capt_oats
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Posts posted by capt_oats
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11 hours ago, thisGRAEME said:
No there isn't.
Sure there is.
Whether he’s actually good enough is a different question but IMO the position Paton is playing in this current system is a better fit for him than any of Alexander’s 433, Hammell’s 4231 or Kettlewell’s initial 352.
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1 hour ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:
Had completely forgotten about him!
Aye. It's been very much out of sight, out of mind. Although tbf, he's apparently been injured the last while at Walsall. (Hamstring)
Ironically there's probably a spot for him in the team with this 3421 we're using at the moment which there wasn't really before.
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1 hour ago, well fan for life said:
I suppose Kettlewell's on a bit of a hiding to nothing. Pulled off a miracle last season, got tasked with gutting the squad and got next to f**k all to replace folk that were left. Mainly I'd like the higher up folk at the club to sort out what we're meant to be doing.
This is kind of where I am as well.
Looking at seasons with Robinson and (regardless of what you thought of him) Alexander both managers seemed to be in lockstep with Burrows. Although Ketts has always been diplomatic with regards his relationship with Weir and McMahon I don't think it's unreasonable to say there doesn't seem to have been the same sort of synergy there given Burrows was pretty much out the door when Hammell was emptied and it's been the shortest of short term thinking ever since.
Tbh I've always wondered to what extent Hammell was a Burrows appointment. Even at the time it didn't feel like an obvious Burrows decision and tbh it had the look of folk on the board trying to flex and clipping Flow's wings a bit after the fall out of the Alexander era. I guess we'll have to wait for the Burrows memoir on that score.
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1 minute ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:
Aye, I'm generally with you there.
This summer, he should have a black canvas in terms of what he wants to bring in and he should be able to hit the ground running in terms of when they sign - late May, early June etc. This summer he was somewhat hamstrung by the fact he had to shift players to get players in and as a result, that would have made a lot about timing. Next season, by my reckoning we only have Blaney here next season who wasn't signed or given a new contract by Kettlewell, so it will definitely be his own team.
There's is, however, a vision I have lingering at the back of my mind, where his new team don't gel as quickly as our impatient support would like in the league cup group section and the atmosphere becomes toxic and people start quoting the 1 win in 19 etc from this season.
Tierney is also contracted for next season.
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Something else re: Kettlewell is that he's still "only" 39 which is something that I guess gets lost a bit given his time with us and at County.
He was 38 when we appointed him so to put that in context Robinson was 42 when he got the job replacing McGhee. McCall was 46. I think I'm right in saying that the only younger appointments than Kettlewell since I've been going to Fir Park have been McLeish (35) and Davies (34).
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5 minutes ago, witchfindergeneral said:
Alexanders goals against record is honking for someone who loved defensive football
In fairness that can really be put down to a couple of heavy defeats against Rangers and Celtic - 1-6 against the **** at Fir Park when we were down to 10 men, a 0-4 against Celtic at FP and a 6-0 at Parkhead on Trophy day when the team were on the beach having just confirmed Europe during the mid-week.
There's 16 goals.
His actual goal difference is -17.
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It's been mentioned before but suppose one of the problems Kettlewell has in how he's viewed is down to the distribution of his record. It's very much been feast or famine in so much as 9 of his 19 wins came in the 14 games of the 2nd half of last season after he took over from Hammell whereas only 5 have come in his 25 league games this season..
He went into this season with a completely unsustainable 64.2% win rate in the league (9 wins from 14) and is currently sitting on 20% for this season (5 wins in 25). The flip of that is that he's only *lost* 36% - so he's actually unbeaten in 64% of his league games this season, almost two thirds.
If there's a more even distribution over his time then it's doubtful this is anywhere near a conversation. I've said this before but IMO we're probably only 2 wins short of where we might reasonably expect to be in a fairly average season (*looks at losing 2-0 to Livi and 3-0 at County*) those margins are pretty fine.
I'd say, at this moment in time I'm still very much a Kettlewell sceptic - the start he had was exceptional but unsustainable and I acknowledge that if he keeps us up then he'll more than likely get an extension which is fair enough because there's no denying he's been dealt a tough hand with all the restrictions that have been placed on him. Equally I have my doubts about his long term suitability - the fact we've gone from looking to all intents and purposes defensively sound to having one of the worst defensive records in the league with essentially the same players at the core doesn't really reflect well and that's not really assuaged by the players he's backing ie: the Harry Paton and Oli Shaw of it all.
