Former Motherwell Fc Players Thread

[wellfan]

27 minutes ago, Yoshi-1991 said:

We have under sold ourselves for so long that we are now worth near fuck all.

We haven't. Neil Doncaster has. 

[bobbybingo]

49 minutes ago, Yoshi-1991 said:

Hes not wrong. The standard is dramatically dropping off in Scotland and we have been left in the dust, not just by the likes of the English system, but by others that are the same size as our own.

We have under sold ourselves for so long that we are now worth near fuck all. Not only that but as has been recently talked about when the Wrexham owners had a look up here, there's not a lot appealing to invest in when the ceiling is where it is for scottish teams. It's bleak. 

I don't know where they imagine the ceiling is for Wrexham, but they'll find out. Once you look below the Championship, English football is mostly dross. Adams might be right about the current standard of skill shown in many SPL games but his claim a mid table League 2 side is 100 times better than Ross County is ludicrous. How many more shit players do we need to import from there to prove that?

[Yoshi-1991]

51 minutes ago, bobbybingo said:

I don't know where they imagine the ceiling is for Wrexham, but they'll find out. Once you look below the Championship, English football is mostly dross. Adams might be right about the current standard of skill shown in many SPL games but his claim a mid table League 2 side is 100 times better than Ross County is ludicrous. How many more shit players do we need to import from there to prove that?

I would say the fact we can't financially compete for players with league 2 teams tells you he's probably not far off the mark.

[Yoshi-1991]

1 hour ago, wellfan said:

We haven't. Neil Doncaster has. 

I dont disagree but he's not the only one. 

[bobbybingo]

4 minutes ago, Yoshi-1991 said:

I would say the fact we can't financially compete for players with league 2 teams tells you he's probably not far off the mark.

That tells you those clubs have more money to spend. What do Connor Wilkinson or Josh Morris tell you?

[David]

34 minutes ago, Yoshi-1991 said:

I would say the fact we can't financially compete for players with league 2 teams tells you he's probably not far off the mark.

Again, we're not unique in that department. I'm sure there are plenty of top-tier clubs from other smaller footballing nations who can't compete financially with clubs in League 2 down south.

[Spiderpig]

56 minutes ago, Yoshi-1991 said:

I would say the fact we can't financially compete for players with league 2 teams tells you he's probably not far off the mark.

Pish, how much money a club is willing to pay out in wages to players is no guarantee of their quality or ability, the whole English set up is a house of cards, all of them spending the sky billions and particularly in the lower leagues offering ridiculous wages to bang average at best players, they may be well paid but but they are not all that good at football. 

You can't blame the players for taking the money, that's why very few of them come to Scotland and we can't compete because the Scottish clubs with a few exceptions try to live within their means.

I wonder how Morecambe's wage bill would compare to ours, and look how pish theve been.

 

[Yoshi-1991]

20 minutes ago, Spiderpig said:

Pish, how much money a club is willing to pay out in wages to players is no guarantee of their quality or ability, the whole English set up is a house of cards, all of them spending the sky billions and particularly in the lower leagues offering ridiculous wages to bang average at best players, they may be well paid but but they are not all that good at football. 

You can't blame the players for taking the money, that's why very few of them come to Scotland and we can't compete because the Scottish clubs with a few exceptions try to live within their means.

I wonder how Morecambe's wage bill would compare to ours, and look how pish theve been.

 

I know you think you are arguing against me but you are just kind of embellishing my point. As you say they are paying big bucks for bang average which leaves us with the less than average.

 

You don't even need to go that far back, look at our squad from even just 10 year ago compared to now and you can see how drastically the quality of what we can afford has dropped off.

[grizzlyg]

With Adams leaving Morecambe I now wonder if that was a Wise move.....ba boom. I'm here all week 😜😜

[wellsince75]

23 minutes ago, grizzlyg said:

With Adams leaving Morecambe I now wonder if that was a Wise move.....ba boom. I'm here all week 😜😜

Always count on grizzly for the Christmas specials 

[AllyMax]

18 hours ago, wellfan said:

We haven't. Neil Doncaster has. 

Not disagreeing, but i'd be interested to know how you would approach selling the Scottish game to Sky etc. There's no massive audience outside Scotland (or even in Scotland for that matter)  and non h**s/Tims games are liable to get next to no audience.

The sheer economics of it make it impossible to walk into a negotiation and say 'we demand £50m a year'.

It's a sad predicament for the game to be in but that's what constant televised football has brought us to. Many fans will sit in the house and watch Aston Villa v Wolves with a couple o' cans before they'd turn up at the ground of their local team.

[SteelmaninOZ]

1 hour ago, AllyMax said:

Not disagreeing, but i'd be interested to know how you would approach selling the Scottish game to Sky etc. There's no massive audience outside Scotland (or even in Scotland for that matter)  and non h**s/Tims games are liable to get next to no audience.

The sheer economics of it make it impossible to walk into a negotiation and say 'we demand £50m a year'.

It's a sad predicament for the game to be in but that's what constant televised football has brought us to. Many fans will sit in the house and watch Aston Villa v Wolves with a couple o' cans before they'd turn up at the ground of their local team.

I have to say I agree with what you said especially your last paragraph 

[Richie]

Incidentally, Ged Brannan has taken Derek Adams' old job.

