capt_oats

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):

@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.

He changed the team that beat County last week for the Cup game and look what happened.

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: 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".

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.

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.

Cool... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://offthepitch.com/

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.

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.