capt_oats

Obviously I don't know but after the St Mirren game and his subsequent exile I wondered if it might have simply been down to his size. Which seems daft given that surely we knew that about him before he signed but equally it feels like something that I can imagine being a stumbling block for Kettlewell in terms of how competitive he might be in this league.

I mean that’s really just inviting speculation since none of us actually know why he’s making these decisions - we’re just stood on the sidelines looking perplexed. Despite Kettlewell’s fondness for talking and the 20 odd minute press conferences I don’t think any of the journos covering Motherwell have ever explicitly asked him “Stuart, why the f**k are you still playing a young right back out of position at left wing back rather than the actual left wing back you’re invariably having to chuck on with 20 mins to go when you’re losing who seems to create chances and goals?”. Tbh, I’d imagine the honest answer would be some wooly idea that the players he’s not giving starts to - including our diminutive North Macedonian international - need to show more in training or whatever. And that’s fine…maybe they do but if you’re a Motherwell manager then the entire job is getting the best out of the players you have available so you don’t really get to have it both ways - you don’t get to blame “budget” while you’re pointedly refusing to use players you signed in preference of sticking with players who are either underperforming or being used in such a way that it’s limiting them. Ultimately I’d say the bulk of the Motherwell posters on here are fairly rational save the one or two handwringing types who have us getting relegated if we lose a game (any game). They’re also broadly in a demographic who for the most part have never known the club as anything other than a top flight team (I’m one of those) - 39 consecutive seasons. We’re not a club who have habitually gone on 12 game winless runs (until recently) - so there’s that expectation but there’s also the experience - we’ve been through a fair number of managers in that time and as a result there’s generally a steer as to when a manager has lost it and what the signs are. As others have suggested the performance on Tuesday in Dingwall said a lot. It’s telling that most have just skipped past the bargaining, denial and anger stages and went straight to acceptance with Kettlwell.

Ironically doing what he did when he was parachuted in to replace Hammell would be a good start: simplify things, play players in their natural positions in a way that plays to their strengths and focus on being difficult to beat. I mentioned this in a post the other day but Kettlewell has been manager for 35 games - in his first 23 we conceded 20 averaging 0.86 goals conceded per game. In the last 12 we've conceded 25 an average of 2.08 against.

You could maybe get away with "fans don't care about circumstances, they just want results end of" chat if we'd lost a handful of games and folk were being a bit moany but I think it's fair enough for folk to be asking questions of the manager after 12 without a win - a run in which we've been ahead for precisely 24 of 1080 regulation minutes and failed to keep a clean sheet in any of those games. Generally managers don't tend to come back from that sort of run. If Kettlewell manages it then absolutely fair play to him. As @YassinMoutaouakil says, we played some genuinely brilliant stuff at points earlier in the season with the same group of players he has available just now which not only undermines the point about us signing "horseshit players" because it's all we can afford with our budget it also begs the question how we go from looking an entirely competent side to chucking a centre forward into the midfield of a starting XI 48 hours after the player himself had briefed the press that he'd literally never played there in his life when he was subbed on in the same position and had no idea what the f**k he was doing - a starting XI that, to the surprise of absolutely no one, ended up 2 down to Ross County inside 20 mins. Tbh, if Kettlewell's finally forced to put out a team with players in their natural positions instead of the fuckery he's been up to for the past couple of months and they actually turn out to be good I will honestly laugh for days.

Tbf, Kelly's just picking up the script that a long line of Motherwell captains have read off with that. It's pretty much verbatim the sort of stuff Lasley came out with before the team saw off another manager.

The presser in question.

As much as I find it difficult to get bent out of shape about Ketts being wordy (I mean, have you seen some of my posts?) I've been giving these a swerve of late because...fucking hell. Nevertheless, I'm absolutely checking this one out and fair play to him for committing to the bit. The fact that the board don't seem to have taken the hint after Tuesday night means this is as nailed on a Saints win as you can get. It's basically our Raith Rovers cup tie from last season again.

This is a good piece from Nick McPheat.

In fairness, going back to Alexander's binning Burrows pretty much came out after it and explained that the board tended to wait until the dust had settled before making a decision. I get that Hammell was emptied a couple of hours after the Raith game but given we were playing in Dingwall last night I'd have thought they'd maybe wait until today and everyone sits down. Like I say, his contract is up at the end of the season so it's not like this should be a prohibitive financial hit when we finally bin him.

