capt_oats

Can I just say...I've always liked Richard Foster.

Aye, to be clear and for avoidance of doubt I wasn't suggesting that you 'hated' him or anything - the broader context of my post was probably aimed at that 'negative element' you mention rather than your SO post specifically so apologies if it read like that (on reflection I can see how it would). It definitely wasn't my intention to misrepresent you. From my POV your post was quite helpful in illustrating the point in so much as a perception of a player can inform things generally eg: his 'downing tools' and 'attitude'. Which is why I mentioned it. Others have covered it better than me in the previous few posts but, to me, with KVV we're talking about a player who has pretty much been run into the ground by his past few managers (Alexander and Hammell), he's been repeatedly asked to play through injuries, played out of position and in the case of this season with Hammell, used in a way that absolutely didn't get the best out of him. To that end, I genuinely can't blame him for chucking the toys out the pram every now and again or taking a huff.

I've been a #BudgetBergkamp Day 1-er but I guess to get a handle on this it's worth bearing in mind that you had one specific poster over on Steelmen Online who was entirely more focussed on Michael Higdon's girth than the fact that he like, scored a ton of goals and won the actual Player of The Year award. A lot of the KVV 'hate' from a section of the Motherwell fanbase seems to come from a similar sort of place and definitely has the same sort of energy in that they've taken a position on him early on and just stubbornly keep doubling down. It's their hill and they will absolutely die on it. In fact, there was a post on SO a while back that was an entirely wild ride taking the line that had KVV as a "huffy manchild" who downed tools to get Hammell sacked due to his poor attitude. Folk are weird, man. I mean, that Twitter account @Busta Nut posted is clearly an absolute danger or as @YassinMoutaouakil suggested is an actual teenager - possibly both but there are enough oddballs in our support that if someone's face doesn't fit then that's it for them. Destined to forever be 'shite' no matter what evidence there is to the contrary. Speaking generally, there's a vibe from some that they're completely unwilling to give Alexander any sort of credit for anything and Van Veen was, of course, a Grezza signing - so there's that as well. He's clearly a mercurial player and he'll never be beloved in the same way Moult was but when you look at our list of top scorers since 2000 he's showing up well - not only has he matched Moult's best season he's also matched Porter in 07/08 as well.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve probably muted more Motherwell Twitter accounts than any other demographic - that’s one of them. Originally I thought it was just someone doing an (unfunny) bit but it seems they’re just a complete danger.

It's 50% off in the sale just now tbf. But aye...I'm genuinely not sure what your man is thinking is realistically going to happen there - and also...why? It's such a fucking weird move. Either way, I'm tickled by the fact that Snoop just takes the thing and fucks off. It's 100% left in his car btw.

I suppose there's an argument that we're still at the stage with Kettlewell where he's getting to know the squad in terms of what he can/can't trust them to do. Slattery was clearly walking a tightrope but in the end what he was actually sent off for is a tough break even if him picking up a 2nd yellow was entirely predictable. Not to be that guy but would Cantwell have been sent off if the roles were reversed? I mean, don't get me wrong it was a weird choice to leave him on given the circumstances but I guess there's a chance that given we were 2-4 down when SK made subs he was looking at it from the POV of trying a different mix. Until yesterday has he had a CM 3 of Spittal, Slattery and Tierney before?

I know Saints fans are quite touchy about 'Well fans popping up in their thread offering opinions on Robinson (despite him generally being thought of as one of our best managers in recent times) but nevertheless - and with no snark intended - this was actually one of Robinson's blind spots when he was with us. In his 3 full seasons at the club the top goalscorer in his first season was a player he inherited who left midway through the season (Moult (14)), his 2nd and 3rd seasons his top goalscorers were midfielders (Turnbull (15) and Donnelly (11)). We were discussing KVV in our thread earlier in the season and how he compared with our other strikers over the years. In comparison here's every forward Robinson signed during his time at the club - it's worth pointing out that both Watt and Cole only really started scoring regularly under Alexander: Alex Fisher (0 in 19) George Newell (0 in 10) Curtis Main (14 in 58) Nadir Ciftci (3 in 15) Danny Johnson (8 in 28) Conor Sammon (3 in 21) Ross McCormack (0 in 4) Chris Long (17 in 66) Christy Manzinga (1 in 7) Ross MacIver (1 in 9) Tony Watt (19 in 70) Devante Cole (16 in 52) Jordan White (0 in 20).

Sensational...

90s Motherwell is the best Motherwell.

Massive edit from me: Turns out he's actually matched Moult's 18. Transfermarkt hadn't updated when I looked earlier. Sorry Kev. I mean, he's now 1 short of matched Moults best over a season (18) and is 1 short of his best in the league (15). He's on 18 17 for the season at the moment so, barring injury, given the form he's in it wouldn't be a huge surprise if he breaks 20. He'll be 32 in June. That extension he signed just before Alexander was launched feels like one of the better choices we made through the summer.

Goss is out of contract. Slattery has another year.

Ketts had said in his pre-match that there were a couple who had been involved recently that have been carrying injuries/knocks. I take it Obika would be one of them then.