 

[Well-Made]

9 hours ago, AllyMax said:

The sheer economics of it make it impossible to walk into a negotiation and say 'we demand £50m a year'.

Even if we able to the ugly sisters would be wanting the lions share, so still wouldn't make the league anymore competitive.

[AllyMax]

25 minutes ago, Well-Made said:

Even if we able to the ugly sisters would be wanting the lions share, so still wouldn't make the league anymore competitive.

100% Agree.......

This line of being undersold is just not true. We don't have a commodity people actually want.

[pretzel]

On 12/17/2023 at 9:16 AM, wellsince75 said:

Derek Adams calling our how poor the standard of SPL is.

Outlining how the paying punter would rightly stop coming if this was the standard. 

Lots to agree with -can't help but think us shopping around in the dross leagues of England is a big part of the issue. 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/67667758

The guy blinks morse code. He is just raging his side conceded well into injury time.

The ironic thing is, when Derek Adams was the County manager he would set his team up to frustrate opponents from the get go by slowing things right down and time wasting. 

 

[Kmcalpin]

On 12/18/2023 at 11:54 AM, AllyMax said:

Ilt's a sad predicament for the game to be in but that's what constant televised football has brought us to. Many fans will sit in the house and watch Aston Villa v Wolves with a couple o' cans before they'd turn up at the ground of their local team.

 

They then complain about the standard of Scottish football.........from their armchairs. 

[David]

On 12/17/2023 at 9:06 PM, Yoshi-1991 said:

You don't even need to go that far back, look at our squad from even just 10 year ago compared to now and you can see how drastically the quality of what we can afford has dropped off.

I firmly believe most of that is because we're still trying to recruit from the markets we recruited from back then. The landscape down south has made it such that we're unable to do that.

What we could be doing is looking further afield. Especially post-Brexit. 

The Scottish FA’s more flexible interpretation of the Brexit rules puts us at an advantage over clubs down south, yet I don't think we take proper advantage of that. 

Instead of adjusting our recruitment parameters down south and simply going for lesser talent than we would have before because that's what our budget allows, we should be utilising modern analytics to shop in European markets, both for players and coaches.

The main attraction we can offer those individuals is our proximity to the land of milk and honey down south. They know if they come here and perform there's a good chance that some over-spending League One or Championship side will come sniffing.

[GazzyB]

I saw an “on this day” feature from the club on social media from when we won at Parkhead 8 years ago.

 

Prime Moult, McFadden and McDonald back then compared to Obika, Bair & Wilkinson now, depressing.

[Yassin]

19 minutes ago, GazzyB said:

I saw an “on this day” feature from the club on social media from when we won at Parkhead 8 years ago.

 

Prime Moult, McFadden and McDonald back then compared to Obika, Bair & Wilkinson now, depressing.

Johnson and Ainsworth too. Always felt that team could have done a bit more, although maybe unfair as they did finish 5th.

[SteelmaninOZ]

Would love to hear the bois chant this again 

 

[El Grew]

On 12/18/2023 at 10:10 PM, AllyMax said:

This line of being undersold is just not true. We don't have a commodity people actually want.

As the bard of Avon wrote, “there’s the rub!”

Like it or lump it, Derek Adams was correct. The standard of Scottish football is dreadful and every season it just gets worse. I’ve not heard any of his fellow managers say he was wrong. Consider what Livingston manager David Martindale said when asked about it “I had a conversation with someone else who has managed at that level in England and up here and that was the same comment I got from them.”

He bemoaned the fact that for financial reasons he was forced to recruit players from the English National Leagues. He made a valid point that the size of the league puts too much pressure on clubs on the relegation front with dread of the consequential financial damages and that if enlarged, clubs might be inclined to take a different approach.

A culture of hiring and firing managers has led to short-term thinking and decision making as clubs become more risk-averse and this is another factor contributing to the drop in the quality of our football.

On top of that factor in clubs having to play each other up to 4 times in a season and an inane splitting of the league.

I think if you’re being honest, you will agree with much of this. These points have been made before and continue to be made by fans of all clubs around the country. Yet those responsible for running the game seem oblivious.

The only games that interest TV are those involving the OF who get the lion’s share of TV money and argue they are so entitled, as they are the only reason there IS a TV deal.

The OF don’t give a jot about Scottish football. To them, it’s only a medium, their control and domination of which, allows them access to the vast sums of money offered by European football. They are, and always have been, solely interested in preserving their hegemony over Scottish football.

[Spiderpig]

8 years ago, Celtic beaten and we have 3 Motherwell legends with 140 goals between them in the same picture, now we have Wilkinson, Obika and Bair FFS😭😭

[wellfan]

2 hours ago, Spiderpig said:

8 years ago, Celtic beaten and we have 3 Motherwell legends with 140 goals between them in the same picture, now we have Wilkinson, Obika and Bair FFS😭😭

Daws needs to go. 

[Ya Bezzer!]

Obviously I've made my feelings clear on the quality of Scottish football for a while now.

I think it's worth noting though that the number of Scottish players in our league is now less than 40%.  About 38% the last time I looked which is an absolute disgrace.

Secondly the number of U21 Scottish players that are getting even semi regular football was something like 4.  4 in the whole league.

We need to stop importing garbage and start actually focusing on youth development. 

It's not like the standard of the league prohibits it.