capt_oats

Never forget.

I think there's also the argument that he's the captain as well. @Quatermass mentioned it a few pages back but assuming he has some sort of presence amongst the group I can understand why, given our current situation, Kettlewell would be hesitant to disrupt that by dropping Kelly. Especially as others have pointed out no one has any real idea as to whether Oxborough is any good (regardless of whether or not he's our 2nd highest wage ) It's a less disruptive route to back him and hope that keeps everyone onside. Which, ngl, I absolutely get. This is very much where I am as well. I mean, I've alway felt that Kettlewell's had a kind of supply teacher energy to him and it depends on who else is available to come in but I think you could definitely say that Kettlewell has done the job he has been asked to do when he was parachuted in. However the job he was asked to do and taking charge of a refresh aren't really the same things.

I think it was @Casagolda who mentioned that the way the Morton game panned out the other night was exactly the way it tended to go when Imrie/Accies used to get a result against us and I think there's a lot to be said for that take. In that respect it feels like there are certain types of fixtures that, for whatever reason, we don't really seem to adapt to. By my count, our H2H with Accies over the last 39 games going back to 2008 has Accies winning 15 with us winning 16 and 8 draws (lifted from SofaScore). I mean, with respect to Accies that is a lot closer than you'd expect it to be given respective league finishes over the 2008-2021 period.

Tbf, I don't think think this is even an energy that's exclusive to cup ties. Clearly the lower league aspect is, but speaking very broadly it feels like we're a team/club who'll just fail to turn up against teams rooted at the bottom of the league on a fairly regular basis. I don't mean that in the cliche you hear from fans across the country that "we'll help out a team on a poor run" it's more that oftentimes we seem to fail to deliver in games in which we'd be classed as favourites. I'm obviously being selective here but even this season the two results that have fucked us are us losing to both Livi and County. I don't know if it's a mentality/culture thing or not but we feel like a club who find it difficult to to deal with any sort of 'expectations'.

Aye. Clearly I've no love for Rangers and I'm not sure what the recruitment is like at the earlier academy levels as far as hoovering up talent goes but anecdotally it's felt like it's been PL/EFL academies that have been more of a problem for us than Celtic taking Paul Slane off us or Rangers picking up Bailey Rice and, to a lesser extent, Jake Hastie given we actually got a short turn out of him (and we got our £350k). Although when you look at the minutes Lennon Miller is getting you kind of feel like Rice could absolutely have had the same sort of involvement seeing as they were both part of the same group and he's also really good. Then again, the boy's staunch so it is what it is. As I say, you look at Ben Hall (Brighton), Robbie Leitch (Burnley), Stuart McKinstry (Leeds), Reece McAlear (Norwich), Ali Gould (Watford), Tom Leighton (Watford) all left pretty early having at best made a handful of first team appearances, most of them none at all.

I had missed wee Dave off that list (edited now). That gives us 8 contracted plus the question mark over Obika. On top of McGinn and SOD who both feel like straightforward renewals if there's a willingness on both sided you've also got Nicholson whose being here has a definite try-before-you-buy feel and the short term deal is probably dictated by the whole 'depends what league we're in' situation. Either way it all depends on what happens with the CEO and chairman thing because right now it feels like we're essentially stuck in a holding pattern until there's some sort of movement on that front. The AGM should be interesting because while the updates in January bought them a bit of time I don't really see that not having progressed with that stuff is an acceptable option.

Others have outlined this better than me in previous pages (in fact @Handsome_Devil's post directly above does exactly that) but the whole point of this season has been to re-set. Us having fewer players signed up presumably allows whoever the manager is a clean slate compared to recent seasons where our budget has been entirely tied up in the longer term contracts. We have Casey, Blaney, Halliday, Paton, Zdravkovski, Miller, Tierney and Bair contracted for next season plus Obika has a year option.

Yeah, I had a feeling I'd missed someone between Lasley and Hartley. Ironically, despite him giving up the armband the season McHugh had as captain was the 2 Cup Finals. So it went Lasley, McHugh, Hartley, Gallagher, O'Donnell, Kelly?

I mean Lasley was generally a fine captain and player but aye, post-Las it feels very much like Stevie Hammell cursed amulet situation with captains. We saw a drop off with Hartley post-injury, Gallagher went off a cliff and SOD never really seemed a good fit. It’d be interesting to track where things started going sideways for Kelly because as @well fan for life said a couple of pages back he had a very good start to his Motherwell career and it’d be revisionist to deny that. Said it before but Tait is probably the best captain we’ve had in that timeframe and he never officially had the role.