I notice someone has updated the List of Motherwell managers page on Wiki (for league games only) and while it's slightly annoying its been separated out into interim/permanent it gives an overview of how he actually compares to other managers (again it's worth noting that McCall only had Rangers in the league for about 1.5 of his seasons in charge).
I've gone back as far as Davies for reference - the only real comparisons based on number of games are Black, Malpas, Gannon (ish), Brown and Baraclough. It gives Kettlewell 39 games and 14 wins combined = 35.8% so he's won more than he's lost (and Hammell 5 wins in 24 games = 20.8% who erm, lost more than he won):
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20 hours ago, Phillips455 said:
When was the last time we won away from home? I'm pretty sure it was against Hearts at the start of the season?
20 hours ago, dezz said:Yup, 0-1 at Tynecastle on the 3rd of September. Over 5 months ago ...
@Div just posted this on the P&B Twitter - we've only won 1 away game in the league all season (at Tynecastle) but apparently we've only lost 4 which is a record only the top two can better.
I mean, we'll lose this one but still, what a weird season.
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3 minutes ago, ropy said:
The last of 4 games I’m missing for being out the country. I’ve missed the whole Warnock thing, was his appointment well received?
Kettlewell keeps the same team until we lose then may make a change but unlikely to be too many.
BBC text in the airport for me again.
He changed the team that beat County last week for the Cup game and look what happened.
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12 minutes ago, eliphas said:
Quite interesting that. To me anyway.
Looks like it goes as far as having actual financial and operational data from clubs who are partners. If I am guessing it should give us a bit of a better idea of wage costs for loans and perm transfers. Maybe will help us target the right clubs and staff.
Plus, it's a Scandinavian company which means it must be good.
Yeah, I thought it was interesting as well. I'm looking at their LinkedIn just now and I'd (genuinely) be interested to know how we'd integrate their tools.
The 'shrug' was more that the actual bit of blurb was/is quite vague in terms of practical application. Especially when you read the wee spiel from Daws:
Quote"As we strive to keep pushing the club to new heights, we need access to the best data available. Off The Pitch has a unique approach and can help us in several aspects of our development – including player trading, finance negotiations, and benchmarking, to name a few,” says Nick Daws, Head of Recruitment Operations at Motherwell FC, and adds:
“Off The Pitch understands the business side of football and has provided us with an intuitive and easily implemented solution."
Like I say, cool...
It's been mentioned before that we take part in TransferRoom - which is in itself quite easy to get your head around and you can see where the value is ie: it's essentially a big transfers conference and provides a platform for clubs/agents to do business.
The Off The Pitch erm...pitch is a bit less clear as @Busta Nut asked earlier "What is this? Is it an accountant?" which is an entirely logical conclusion to come to when you see "football finance data partner".
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2 hours ago, thisGRAEME said:
If Kettlewell has us anywhere from 7th-10th, I would expect him to be here to kick off our League Cup group stage campaign, tbh, I think suggesting he'll be away is quite fanciful on the whole.
Certainly, judging by the transfer business in January and the players he's brought in, I'd very much assumed they were in the main brought along in an almost extended trial version of a deal to see what they can do for us, and whether we think they're worth extending for a longer term. Halliday already signed up beyond this year. Elliott and Nicholson in til the end of the season, Montgomery (who I think we've tried to get a couple of times?) in on loan with his deal expiring in the summer, Vale I think the same. I suspect Devine may be attainable as well.
With SODs, Spittal, Kelly, Slattery, Mugabi, Obika and Butcher all out of contract in the summer, that's basically anyone that even might be on a decent wage for us potentially away. It also is leaving an enormous gap in experience if we're waving them all out the door.
We're clearly gambling a bit on Ross County and Livingston continuing to be terrible. IMO, Kettlewell is starting to build the squad because he (I suppose rightfully, to me?) assumes he will be here in June for the start of the league season, otherwise I'm not sure why he would be allowed/encouraged to do a longer term deal for guys like Halliday.
Aye, I think there's a fair bit of mental gymnastics going on in terms of people projecting whatever their preferred outcome might be. Besides the fact that people's mileage will vary with Ketts I guess his being out of contract along with the uncertainty around the CEO/Board stuff is the wrinkle here.
