Hardly a shock and like most I agree 20k is an absolute insult if true. I'm pleased for the lad though and the new manager will have someone lined up I'm sure. Hardly panic stations just yet.

Edited for accuracy.

If we did re-sign him and I had the spare cash, I'd sponsor his gloves, home and away kit in Mr tREE's name

tHOUGHT nOTHING sTUCK tO hIS gLOVES!

Like someone has said above if the undisclosed fees are anything like the rumoured levels I reckon we are at least 750k short (combined) of what I would have expected in today's market for Carson and Thomas. That's the worrying point, desperation sales which in fact if they'd managed to make any sort of credible deals on many got have given them most of their money back

This is the hardest one to take so far. Gutted.

It will be the nominal of nominal fees, Motherwell have one of the lowest budgets in the league

We are like their feeder club. Only just got over Bakes going there!

Couldn't we of arranged a pre season friendly with them as part of the deal ? FFS !

I'm not so sure why anyone expected a large fee for Carson to be honest he's a keeper who's played pretty much in League Two for all of his career. Plus I'm sure as I mentioned earlier he'd have had some sort of relegation release fee in his contract. Given how blasé Coxall was about relegation in January and even later in the season even when it was apparent we were in big trouble would it surprise anyone of that clause had a really low fee attached to it? It's exactly how we signed the bloke in the first place from Cheltenham as well.

Good luck to the bloke because aside from being a good keeper he's always came across as a very good bloke.

No, their average for last season was 4,486 while Pools was 3,890.

Not a great deal of difference granted, but Motherwell has been in the Scottish Prem for 32 consecutive seasons. Got to be better than Vanaramadingdong.

I'd imagine if you took out 4 games against the Old Firm then we do get better crowds. I didn't look it up I've just noticed they get crowds of 3,100/2,800 etc over recent years.

Scottish football is sh*te , we all know that, and the dominance of Celtic and Rangers must make it doubly tedious. Regardless of crowds, clubs like Motherwell are a lot bigger than Hartlepool, in status and stadia etc, more akin to our Wigan/Barnsley's than us.

You said bloke a lot there


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The BBC transfers have just got him down as a free ?

Can't say I'm not disappointed but I find it difficult to blame the players. It is their livelihood and after last season's experiences, both on and off the field, it is no wonder they want out. We just have to start again, with new players, and do the best we can.

If the sum of our ambition is to replace our best players with conference north players then we will end up there. We tried that last season with conference players and we ended up there.

Always try n sign from the league above if you can. Enough players will have been released. If we offer a good package financially n sell them our ambitions (if we have any) people will come. They have in the past.

Gutted Carson has left. But can't blame him


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Just done a quick calculation and, if you take out the Celtic & Rangers games, the average falls to just over 3,900. Almost the same as ours.

Motherwell

The best he and his agent could do, Highly thought of this side of the border then.
As we will see this season there,s a number of better keepers in the vanarama.
He,s always been overrated, Here.

Motherwell are playing in the top division in their country. Its like pools playing in the championship or premier league. Id hazard a guess we would comfortably have a larger fanbase if that dream ever happened.

Spot on!

We should be looking at league 2 players and the best in the Vanarama , plus a marquee signing, someone of league 1 quality willing to take a temporary step backwards in return for league 1 wages, to play for a club on the up, someone like a Coppinger or Mirfin. Therein lies the problem, we couldn't sell someone a dream, because there isn't a dream to sell.

Ideally you want a league 2 standard team playing in the Vanarama, we got relegated because we had a Vanarama standard team playing in League 2. There are some good players in Conference North/South etc, but given our history of missing out on players , in the main due to a non existent scouting system, I wouldn't want us or trust us to unearth these gems now. If we had done that 5 years ago, we may not be in the position we now find ourselves in.

Likewise , if Motherwell were playing in our Championship, I reckon they would pull in between 8000-12000

... is the correct answer.

Thing is horden they already have 4 massive home games against celtic and rangers. How many other teams would take anywhere that level of support in our championship? We are getting similar crowds after 7 years of dross. They are mid table and playing two of the biggest teams in the world.

