capt_oats

FWIW: this is the company we engaged to assist with our CEO headhunt. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/football-careers_football-careers-is-delighted-to-have-been-activity-7029743615010590720-VvC2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop Their MD's LinkedIn photo has him sitting in what looks like the Cooper stand and apparently he's been involved in coaching at Academy level with us. I genuinely don't think there's anything more to it than we got applications, spoke to people and either they weren't right for us or we weren't right for them. The upshot has been that we've just parked it and decided it's better to proceed with Weir as interim rather than just bring in some random. Which is fine. It'd just be nice if the Club had communicated this stuff rather than burying it in a passing mention in the WS mailer. Speaking of which, the average open rate for a MailChimp mailer in the Sports industry is 24.57% https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/ So while the WS weekly updates are welcome (and my post last night shouldn't be taken as a dig at the WS my frustration is more at the senior figures at the Club) simply pressing send on the mailshot isn't any sort of guarantee that it's going to reach a wide audience.

On the topic of First Team recruitment here are our signings split by season and HoR in post at the time lifted from an old post and updated a bit, I should probably have put it in a spoiler but it's actually worth having a look at some of the names (there are a lot). Incidentally, I think it's been acknowledged that the deals for the likes of Moult who signed in the early stages of the summer 15/16 window were set up by the previous guy, Gary Owers who was only at the club for a couple of months before Foyle took over in August 15: MARTIN FOYLE Baraclough: 15/16 Theo Robinson, Craig Samson, Jake Taylor (loan), Liam Grimshaw (loan) Total = 4 McGhee 15/16 (winter) James McFadden, Morgaro Gomis (loan) Total = 2 16/17 Ben Heneghan, Richard Tait, Jacob Blyth, Dean Brill, Carl McHugh, Craig Clay, Ryan Bowman, Luca Belic (loan), Lee Lucas, Elliot Frear, Russell Griffiths (loan), Zak Jules (loan), Shea Gordon, Stephen Pearson Total = 14 McGhee total signed = 16 Robinson: 17/18 Alex Fisher, Gael Bigirimana, Craig Tanner, Trevor Carson, Andy Rose, Russell Griffiths, Charles Dunne, Cedric Kipre, George Newell, Ellis Plummer, Rohan Ferguson, Deimantas Petravičius, Liam Grimshaw, Gennadios Xenodochof, Curtis Main, Peter Hartley (loan)/(permanent), Nadir Ciftci (loan), Tom Aldred (loan) x 2, Stephen Hendrie (loan) Total = 19 18/19 Mark Gillespie, Liam Donnelly, Danny Johnson, Aaron Taylor-Sinclair, Alex Rodriguez-Gorrin, Christian Mbulu, Conor Sammon (loan), Ross McCormack (loan), Gboly Ariyibi (loan) Total = 9 19/20 Declan Gallagher, Liam Polworth, Jake Carroll, Casper Sloth, Jermaine Hylton, Christopher Long, Sherwin Seedorf, Christian Ilic, Christy Manzinga, Ross MacIver, Bevis Mugabi, Tony Watt, Harry Robinson, Devante Cole (loan)/permanent, Mark O'Hara (loan/permanent), Mikael Ndjoli (loan), Rolando Aarons (loan) Total = 17 20/21 (Summer) Ricki Lamie, Jordan White, Nathan McGinley, Scott Fox, Stephen O'Donnell, Aaron Chapman, Jordan Archer, Jake Hastie (loan), Callum Lang (loan), Robbie Crawford (loan) Total = 10 Robinson total signed: 55 Alexander: 20/21 (Winter) Liam Kelly (loan), Steven Lawless, Harry Smith (loan), Sam Foley, Robbie Crawford (loan made permanent), Jordan Roberts (loan), Eddie Nolan (loan), Tyler Magloire (loan) Total = 8 NICK DAWS 21/22 Connor Shields, Justin Amaluzor, Kaiyne Woolery, Kevin Van Veen, Liam Kelly, Darragh O'Connor, Mich'el Parker, Callum Slattery, Juhani Ojala, Sean Goss, Sondre Solholm Johansen, Ross Tierney, Jordan Roberts (loan/loan made permanent), Victor Nirennold, Joe Efford, Robbie Mahon, Liam Shaw (loan) Total = 17 23/23 (Summer) Paul McGinn, Blair Spittal, Josh Morris, Aston Oxborough Total = 4 Alexander total signed: 29 Hammell: 22/23: Stuart McKinstry (loan), Matt Penney (loan), Rolando Aarons (loan), Louis Moult (loan), Shane Blaney, Ollie Crankshaw (loan), Mikael Mandron, Riku Danzaki, Jack Aitchison, James Furlong (loan), Jonathan Obika (loan), Dan Casey, Calum Butcher Total = 13 Hammell total signed: 13 Kettlewell: 22/23 (post-January): Harry Paton Total = 1 23/24 (Summer): Jonathan Obika, Conor Wilkinson, Pape Soaré, Davor Zdravkovski, Theo Bair, Mika Biereth (loan), Brodie Spencer (loan), Oli Shaw (loan), Georgie Gent (loan) Total = 9 Kettlewell total signed to date: 10 We signed 83 players from Foyle's arrival (1st August 2015) up to the point we announced he was moving on - 21st May 2021. Which comes in at 2120 days it includes things like making Russell Griffiths' loan permanent and signing Grimmy twice. We've signed 44 players since the summer of 21 when Daws entered the chat - one of those was Kelly signing permanently, he signed on loan while Foyle was still here, same with Jordan Roberts who was on loan then loaned again before the loan being made permanent. It also includes the assortment of ringers we brought in to fill jerseys in the early LC games and opening weeks of Alexander's first full season. Daws was announced 11th June 2021 so he's been in the role 914 days. Again, to echo my own point earlier about the First Team manager being accountable for recruitment you only have to look at Hammell apparently just looking at whichever former player he had handy on his phone or Robinson's policy of signing 2 or 3 in the hope that 1 comes good or his habit of just binning a player out the team after a couple of months and lobbying for replacements or simply Kettlewell signing/re-signing players he knew to be injury risks.