There's a chance that his contract isn't renewed but I agree that it's pretty unlikely all things considered.
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We were trundling along reasonably well, unbeaten in our last 5 in the league and only Rangers had beaten us in our last 8 (again in the league) but there's every chance that Morton game spooks everyone.
Looking at the form Miovski's been in then add me to the 'I'd take a draw tbqhwy' gang.
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11 hours ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:
For me, I don't think washing our hands of Kettlewell is as easy it would be to look at e.g, a goalkeeper or club captain who had served the club reasonably well for a few years but was now out of contract and would probably do everybody a favour by moving on. With a manager I think you probably do have to take extenuating circumstances into account- IF Kettlewell gets us to 10th or above, I think you probably have to say that he's met most of our pre-season expectations and has at least proven himself to be a semi-competent Premiership manager over that period. In that situation I think you're probably better sticking with the guy who has at least spent a year clearing the decks and will be a bit more ahead in terms of planning for next season than we would be if we rolled the dice and appointed someone else in June.
McInnes obviously has much more of a track record but still finished 10th with Killie last season and they're seeing the benefits of sticking with him. Even County would probably be in a better position if they hadn't sacked Malky.
10 hours ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:Even at our worst in the league earlier this season, I've more or less been of the "better the devil you know" mindset with Kettlewell.
I wouldn't trust the board to successfully replace him, but then again we don't know who the board will be come May.
What does make me torn though is that a finish of 10th or above come the end of the season, probably meets our expectations, but represents a good time for a natural parting of ways. Much like it was with Alexander a couple of seasons ago, which failure to part ways caused many of the issues we find ourselves in now.
With the number of players we will need to sign in the summer, I could see them not gelling right away (or even being in the door in time), us having a toxic league cup campaign and the pitchforks being out for Kettlewell before the league campaign has taken off.
Whatever happens it's a very crucial call to make.
As others have said, it's fairly uncommon for managers to leave in the summer. Usually hiring and firing are dictated by factors through the season and I guess the planning aspect makes it less than ideal to go into a summer with all that stuff up in the air.
The last managers we've had to have left at that end of a campaign would (I think) be McGhee leaving for Aberdeen (succeeded by Gannon) and Malpas with whom we cut ties after one season of a three year deal (succeeded by McGhee).
Curiously enough we were sitting on the same number of points after the same number of games during the Malpas season as we are now (albeit we had lost more games than we have currently having scored fewer and conceded more).
Agree with @YassinMoutaouakil in so much as Kettlewell's situation feels a bit less straightforward than just cutting our losses as it feels slightly unfair to place restrictions on the manager that would limit his ability to do the job then shake his hand and hand him his P45. The general support aren't going to factor in that he's been asked to drastically reduce the numbers in the squad and get us to a place in which we're working on a lower playing budget than any of his recent predecessors but that's where we are.
To do so having lost Max Johnston and KVV as well means it feels like a big ask to have expectations of improving.
Then again, I suppose it's possible that there's a feeling that Kettlewell may be underperforming with the resources he has at hand.
For all it may be the case that the board may have been sympathetic to the extenuating circumstances around this season and given Kettlewell more modest targets eg: 10th or above is fine, as @crazylegsjoe_mfc says assuming everything goes to plan and nothing weird happens there should be a new Chairman and a new CEO along with a restructured board.
Essentially the people who set those targets may have been replaced and the people who actually gave him the job may not be at the club anymore.
It then becomes a question of whether we think Kettlewell is actually a good fit to oversee the rebuild - which is an entirely different job to being parachuted in to fix Hammell's shambles and generally steady things.
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3 hours ago, well fan for life said:
I'm not angry about Friday night. But even the mere mention of that game when they had been relegated to league 2 and we were literally top of the league and McCall had us shitting the bed from about a week before the game gets my blood gently simmering.
Never forget.
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3 hours ago, Handsome_Devil said:
I forget who mentioned it earlier but I suspect the reason Kelly gets a constant free pass is the back-up hasn't impressed enough in training. Other than the comedy conspiracy theories, there's not much other explanation.
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
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It's a less disruptive route to back him and hope that keeps everyone onside. Which, ngl, I absolutely get.