I just think the support of clubs like Motherwell, St Mirren, Dunfermline etc is poor due to the sheer banality of just making the numbers up season after season. 40 years ago , these teams regularly got 10-15000 crowds.

Our crowds have held up over the years purely due to cheap season tickets. Take that away and I think you will find our real level of support is somewhere around the 2200-2500 mark. Cheap tickets or not, I think we could even see those figures in the coming season.

im sure we will see 2000 to 2500 regularly now but thats down to a few reasons, being bled dry for the last few years. Watching utter shit for god knows how long now and probobly having to watch harrison and bates in defence, with featherstone as our main midfielder battling against the likes of solihull week in week out. Maybe if we started getting something positive happening with the club we might start getting similar crowds to league 2 again. Decent signings would be a start but im not holding my breath on that.

Matty Dolan signs for Newport - That's sort of player I'm on about. Surely If we had some dosh and nous, we could of tempted him here. Would of stood out in National League.

As bad as things are, I don't see the point of slagging off the likes of Scott Harrison.

Chances are he is going to be one of the stalwarts of the side in the National League. He can never be faulted for lack of effort and he's still young enough to learn and improve.

Don't know how anyone can decide in advance that he won't be up to snuff at non-league level. He might look like a world beater compared to the players the new manager is able to bring in!

He needs an old head alongside him, and only then could he become the player he has the potential to be

Would've been a great signing Dolan and he would've signed if we stayed up. Unfortunately didn't want to drop into non-league. Although that does make Newport a strange choice

The problem has been obvious since January. The club is bust and losing money fast. Not enough is going in to meet the outgoings and the owners are not prepared to put any more in.

For years we have been lucky to have IOR funding us. Thus time we hit unlucky. Pam is attempting to put the club on a level footing and start receiving her and Sage's money back as soon as possible. This has been clear since January.

Motherwell and Hamilton, (with Bingham last season) are the only clubs offering the wage scale that we are on for the players of this standard. At the HUST meeting it was mentioned typical turnover for our level i around 4-4.5 million. This suggests our player wage bill was ridiculous from the levels that they were on running into the '000's weekly.

This all just appears to be a reality check to some. The players we end up with now are likely to be on a much lower salary, probably less than half of those we are letting go. By the law of supply and demand this suggests we will perform at a lower level...our current odds of 14/1 are ridiculous, it will be a big surprise if we reach the top half of the league without major investment. This is all a reality check.

Current squad

Ryan Catterick
Matthew Bates
Scott Harrison
Liam Donnelly
Kenton Richardson
Josh Nearney
Aaron Cunningham
Nicky Featherstone
Michael Woods
Nicky Deverdicks
Lewis Hawkins
Josh Hawkes
Padraig Amons
Jack Blackford
Devante Rodney
Connor Simpson

I think that is it. Good luck to Craig Harrison.

If we had signed him last summer, we would of stayed up.

Take Amond out of that , as he will surely leave , and Bates , who will be injured for half the season, and there you have it, an Evo Stik Premier team.

Bates ain't going nowhere.

Bates should be captain next year, he's obviously able to motivate judging by the last game.

A captain should play 35+ games a season

All very depressing . and as I said in a previous post, bears all the hallmarks of a club in total freefall. I cant see how in such a tight timescale how we can get 5 or 6 decent players in before pre season training starts and organise any meaningful, structured friendlies that will help our cause next season. I will take 5th off bottom now.

We just have to hope there are things going on behind the scenes regarding players, backroom staff, finances etc....at least they have listened about extending the deadline and Harrison has confirmed he'll give weekly updates about what he's up to...obviously he can say what he likes and we'll be none the wiser but if nothing else, it gives us the impression that we're moving in the right direction re: communication.

The problem Pam and everyone else has is the shite that Coxall left us in and his constant bullshitting means it will be sometime before most believe a word coming out of the club.

I contacted the club the other day about the lack of pre season friendlies, they replied almost straightaway , saying the job was in hand and that they are working on it, as well as working hard on everything else.