GLF 49: Are They Mad?

As Scottish football's latest comic book character wings his way in to Dens Park, you could be forgiven for thinking that the game has some strange double standards when it comes to judging its public figures. Giovanni di Stefano, close friend of Saddam Hussein, a man with alleged links to Serbian warlord Arkan, legal representative of Harold Shipman. But forget all that, he's a bit of a laugh, offers fans the chance to pick
the team Pop Idol - style, makes joke bids for James McFadden.

On the other hand, there's John Boyle, the man who dumped some poor football players on the scrapheap, whose club dare to sign players while in administration, and who denied poor old Falkirk a place in the SPL. Of course, Boyle’s cash was welcomed when he first invested at Fir Park, but his plans for “New Motherwell“ quickly attracted scorn.

The fact is that anyone putting money into football either needs their head testing or their motives examined. Has anyone asked this mysterious Di Stefano why he wants to invest in Dundee? Surely if you had £26m you wanted to spend on football, you would take over your own club instead of playing second fiddle to a couple of nightclub owners in dreech Dundee.

As for Boyle's motives, who knows? By all accounts his Direct Holidays stewardship was paternalistic in its approach to the firm's workers. I can't imagine he wasn't motivated to some extent by putting something back into the community. His father was apparently a big Motherwell fan so he could well have been inspired by him. Of course, self - publicity must be a major factor in a lot of businessmen's decisions to invest in football clubs. And then there are the conspiracy theories, his latest business dealings have been property deals, does he want Fir Park for ulterior motives? Nobody but himself and maybe a few others know, but at the moment he's reportedly £11m out of pocket for a seemingly selfless bid to boost the fortunes of his local football club. No - one can really have expected him to keep ploughing money down the drain, and despite a few players you couldn't help but feel sorry for such as Mark Brown, why should he keep subsidising Karl Ready's inflated wages? Football is one of the most insecure labour markets around, players get dumped at every club at the end of their contracts and just as they are hoping to make the grade. So why should Motherwell be the villains just because one man decided to stop bank - rolling a club?

Unfortunately, I can't help but see the future for Motherwell FC as anything, but bleak.  The bottom has fallen out of the transfer market, making it difficult to bring in big money through transfers, although maybe the new big Sky deal down south will encourage teams like Leicester to up their offers. We are apparently spending less money on youth development than most SPL clubs, although the coaching staff must be doing something pretty special. Our first - team squad is pretty threadbare, and with players apparently being asked to take a cut in their win bonuses, what chance do we have of strengthening the squad in the future?

In the short - term, I hope we can put a few points on the board before the exodus of our best young players begins. After a disjointed opening day display against Dundee, I think the players took it for granted that this season would be much better. Hopefully Lasley has come back and added a bit of steel to the midfield, and I write this not knowing what's happened since, but we're going to have to fight for every ball if we're going to stay up this season. Hopefully the players appreciate this and don't let the heads go down. If they go on a run they might surprise a few people, but they can't afford to find themselves adrift at the start of the season.

Gavin McCafferty