It'll be interesting to see what he does...besides throw all our strikers on when we're losing with 20 mins to go obvs.

There's probably an argument (which I'd make tbqh) along the lines of the first team manager being accountable for first team recruitment since it's ultimately them signing off on deals which in turn brings it back round to the whole buying out manager contracts and ridiculous supermarket sweep situations. To that point, Kettlewell signed Oli Shaw for Ross County and backed him when he brought him to Fir Park. Pape Soauré was with us on trial so Kettlewell had time to have a look at him and knew what his injury history was...he still went ahead and signed him (albeit on a short term deal). It's probably not a hill for me but I see folk taking shots at Daws quite regularly, don't get me wrong I'm quite surprised he's still here post-Alexander given we got shot of all the other backroom staff but I genuinely don't think our recruitment with him as HoR has been significantly worse than it was with Foyle in the role. We've maybe not had the Carson, Kipré or Gillespie-like high watermarks but equally was Riku Danzaki any more or less of a bust than Casper Sloth? Is Shane Blaney any worse than either Nathan McGinley or Ricki Lamie? Not for me.

Absolutely. The thing is, Weir getting involved on an interim basis was initially announced in a WS mailer. I'm pretty sure that the Chairman's update in August was the first time it had been formally addressed by the club. I get that the WS are the owners of the club but I dunno it feels like this sort of information warrants more than passing inclusion in a MailChimp email. This was from the mail shot on 12th May and was tagged on right at the foot of the mail: @Handsome_Devil is quite right in saying there's a need to keep fans onside with transparency and updates. That doesn't necessarily mean getting on Twitter and engaging with the reply guys but ultimately we're a fan owned club (and have made a big thing about it) actually keeping the fans up to date with key issues is kind of important. You could argue that the WS is doing that by including this in their mail outs but if we're being honest tucking today's update (such as it is) mid-way through the body of an email with the subject line 'Get set for Junior Steel day' is actually hilarious. Lads, honestly...what are we doing here? Without wanting to kick this particular dead horse it really speaks to the fact that we don't have anyone running our comms in a strategic sense. If there's been an executive decision made that we don't need a Head of Comms then given the way the flow of information has been handled since Grant left I'd respectfully disagree. As has already been mentioned the media team seems to have been stripped back to the bare bones and those involved seem to be completely overworked as it is. On top of that, comms strategy isn't (or shouldn't be) their job. Ultimately the people who should be addressing this are the Chair or the interim CEO themselves - the fact that they're not doing this is broadly causing the club a fair bit of unnecessary grief because all they're creating is a void that isn't doing anyone any favours.

Tbf there have been other updates in that time. They've not really said anything different but it's not like this is the first they've addressed it. Here's one from August for example: https://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/2023/08/04/a-note-from-the-chairman-ahead-of-the-2023-24-season/

