Farewell King Louis, your place in Well lore is secure
THE King is dead, long live Ryan Bowman. Motherwell fans have been in mourning this week after news broke that their goal hero Louis Moult was for the off with Preston luring him south of the border.
But really, Scottish football on the whole will no doubt feel the loss of someone who has been a crown jewel for the league since he arrived in the Premiership in the summer of 2015.
Just a day after penning his deal at Fir Park after the board had chosen to pay a nominal sum to Wrexham for the unknown talent’s services, he was unveiled at Fir Park to a grand total of seven people.
I was there, along with another two reporters and a family of Well fans who had won a chance to see the club’s new strip being unveiled, not really fussed about the nonentity who was attempting to fill it with his diminutive frame.
He then stood for around 20 minutes with the three of us, talking about his feet but from his heart. All topics were covered from his one first-team appearance for his beloved Stoke City to him taking his coaching badges after dropping down to part-time football. Even the subject of the loss of his mum Vicki to alcoholism eight years earlier at just the age of 15.
To say he went on to make her proud is an understatement. Fifty goals he banged in while wearing a claret-andamber jersey, 50 times he then pointed both fingers to the heavens in dedication to the woman no doubt smiling down upon him.
Fir Park has been home to many iconic strikers over the years. Even in my brief 30 years progressing from baby to balding father-of-two I’ve seen Tommy Coyne, Dougie Arnott, Jamie Murphy, James McFadden, Michael Higdon. All men who knew where the goal was. Yet Moult deserves his place among them, in most cases even above them.
Some of his finishes have been sublime. His dink over Craig Gordon at Fir Park last season was a touch of class, while the lob to grab Motherwell’s second in this season’s Betfred Cup semi-final against Rangers was almost beyond comprehension given what was at stake.
Off the park, his class has also been felt. In the normally brutal world of Twitter where egos and bampots rule the world, Moult’s humble side regularly came to the fore as he engaged with supporters, fan groups and various projects in and around the community.
He and fellow striker Bowman even went to visit young fan Taylor Drummond in hospital as he battled illness, posing for pictures with the Motherwell fan to mark his 21st birthday. Taylor sadly passed away on December 1, with Moult being one of the first to offer his condolences.
As much as Moult has clearly been good for Motherwell – without his goals they almost certainly would have been relegated last year – Motherwell have been very good to him, as he admitted himself yesterday in his farewell video message to supporters.
The Fir Park club have transformed him from an unknown player bobbing about in the lower reaches of the English game into one of the best strikers around. If he’s not the best in Scotland, he’s certainly the best outside of Celtic Park.
It begs the question why others such as Aberdeen offered so little for him in the summer. It beggars belief that Rangers didn’t offer anything for him. In truth, he is better than the Premiership and in many ways has outgrown it. Whether he went now or in the summer, it was clear his future lay south of Gretna.
A fair chunk of Motherwell’s transfer funds coming in are ring-fenced to pay off soft loans, so it was never on the cards that the club were going to be forced into selling their top asset on the cheap.
Having said that, with a sellon clause included in his deal, it makes good business sense to let him leave now. Not only do Motherwell get plenty of time to look for a replacement – which is something the club were doing anyway – but a potential windfall if Moult sets the heather alight at Deepdale could be worth much more than the couple of hundred grand they’d get for an improved league placing if he hung about.
The Motherwell model of getting talent in and then selling it on is already working well, and Alan Burrows and the board deserve great credit for turning things around. Marvin Johnson’s sell-on fee after he moved from Oxford to Middlsbrough is proof that it works, and Moult has all the attributes to go even higher.
At the age of 25 he has the skillset to make a real success of his career and maybe even one day grace the English Premier League again. For his sake and Motherwell’s, let’s hope that dream comes true.