Here's the case for Wee Tam.
For those who know me well this may be a strange artlcle for me to write, but what made me do it was the call on clyde' s open line on sat 24th august after the airdrie game. this was when a caller said that all well fans would like to see McLean go. well Ifor one don't and hopefully i can explain why.
I was not a great fan of the man over his first few years, where we lost a few good players e.g. McAllister, Mauchlen, forbes etc. to be replaced by a few dodgy ones. But with 20/20 hindsight this was necessary to balance the books. By selling these types of players did this in two ways, one it brought in the transfer fees and it would reduce the wage bill as the incoming players would no doubt not receive as much. To be blunt, it was probably either do this or there would have been no club to follow at all.
On the subject of transfers much criticism has been made of our inability to agree personal terms with players. This would appear to be as a result of the clubs payment scheme which appears to be built on bonuses. But if again we look back it was ridiculous wages in the McLeod/Hynd/Watson days that contributed to the financial mess we were in. therefore on this one again I feel Tommy McLean should receive praise rather than criticism.
We also had no cohesive youth scheme to talk of before mclean arrived. but the work he has done has provided us with Griffen, Dolan, Bryce, O'Donnell, McGrillen and to a lesser extent McCart and Boyd. Again in this area i believe that Tommy McLean emerges on the credit side.
Despite the restrictions of the wage scale and limited money for transfer fees he has also been successful with the players he has attracted. Who would've thought that a team could win a major domestic honour with a team costing only £370k to £400k, with 6 of the team costing nothing. When you compare this to money spent by clubs such as St. Johnstone, Dunfermline, St. Mirren, Falkirk and Kilmarnock and they come nowhere near matching our level of performance in the last 4 years.
I believe, as with his brother Jim, Tommy's nature will never endear him to the public in general. But we have to respect his achievements at motherwell with the resources available. We are now financially sound and well prepared to meet the restrictions of the Taylor report. And on the field we are no longer considered as automatic relegation fodder but as a team who should be pushing for UEFA qualification. So lets get off his back and give our vocal backing to the team on the pitch rather than the constant barracking of the manager.
G. Barnstaple
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