H/T to Narey's Toepoker for these numbers. It's one for the smooth brain "it's because they sold KVV" takes... In his first 23 games we averaged 1.69 goals for and 0.86 against In the last 12 we've averaged 1.08 for and 2.08 against.

I see Lennon Miller's wee brother has signed with us.

Add me to this group anaw. Like I get why folk are wringing their hands and everything but I don't inherently think this is a particularly bad group of players - it just feels like their confidence is shot (not winning in 12 games or whatever will do that) and it's not being helped by the manager doing really fucking weird stuff. As I say, where my doubt lies is with the people involved in the process of replacing Kettlewell as our last two appointments post-Alexander have entirely been 'path of least resistance' situations.

The mental part of it to me is basically what @Casagolda has alluded to in so much as when we've chucked Gent on as a sub he's broadly had a positive impact yet for reasons genuinely only known to Kettlewell he's flat out refused to give him a run to the point that in his sole pivot away from playing a predominately one footed right back out of position he preferred to launch Blair fucking Spittal (nominally one of our most productive players when used centrally) in at LWB. It's honestly nuts. The only vague rationale I have is that he's been trying to keep SOD onside as a senior player after bumping him to the bench in favour of Max Johnston last season. Considering SK's approach to fixing Hammell's mess was to simplify everything it's been quite the sight watching him tie himself knots on this run. The further he's gone with this the more chaotic things have become including chucking Wilko into midfield 48 hours after the man himself was telling the press that he's never played there in his life and had no fucking idea what he was doing on Saturday. Real Charlie Day meme energy...

I've mentioned this before but my hot take is that Stuart McCall wasn't actually a very good manager. Like, he was fine and he assembled a good side but his success with us (and he was successful) seemed to be more from vibes rather than good management.

Not really. Van Veen was scoring goals for Hammell and we were still 11th when he was emptied. There's a credible argument that Van Veen's 'hot streak' as you put it was a direct result of Kettlewell's management and him getting the best out of the player - that's not really getting lucky. Kettlewell benefitted from having one of the best strikers in the league available to him, sure but there's no getting away from the fact that Hammell's side was manifestly broken and he fixed it. He immediately improved us defensively, simplified our game tactically and we stopped shipping as many daft goals on top of that we started playing players in their correct positions rather than things like trying to play KVV as a winger - the irony that Kettlewell seems to have come full circle with an absolutely wild starting XI last night isn't lost on us. As I said the other day Kettlewell being the right guy for the job he was asked to do last season is very different to him being the right guy for the long term.

I mean, he only has 6 months or whatever of his deal to run so it's not like binning him should be a problem. What is a problem is that I don't trust the judgement of anyone who's likely to be involved in the process of finding a replacement. Either way, he should absolutely be toast now - that's the sort of result and general omnishambles that there's no coming back from. As for replacements I've posted before but we've generally had a profile of candidate that's worked out for us in the past...I'll just re-up the post from when we lost the run of ourselves and just thought "f**k it" and gave Hammell the job:

I mean, sure...read the room and all that lads but at the same time that's a genuinely lovely goal.

I mean, Robinson was here for 3.5 seasons that's pretty much the shelf life for a manager at a club like Motherwell. He lasted 169 games compared to McCall's 174. The only other managers we've had to last longer than 100 games in one stint since McLean have been McLeish (156 games), Davies (123 games) and Butcher (175 games). The other point about Robinson is that he was pragmatic enough to realise when something either wasn't working or when it was simply about grinding things out to shitfest a win. That run where things fucked up after the Celtic trilogy in his first season amounted to 8 games without a win (draws against Celtic at FP and Dundee at FP) but he was coming off a cup final. In the season he resigned it was after a run of 8 without a win in the league (we also lost to St Johnstone in the League cup) that run included 3 draws - St Johnstone (a), Aberdeen (h) and United (a). I was just a wee guy during McLean's early years (my first game was December 1986) and I probably started going regularly around 1989 onward so that window of good stuff matched my formative years. Anyway, I feel like the culture around the fitba' was very different at that time but was McLean prone to going on double digit winless runs?