I mean, the positive I'm taking from that is that they've not just cracked on and appointed some random. If the stance is that Weir continuing in the role as interim is a better position to be in than bringing in someone who doesn't meet the requirements we're looking for then...yeah, cool I can see that. It raises the question as to how realistic either our expectations are or how competitive our package is and we really don't need to re-litigate the whole timeline of Burrows' exit, public statements made by the board and the fact that we're closing in on a full year since AB announced he was stepping down without finding a replacement. They've fucked it. That much is clear but as I say, the current situation feels like the least worst option vs filling the position with an actual moron or whatever. The fact that it's taken people "taking to social media" along with presumably the article from Nick McPheat on the BBC and McGarry's Thursday Mailer in the Herald (sign up if you haven't already) to prompt an update again raises the points about comms and the post from @eliphas above hits the nail on the head on that score. It's basically confirming that we're ensuring that the short term stuff is being dealt with eg: Miller's extension (good), budgets being manageable (also good). To read between the lines though, it's essentially saying that there's no mid-long term strategy being implemented and from the sound of it @thisGRAEME's post the other day is, to all intents and purposes, what's happened: Like, I get that I'm being snarky and that if we've invited applications and from the sound of things none of them met our criteria then rather than continuing the search relentlessly it's probably wise to take a pause. That said, we're going to "re-start the process" in the new year? Sound. I'm sure that will go well.

Possibly a discussion for our thread rather than in here but I'd kind of hope that Clarkson would be inclined to look at what happened with Hammell and have the sense to think "f**k that". Kettlewell was in a different position as he wasn't Head of Academy and it was clear that he'd taken the role as Lead Development Coach as a way back in after his time out the game post-County. As I've said before the worry I have is whether those actually involved in making the decisions have enough about them. Although it feels as if Burrows had his wings clipped after backing Alexander and the subsequent investment in restructure you at the very least had an idea of what profile of candidate we needed. I guess we'll have to wait for the memoir but although he was still at the club I'm not 100% that Hammell was a Burrows appointment. It had the vibe of other board members flexing after the wheels came off the Grezza bus. Like I say, I'm definitely not confident of the current board being able to actively convince someone to take the job when it becomes available.

Aye. Here's a list of our erm..."shorter term" managers - obviously Brown fucked off to Aberdeen and Hay won us promotion but it places Kettlewell in a bit of a weird place since he's currently P 36 with a win % of 41.67: Steven Hammell: P 28 win % = 25% Ian Baraclough: P 34 win % = 35.3% Craig Brown: P 44 win % = 47.73% Jim Gannon: P 25 win % = 28% Maurice Malpas: P 44 win % = 31.8% Eric Black: P 27 win % = 25.9% Harri Kampman: P 22 win % = 27.27% You're then going to the likes of Bobby Watson (P 36 W%: 11.11%), Jock Wallace (P 44 W%: 31.82), Davie Hay (P 40 W%: 65%) and Roger Hynd (P 36 W% 13.89) who were before my time.

He won't be binned before Saturday but hypothetically, if he was as @well fan for life says I'd imagine it'd be David Clarkson. Not to be contrary but I don't think you could say that Kettlewell hasn't been a success. I mean, he still has a win % of 41.67 - he's still won more than he's lost in fact he's only lost 11 of 36 - 8 of which have been on this run. I mentioned this in our thread but Kettlewell's time at the club has had a very heavy "supply teacher" energy in so much as he's permanent manager in name but he's never really felt like an actual Motherwell manager to me (Hammell had a similar sort of thing - he just never really felt credibly like our manager). Deciding whether or not he's been a success really depends on what the objectives he was given were. His priority would have been to keep us up, which he did - comfortably.

Aye. As I said in our thread both Alexander and McGhee were managers a section of the support actively disliked from the outset so they didn't need much of an invitation to kick off. Similarly it was the players who got the Apostrophe Monster treatment for ruining Club Legend Steven Hammell's legacy. With Kettlewell there were probably pretty low expectations when he got the job which he subsequently outperformed and with the fact his contract is up in the summer I think there's a kind of acceptance he's done. It's just a case of waiting for an announcement he's been binned rather than anyone needing to get the spray paint out.

I hadn't read that but yeah, that's a weird write up. It appears Andrew Petrie is the St Johnstone correspondent for BBC Scotland. Good for him.

Tbh, it's not really strange that we signed him. We picked him up because Mandron had lasted 1 (ONE) game before immediately getting injured and missing the next couple of months. We were into the closing stages of the window and it was a case of taking what we could get who vaguely fitted the profile for that role. Like, the deal was done that late that we announced him after the window had "slammed shut". In short, in this particular window Jon Obika was the equivalent of it being 3am at The Garage for us. It wouldn't have been everyone's choice but him sticking around still had a reasonable degree of logic - Kettlewell was sticking with the same shape that had worked for him last season so we needed someone to play the role of the foil to our main striker (KVV last season, Biereth this season) which both Obika and Mandron filled and in their respective time on the park Obika had shown himself to be the better all round option. It was a Devil you know sort of situation. It was mentioned in a Kettlewell interview that we had a conversation with Mandron about sticking around but the implication was that he either wanted more money or minutes on the park (or both) than we were willing to offer. Presumably Obika was more willing to accept the pitch we made and I'd imagine that the injury issues meant he was in less of a position to make demands that weren't a good fit for the fact that we were significantly cutting our budget this season.