The other thing re: Bair is that his game isn't being a target man. It's about balls to feet and running in behind which Morton clearly knew so made sure they set up in a way that minimised that. It's wild that Morton doing this seemed to leave us absolutely baffled as to how to break them down. I'm not exactly a Harry Paton fan but last night was as clear an example for why he's not a good fit for that role in that type of game especially when you've got Nicholson sat on the bench.

Happy to stand corrected but I'm not sure he did. I thought he had said something along the lines of "at one point" we had (past tense) 3 managers and assistant managers on the payroll. The implication as I saw it was that it was last season he was talking about rather than currently. As far as I could tell the reason we're not keen on making another managerial change is, as you say, the cost but also there seems to be a general acceptance that we can't just keep binning managers every time we have a bad run (the bad business and bad vibes argument). Also the fact that the interim CEO is stepping down along with the chairman means it's a hassle they probably don't want to deal with.

He was subbed off after 49 mins on Tuesday. He's barely played any football this season and most would have been entirely fine with Lennon Miller dropping in to replace him given the way he's performed for us this season. You don't think it's possible for him to have been fit enough to take some part in the game but not start? Sound.

Halliday went off injured on Tuesday night so...there's the answer to why he didn't start.

Result aside this is probably the most annoying thing about last night IMO. Even though we hadn't necessarily been winning on this recent run it felt like we'd generally found a way to get gain control of games rather than the sort of chaos we'd seen through November/December. As you say, that just seemed to go straight out the window as soon as Morton started to get in about us - to me that seemed more a result of the players getting spooked rather than anything tactical but the net result was the same I guess. @thisGRAEME made the point a few pages back that the one time we got the ball down and moved it quickly we scored. Which is, politely, infuriating given the shambles that preceded it. There was a point in commentary where it was mentioned O'Donnell gave Kelly both barrels after seeing the ball launched (again) when there was a straightforward short ball on to Bevis or himself. It didn't seem to register though. Tbh, Kelly had the energy of someone playing through a full blown panic attack and having gone completely rogue.

Aye. I’m no Kettlewell stan but I agree that was on the players. Not in a ‘downed tools’ way but they never got to grips with the game and genuinely looked spooked by Morton.

Given my username every post I make is a small reference to The OC.

See, the more I’ve thought about it; George quit then went back pretending nothing happened after he realised he wasn’t getting another job. We’ve terminated little Oli’s loan and sent him back to Barnsley before bringing him back after all our other options fell through saying “Oh, yeah there was always a chance this could happen”. I don’t think we were ever playing 4D chess or anything but it actually *is* the Costanza move we’ve pulled.

I mean, maybe I’m not giving everyone involved enough credit but I’d be surprised if we Costanza-d Shaw. Dunno, it feels more likely that we’ve just gone back to Barnsley as an absolute last resort after we’ve missed our targets than us terminating his loan with the intention of gaslighting everyone by bringing him back and pretending nothing happened.

I just had a swatch at Ferrie's Transfermarkt and he's actually played more minutes for us this season than he managed at Stenny.

Aye. I mean, fair play to the club for trying to spin this and given the circumstances...fine but don't kid a kidder. Yeah, I had posted after the window shut saying that regardless of what happened going forward it was still a failure and I kind of stand by that. We cleared the decks but presumably missed *all* our targets - given we've brought back an apparently still injured player whose loan we terminated less than a month ago. Like I don't think folk need to be looking for their pound of flesh or anything (the Nick Daws thread on Steelmen is a riot - shoutout the boy who can't "farthom" (sic) why people think results last season were worse. Spoiler: it's because results last season were worse.) but there probably needs to be some sort of accountability as far as process goes; were we unrealistic in our targets, did we leave things too late, was it financial etc?

I see "Union" Jack has us releasing a joint statement alongside Aberdeen, Livi, Rangers (ick), St Johnstone and St Mirren.

Well. My point was that in any circumstance a draw wouldn't suffice on account of the Dundee St Johnstone impacting. I thought that was pretty obvious but...here we are.

Yes. I know. That's why I said "it depends on that result" in the sentence you've just quoted and then pointed out the permutations.

It'd need to be a win against Aberdeen as the rearranged Dundee v St Johnstone game is over the weekend so it depends on that result. The draw puts us on 26 points. Dundee win they go to 29 points, draw 27. St Johnstone win they go on to 27. The difference in narrative of the respective seasons is quite funny though. The general consensus seems to be that Dundee are having a "good" season while we're erm...very much not. As it stands there's a point difference between the two teams with us having (marginally) scored more goals and conceded fewer.

The spiel in the news story for his signing was really oddly worded in so much as it implied it was a free transfer. However, during the press call he did the other week he said that he's still "technically" under contract at Colorado. Reading Colorado's announcement he's been 'waived' so it seems he's been freed. I actually quite enjoyed his presser (as far as you can "enjoy" pre-match interviews with players) he seems entirely sound...