I agree with the sentiment and I can only echo the point that's been made that it's bad business and bad vibes to be continually emptying managers. However as @YassinMoutaouakil mentioned in a previous post we've generally had decent finishes to the season when we've changed manager mid-season so that kind of undermines the point that it's insanity. Broadly it's worked out quite well for us: There's an argument that the job he was asked to do last season ie: pick up the pieces from the situation Hammell left and save our season is an entirely different thing to the longer term project. I suppose it's entirely possible for him to have been the right guy for one but not the other and again I've said it before but it feels like right now he's tying himself in knots and not really helping himself with square pegs in round holes when the approach that gave him his success in the first place was a clarity of vision. That's not me saying I want him gone or anything but I don't think it's unreasonable for questions to be being asked when you look at the winless run and the fact we haven't kept a clean sheet in 11 league games.

This was something I was thinking about when I was out a run there - about the team in general tbh. It echoes the comparison @thisGRAEME has made before either here on the pod between Robinson's 18/19 team and where we are now - in so much as similarly to us finding the 352 didn't function as well after we sold Kipré because we didn't have anyone who could play like him it feels like we're currently asking players to do stuff that isn't playing to their strengths. Casey's best form for us has come playing (weirdly - given he's naturally right footed) left of the back 3, we've now got him on the right of the 3 filling in for McGinn - respectfully, he doesn't offer what McGinn does on the ball - which was a big part of our whole system functioning last season. Mugabi isn't an organiser and never has been - we've got him in where Butcher was doing that last season. SO'D is a very handsome man and he's an experienced RWB but he's not Max Johnston. Brodie Spencer could maybe be Max Johnston but Kettlewell seems entirely committed to playing him out of position presumably because he either a) doesn't trust him enough to play him ahead of SOD or b) doesn't trust Gent at all beyond the last 15 - 20 mins as a hail mary when we're losing or c) both. Lennon Miller might have a higher ceiling than Sean Goss but he's currently out with (knee) and though our other options have their qualities they don't bring the same things to the midfield Goss did. That spiel isn't inherently a criticism of the individual player it just feels like asking players to do stuff that isn't playing to their strengths is generally a bad idea, right? It's also the complete opposite of How Stuart Kettlewell Fixed Steven Hammell's Team.

It was Wilko who played that shroo ball for the chance Shaw tripped over against St Johnstone that everyone was furious about. He was involved in the (very nice) build up to the goal at Dens on the opening day of the season as well. I think he's an absolutely fine option although I'm not sure he's what Kettlewell *thought* he was getting - he's certainly not a target man - but he's another of those player who I don't think has really been helped by the absolute fucking chaos around whatever Kettlewell's trying to do at the moment (see @CoF's post above about the variations we played yesterday). Ngl, given there were a few "I'd have kept Mandron over Obika" type huffs getting chucked about the other week it tickled me a bit when I was looking at the top scorers chart yesterday evening and noticed that (at the time of writing) Wilkinson has the same number of league goals as the bold Mikel Mandron in fewer minutes. Tbh, Wilkinson feels like one of those player that a few made their mind up about quite quickly. Speaking in a broader sense, it's a laugh that - generally speaking - when teams are on a run like this they'll generally hit a point where the decision is made to just be difficult to beat and shitfest to a couple of wins (in fact, that was Kettlewell's fix when he took over from Hammell - 'be more difficult to beat'). At the moment we seem to be progressively making ourselves easier to beat week on week by defending like fucking idiots - but fair play to the players for having dug in and salvaging a few points.

It is: https://dataglossary.wyscout.com/pre_assist/

He's credited with the assist for Thelonius Bair's goal against Aberdeen.

I've nothing against Kettlewell (although I've always thought he's brought a supply teacher sort of energy) and I've sympathy with him in so much as the job he had this season was to cut the squad numbers and reduce the budget - which he did very well. I suppose the problem that he has (aside from the whole not winning games of football thing) is that in the opening stages of the season we were actually playing well in games and from that POV that's his benchmark - the form we showed last season when he picked up Hammell's mess was clearly fucking unsustainable but we've gone from looking absolutely capable with this group of players to now just chucking c***s on with 15 mins to go in the hope they do something and salvage a point. I mean, we've a laddie up front with 5 goals in 8 games who's averaging almost a goal every 90 mins but defensively look like we couldn't collectively keep weans out a close - which is frustrating.

On the Turnbull vs Ferguson topic I'm pretty sure this was the first time I ever saw Lewis Ferguson...his sending off was very, very funny. Accies going down to 9 men and chucking a 3 goal lead? Also very funny.