongside Bair would be utterly pointless.