10pm

The club have agreed terms with Celtic for the transfer of Scott McDonald at the end of the season.  The agreement is subject to a medical and should be completed within the next few days, with the fee ranging between £600,000 and £750,000 depending on what paper you read.

Maurice Malpas is quoted as saying:
"It is well known that Scott wants to move on from Fir Park. The club has succeeded in securing a healthy transfer fee for him and ensuring that he will remain with us to the end of the season. No club would wish to lose a player of Scott’s quality but we wish him well in the future."

McDonald said:
"I have thoroughly enjoyed playing for Motherwell and I will leave with a lot of good memories. I hope the fans appreciate that I want to move on and develop my career and I would like to thank them for the support they have given me."

I'd like to wish Scott well in his future career, but as he's signed for one of the Old Firm then I can't really.  The timing is also a bit strange, and I'm not sure why it couldn't have waited until the end of the season.  Oh well, thanks for the memories Scott, especially "Skippy Sunday" which will probably never be forgotten.

It seems that McDonald will be in the side to face to Dunfermline on Saturday, but Maurice Malpas has decided it would be unfair on the striker for him to play against Celtic the following week:
"He’ll be treated like any other player, but will definitely not play against Celtic. He will play on Saturday against Dunfermline, then after that we will look at what is best for Motherwell and then what is best for Scott.  It would be a body blow if he picked up an injury and he loses out on the move and we lose out on the money. Plus we need to keep one eye on next season and look at who we can prepare for that.  After Saturday we will sit down and talk about what we will do for the rest of the season.

"We are struggling for players for Saturday and he will need to play. I am aware that some of the punters don’t want him to play but if he plays I will stand by that decision and it is one I will stand up and be counted for."

Eh?  So has he signed some sort of deal with Celtic or hasn't he???  There's something very strange going on here...

On the Brian Kerr situation, Malpas added:
"Brian Kerr was done up a bit by the press the other week, and I spoke to him afterwards and he assured me the way it came out was not the way it was meant.  We have made him the best offer we can and we are waiting for him to decide what he wants to do. I will set Brian a deadline after the Celtic game when we have spoken to every one else who is out of contract.

"We are prepared to give all of the players we want to keep to the best offer we are prepared to make. We do not want to get into the same situation we were in with Steven Hammell last season, I want to know before the end of the season to start planning for next season earlier than we did last season."

MM also confirmed that Shaun Fagan will be released at the end of the season:
"We told Shaun a few weeks ago as we wanted to give him the chance to find a club before the end of the season. He has already been out on trial at a couple of clubs, and we hope gets signed up quickly and can settle his piece of mind."

Another article on McDonald's transfer to Celtic (repeating much of what appears above) is available from the BBC Sport website.

Stephen Craigan won his 29th cap for Northern Ireland in their 2-1 win over Sweden last night, while Krisztian Vadocz made his third appearance for Hungary in a 2-0 victory against Moldova.

Brian McLean is back in training, and has targeted the reserve game with Rangers on April 10 for his comeback.  All being well, he aims to be back in first team contention by the end of April. 

Must admit I completely lost all interest in the whole Greatest Ever Motherwell Team thing, but the results are available from the Official Site.  Apparently there were no more than 200 non-corporate fans at the event.

Also visit the Official Site for details of this week's AGM.  This was the first one that I would have been able to attend, but I completely forgot it was on.  Anyway, the main points seem to be:

• A profit of £122,302 was recorded for the year up May 2006
• Turnover was down from £4.04m to £3.62m, due to missing out on the top 6 and not appearing in a cup final.  £350,000 of this came from the sale of a lease for a mobile phone mast.
• Allowing Old Firm fans into the Davie Cooper stand makes the club between £50,000 and £70,000 per game
• There are no plans to relocate to Ravenscraig, and despite rumours to the contrary the club DOES still own Fir Park
• The difference between finishing 11th and 7th  in the SPL is £300,000 i.e. £60,000 a place.  Maurice Malpas said the aim was to finish 7th, and for the remainder of the season he has to find a balance between blooding the younger players (Jamie Murphy and Mark Archdeacon were mentioned by name) and getting results.
• The Main Stand requires ongoing building work, which is inevitable with an old building, and there is every likelihood at some time in the future that it will become "unfit for purpose"

As if we didn't have enough bad press, the The Motherwell Times reports that a 17-year-old Motherwell fan from Wishaw has been banned from Fir Park for life and charged with a racially-aggravated breach of the peace after shouting racist abuse at Shunsuke Nakamura during the game in December.

Tickets for the game at Parkhead a week on Saturday are now on sale from the ticket office.  Prices are a ridiculous £27 for adults and £15 for juveniles/OAPs!

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Should Scott McDonald play for Motherwell FC again?