Mea culpa. "Salty" was probably the wrong choice of words, "snarky" would have been more appropriate. Even in that last section you mention praising us for being able to sign Biereth - which in itself seems to be written with the subtext of, "if Motherwell can do it then Saints can too" (which whilst being true begs the question of, if it's that easy or straightforward then why haven't you?) - his opening sentence is "Motherwell might not get all their signings right – or even get close to it these days". Again...shots fired from Eric.

Yeah, I'm not suggesting he's representative of Saints fans or anything it just feels like he just has a slightly odd kink when it comes to Motherwell and there's some sass in that article that feels a bit extra: "Motherwell, who have become experts at chasing a game late on (they’re good at it because they have powerful substitute attackers and because they’ve been behind so often that it’s becoming second nature)." Sure, show me the lie but also...Ooooh, get you Eric. He's written about us before (@YassinMoutaouakil referenced the article above) and it definitely had a sort of "tell me you don't understand Motherwell Football Club without telling me..." energy. It's kind of become a running bit.

Eric Nicolson being salty about Motherwell? I for one am shocked. (You should be able to read it in an incognito window) The number of digs at us in one article is quite funny especially when his team are currently below us in the league.

In the case of the whole playing players in their natural sides thing it's up for debate as to whether it even took him 12 winless games to realise. He was forced into it by injury and suspension. Let's say Casey, McGinn and Butcher weren't injured and Paton hadn't been suspended does anyone think we'd have seen Gent or Zdravkovski? Based on his team selections up to this point (Spencer and Spittal starting at LWB, Wilkinson at centre mid) I doubt it. So in that respect, it's kind of hard to see a corrective of a glaring issue being implemented because it's been entirely forced on the manager as a positive tbh.

Both agree and disagree with this. Of course additions are needed but I think at points in the season the current squad have shown that there's actually the guts of a decent - even good - team in there and there's an argument that they're being hamstrung by the manager doing weird things. Both Gent and Davor showed yesterday that they're capable of contributing yet Kettlewell has - until his hand was forced - utterly refused to use them beyond 15 - 20 min cameos as a Hail Mary in Gent's case or at all in Zdravkovski's. Why that is IDK, we're into probably unanswerable questions territory (and I doubt Kettlewell would give an honest answer because as it stands he looks pretty culpable) but it feels like a loyalty to both SOD and Paton is the root explanation. As I say, of course we need additions in January but equally I think the squad has been a victim of the manager needlessly tying himself in knots.

Just stopping by this morning to give Big Mika his flowers. This is, genuinely, an outstanding header (and a very well worked goal tbf).

Alexander's run was 11 league games without a win that extended to 1 win in 15 but there were also wins in the cup vs Morton (aet) and Aberdeen so even in that respect he had a better record than Kettlewell at the moment. Tbh, I think @Swello's post further up the page answers it in so much as the team clearly haven't chucked it. As I mentioned at the top of the page we've only lost 2 of the last 6 (including the point at Parkhead) so there's that and I guess there were sections of the fanbase who actively disliked the likes of Malpas, McGhee and Alexander from the jump so it took a lot less for folk to get bent out of shape.

Nah, I had a similar thought through the week in so much as I thought it was interesting the current vibe with Kettlewell vs the general feeling of animosity there seemed to be towards the likes of McGhee and Alexander and then, subsequently towards the players rather than Hammell back...presumably the players got it because it was Stevie Hammell in the dugout fucking things up.

This shouldn't be taken as an argument for Kettlewell (or for the board) but I noticed that the draw today now means we've only lost 2 of our last 6 (the problem of course being that we haven't won any of our last 13 or whatever and yes, it includes an abject scudding in Dingwall). Either way, that probably makes the decision on Kettlewell a bit harder for the board and as @well fan for life says it's a bit different to the Hammell situation. Having said that, 3 of the 4 draws in the last 6 have been secured by goals in 90mins+ which is something that feels pretty unsustainable tbh.

Kettlewell shipping Tierney out to Walsall - yet more evidence of his anti-wee guy agenda.

Sidebar: I just clocked that McKinstry played more minutes for Bielsa than Ketts

I suppose the thing with both Zdravkovski and (to a lesser extent) Gent is that we've seen Kettlewell completely freeze McKinstry out when we had a fair idea that he was capable of doing a job for us. Like, I get that the switch to 3412 worked for us and it meant that we weren't playing with wingers but to go from 1,287 mins, 23 appearances and 4 goals and 2 assists in a misfiring team under Hammell to literally 5 mins across 2 sub appearances under Kettlewell (regardless of the fact that we were winning games) means it doesn't seem too far fetched that SK could just freeze someone out for *reasons*... To that end I don't think it's necessarily a given that Davor is "shite". I mean, he might be...but he might not.