3 hours ago, Desp said:This is exactly where I am as well after Friday night. It now feels like the summer is time for a complete refresh of the club, from top to bottom.
I think SK can pretty much walk away with his head held high, after keeping us in the league in two difficult seasons, but I don't see him being the man to take us forward.
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.
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58 minutes ago, MurrayWell said:
I would agree that we seem to have a bit of a mentality block, compared to other similar sized/smaller teams, but have no idea if the stats actually back that up.
Weird feeling since Friday's match, obviously really disappointed with the performance and result, although as others have said it had no feeling of surprise or shock. .
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.
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9 hours ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:
Ineptitude whilst clear favourites in cup ties is far from exclusive to this group of players and staff. Again, I may be speaking out of turn here as I've seen very little of Friday's game, but from what I've read, the post mortem seems to have a lot in common with the post mortem of most of those other 27 matches I mentioned.
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'.
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34 minutes ago, Busta Nut said:
Motherwell, who I'm a bit biased towards, think have a decent record for giving youngsters game time over the years. Have had a couple of "next big things" plucked from our academy by a few team (rangers took a few of them) only to never hear of them again.
31 minutes ago, AJF said:I think Bailey Rice is the next one we have high hopes for that was recruited from you guys.
Became our youngest ever player when he made his debut last season and by all accounts is highly thought of but I think Clement was hinting at a loan opportunity next season to get him regular game time.
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.
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30 minutes ago, Handsome_Devil said:
I'm really hoping the Obika option is from our side.
I'd keep McGinn and offer Slattery a year. Bizarrely as much as I'd definitely bin SOD the wing-back, I'm not against possibly renewing him as a RCB on a lower wage depending on how he does coming up.
The rest should go though until I see butcher, Mugabi and Kelly departed I'll be nervous about it.
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.
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28 minutes ago, Well Well said:
I don't know where any new finances are coming from as we have what 4 players signed on for next season and possibly a new manager?.
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.
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13 hours ago, CoF said:
Youve also got Carl McHugh who, to his credit, could see how the additional responsibility was affecting his game and gave it up. For some players, they could just do without the extra thing to think about - Kelly could be one of them.
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?
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2 hours ago, standupforthemotherwell said:
Motherwell seem to very much have a captain's curse. Is there a huge amount of pressure behind the scenes with the role? because it seems that you can be a solid player but the minute you get the armband, you turn into the NBA players in space jam after their talent is stolen.
It's happened with almost every captain I can remember from the last 20 years where performances drop massively when they take the role.
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.
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37 minutes ago, one m in Motherwell said:
The problem with Kelly’s current state is that it clearly gives the folk in front of him zero confidence whatsoever. You add that to a defence that is full of players who aren’t naturals in the role they’re being asked to play, and it’s no wonder we are conceding soft goals most weeks.
In patches last night (the first 20 mins or so, and when Vale and Devine came on) I actually thought we looked quite useful - some decent passing moves and everything looked quite fluid. We seemed to resort far to quickly to shelling long balls at Bair who only got more isolated as the game went on, you had Spittal and Paton dropping further and further back to try and force things rather than just concentrating on our own game.
As many have said, we seemed to shite it from Morton and just couldn’t get over that.
In terms of individuals:
- Buyabu has a touch of the Gbolys about him
- Vale and Devine deserve a start
- Butcher is honking
- Bair tried hard enough but needs support.
That fucking Dougie Imrie song was doing my nut too, I should have stayed in and watched Seinfeld.
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.
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The St. Mirren FC 2023/24 thread
in Scottish Premiership General Chatter
Posted
He had 2 year or something left on his deal at QPR when we signed him so it's not unreasonable to think he's on a decent wedge.
The story seems to be his weekly is at the top end of our scale but it's not wild instead it was his signing on fee that made sure he wasn't leaving money on the table.
The season we signed him on a permanent our accounts show we spent £542k on players (we paid fees for 5 or 6). I'd guess the Kelly deal accounts for a chunk of that.
Aye. Lawleff basically said that it was Robinson who initiated his signing Alexander just waved it through and signed off on it. Alexander wasn't even the manager when Kelly was announced so odds are the loan had been set up by Robinson/Foyle.
Robinson resigned on 31st December, Kelly announced on 6th January. Alexander was confirmed 7th January.