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2014-15 Ins And Outs


Toxteth O'Grady
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Rightly or wrongly, McCall is obviously not keen on McFadden. Pearson, I've always rated but not sure he is the type of player you want when the chips are down.

 

As well as filling in the vacant positions in the squad, our signings should be matching at least 1 of 3 criteria: 1. Sell on potential 2. Dynamic and athletic enough to compliment Vigurs and Ainsworth 3. Experience and leadership to bring on the youngsters.

 

Looks like we are going down the route of loaning a couple of young ones from England. Which is fine but short sighted and hopefully not to the detriment of our own youngsters.

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Exactly. Even a bit of speculation to tart up this thread. Lie to me. I don't need sources.

Del Piero still hasn't got a club.

 

And I hear Zanetti is thinking of coming out of retirement for one last season...

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Maybe we are running out of ex Bradford players that we can sign...

 

Of all the myths surrounding our club, this is one of my favourites.

 

Ojamaa, Higdon, Sutton, Vigurs, Lawson, Reid, Ainsworth, Josh Law, Twardzik, McFadden, Anier, Neilsen (off the top of my head) make this sound ridiculous.

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Of all the myths surrounding our club, this is one of my favourites.

 

Ojamaa, Higdon, Sutton, Vigurs, Lawson, Reid, Ainsworth, Josh Law, Twardzik, McFadden, Anier, Neilsen (off the top of my head) make this sound ridiculous.

 

Bread on a hook was what that was.

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Of all the myths surrounding our club, this is one of my favourites.

 

Ojamaa, Higdon, Sutton, Vigurs, Lawson, Reid, Ainsworth, Josh Law, Twardzik, McFadden, Anier, Neilsen (off the top of my head) make this sound ridiculous.

 

Exactly. Who are all the ex Bradford players? Ramsden, Daley and Jones - only 3?

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Bread on a hook was what that was.

 

Hmmm? I said it was my favourite myth (as witnessed by the number of times it is raised in this thread alone). I didn't say who believed it; that's left as an exercise for the interested reader.

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Its ironic that a few people on here are hoping that Faddy, Pearo and Clarky all came back to Motherwell. Three players that we sold on for large transfer fees after blooding them young....

 

Lets just play the kids and forget about these guys. Its the only way the club will survive.

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Lets just play the kids and forget about these guys. Its the only way the club will survive.

 

I totally agree with this, they've had thier day.

 

It probably goes in peaks and troughs, but other than Dundee Utd, who seem to have a conveyer belt going, who is knocking out 'tomorrows stars' at the moment??

 

I'm all for progressing youth, but apart from Stuart Carswell, everyone seems a stop gap at the moment. When are we going to see a home-grown youth thats going to play regularly at 20/21??

 

It may be risk taking, I'm sure Dundee Utd's revenue exceeds ours, so they can tolerate a few seasons of medicrote for a season or two, to bring these players into the shop window.

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Is there a sensible long term view that it's worth losing prize money short term in order to develop players and sell them on for higher returns?

Only way to sell players for higher returns is to have them on longer contracts. The risk there is that they develop into Kinniburgh, Ramsay and Gary Smith rather than Quinn, Pearson and McFadden and we're tying up money we can't afford. Short contracts mean we lose out on fees but can get rid of numpties. Low risk, low reward.

 

But even if the club were to change strategy, how do we convince players to sign a five year contract at Fir Park? How do the likes of Dundee United manage to do it? Serious question. Because as impressive as they are at finding talent, what's more impressive is the length of contract they get them to sign...

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This sums up my thoughts on the subject also. Despite finishing well up the league in recent years have we really progressed overall as a club? How can we when we continue to sign players on short contracts then lose them for hee haw in droves every other year.

 

Is finishing near the top of the table actually worth it when we get horsed out of Europe every year anyway?

Is there a sensible long term view that it's worth losing prize money short term in order to develop players and sell them on for higher returns?

 

In short aye. What people want to see is a team that wins games, closely followed by being a team that is decent to watch.

 

On the whole we've succeeded in both those areas for several seasons. Who cares if we bring though youngsters and sell one or two for a couple of million if we're mostly mediocre and the money gained doesn't enable us to take some massive leap forward.

 

We've hardly had a bad team since Malpas left, provided we do enough to stay fiancially viable I'm pretty happy with this. Of course would love to see us bring through more young players and flog them for a fortune to ensure a stronger future and I'm sure if we had any real superstars in the making we'd pull out all the stops to get them to sign long term but we got Hutchison and Randolph on three year deals and couldn't attract much in way of bids for them. Decent length contracts on quality younger players doesn't automatically mean we can start counting the money.

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Only way to sell players for higher returns is to have them on longer contracts. The risk there is that they develop into Kinniburgh, Ramsay and Gary Smith rather than Quinn, Pearson and McFadden and we're tying up money we can't afford. Short contracts mean we lose out on fees but can get rid of numpties. Low risk, low reward.

 

But even if the club were to change strategy, how do we convince players to sign a five year contract at Fir Park? How do the likes of Dundee United manage to do it? Serious question. Because as impressive as they are at finding talent, what's more impressive is the length of contract they get them to sign...

 

If you want to avoid that risk you put players into the first team as soon as possible. If a kid of 17 or 18 can hack it at the top level the likelyhood is they will do something in the game. By the time a player is 20, 21 he's already lost too much development time. Of course some players develop later but as a general rule if you look at players who have stayed at a higher level, they are guys that played earlier in their careers.

 

We blood players far to late in this country and when they do go in it's 15 minutes as a sub two or three times a season.

 

Maybe I'm wrong but if Divock Origi was a Motherwell player, he wouldn't even have started a game, never mind been to a World Cup and signed to Liverpool for £10million at 18.

 

But what has really disappointed me is that I think we have really missed a great chance to blood youngster. Two seasons ago we had a really good team. That was when we should have given youngster a chance. They could have played along side Ojamaa, Murphy, Law, an on form McFadden, Higdon, Randolph etc. That chance has been lost for ever now. It might be a long time before we have a team that good again. Today if youngster are blooded they are coming into a team that is, lets face it, not on the same level.

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Guys like Moore, Leitch, Hutchinson, Murphy, ZFA, Murray, Carswell have played in the first team before they were 20 (and Erwin most likely would have had he not been injured). Cadden is also listed in the first team squad this season.

 

It's a tough call though, and I have some sympathy with the management team. On one hand, it's great to bring the youngsters in and blood them. On the other, the old "never change a winning team" mantra hangs over them every week.

 

I would happily sacrifice a league position or two to bring on some of the youngsters - but I'm not sure everyone would. Moreover, from a financial perspective, swapping our last 2 season's league slots for Dundee Utd's would have seen a big dent in our budget. Of course, we might have been able to sell on one or two of the youngsters, but our financial structure is such that we are unlikely to get anything similar in transfer fees - Utd spend money there we could just never afford.

 

Ultimately, as Melvin said earlier, we are a low risk club.

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My mate who's a big Fulham fan just text me saying we are being linked on their forums with a loan move for Dan Burn.

 

Guys about 10ft 8' and played quite a bit in the premier league last year. He came on second half in the friendly a few weeks ago.

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