The interesting wrinkle as I saw it was that Butcher was one of 3 of the January 9 who had signed deals beyond the end of the season (Blaney and Danzaki being the other two). Like, I'm sure the deals have relegation breaks and all that but the slight worry I had was whether Hammell may have made a pitch based on Butcher playing a specific role that he'd bought into but inside a couple of weeks everything's out the window with a new manager in and him being asked to play centre back. There's probably a version of that where it becomes a bit awkward. I know players will generally just give bland platitudes when they're up in front of the press but if he's into it and no one's agitating to change things up then...cool.

This is mildly amusing as presumably Hammell actually signed Butcher to play in midfield. It feels like there's a definite irony in there that the guy who was signed to fix our midfield has ended up fixing our defence (so far).

Tbh, this is kind of why I think Robinson let himself down a bit by deciding that he wanted to try and play *football* against them at FP. It seemed to largely be because he took the huff at the hammer-thrower tag he was getting as he possibly felt it was damaging the CV his Mr 20% was sending out. These were his Thunderdome results at FP against both Rangers and Celtic until the 433 sexy Motherwell era. 06/08/17: Motherwell 1 - 2 Rangers 29/11/17: Motherwell 1 - 1 Celtic 18/03/18: Motherwel 0 - 0 Celtic 31/03/18: Motherwell 2 - 2 Rangers 28/08/18 Motherwell 3 - 3 Rangers 05/12/18 Motherwell 1 - 1 Celtic

Is this whole Thursday press conference a Kettlewell thing then? Hammell and Alexander's were usually on the Friday eh? Anyway, as far as the games against the **** go, they really just feel like necessary evils at this point although I'm not entirely surprised by the 5 draws. Either way, we beat them in the games that actually mattered (play-off and the LC semi). I'd guess that what with our 38 consecutive seasons in the top flight situation we'll have had to play them more than most over the past few decades? That said, I'm all for nostalgia and the 90s were great.

Oh... That sweet, sweet solidarity %. Anyway, it's a bit of a LOL given the mild shitstorm around him kb'ing our offer of a pro-contract.

I can't remember who it was that mentioned about SK and NA being quite vocal towards Kelly from the sidelines (I think it was in the Killie game?) but it's probably worth mentioning that there looks to have been a bit of a change in his game since Hammell exited. Not arguing for a second that he's the international class keeper some of our fanbase seem weirdly fixated on him being but against County it felt like he was coming for (if not actually collecting) a lot more. Genuinely hope he sees a continued uptick in form. Also, apropos of nothing...OTD in 1998.

Devlin coming back to us feels like a wildly obvious shout based on nothing other than the fact we're looking at the prospect of going from 3 right backs to 0 this summer.

Once you notice it you really can't unhear it. One of the other vaguely useful parts of the interview was SK giving a brief explainer of what his role at the club had actually been as LDC. The news story that went out when he was announced made it clear that it wasn't a first team appointment: "The former Ross County boss, 38, takes up his new post today working specifically with our Development and Under 18s teams." The "specifically" in that line makes it quite...erm, specific what his purview extends to. His role was working with Academy graduates in that transitional space between Academy and first team. Which is fine - the question he answered makes it clear how that actually worked in practice. I know the role Ross had changed as a result of the Reserves being mothballed during Covid but rightly or wrongly when Robinson was at the club it always felt like the coaching staff (Robinson, Lasley, Ross, O'Carroll, Boles and Hinchliffe plus Craigan and McManus before them) was a much more fluid group in terms of responsibilities. That doesn't appear to have been the case here. It'll be mildly interesting to see if that changes with Kettlewell. Again, to go back to the AGM (that I wasn't at), responding to the question about someone with experience coming in to assist by pointing out that there's already experience in the building that Hammell could lean on kind of missed the point if the issue was actually executing the work on the training ground. Like, it's great if the manager can pick up the phone to someone for advice but that is absolutely zero help if he and his assistant couldn't run a minodge...

I really don't want to keep dinging Hammell and rake over old coals as he's gone, out the door etc but it's really fucking hard not to have questions about this sort of thing. It's not like Kettlewell is criticising but the fact he's highlighting it doesn't really reflect well on the previous set up (that's before you get into the speculation about our training during that period). If you go back to last summer Alexander was also talking about speaking to potential candidates to bring in to a coaching role, essentially to replace Lasley. 22nd April 22: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/local-sport/motherwell-eye-coaching-staff-addition-26774850 21st June 22: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/local-sport/motherwell-boss-graham-alexander-new-27286952 So we've got Alexander explicitly talking about wanting to add to the coaching staff. Almost the first thing Kettlewell brought up besides the whole winning games of football business was that we were/are understaffed on that front. Meanwhile Hammell was in the job for 6 months and never once mentioned it as an option. In fact, while the question was framed differently, he bristled at the suggestion of getting additional help in. Again, I realise that point was put forward at the AGM was more of a DOF or experienced guy to learn from but as a general point it feels telling that he dismissed the idea. Don't get me wrong, I understand that he may have felt it would possibly have undermined his position but it's hard not to compare it with Kettlewell choosing to hire Frail. Either way, I'd have thought that given Hammell was in the job 29th July 22 - 11th Feb 23 if he'd actually wanted another coach in he'd have been able to find someone. Put it this way, we managed to get Neil Alexander in the door inside a month of Dibble having left. Obviously I don't know for certain as I wasn't in the building and I don't know Steven Hammell but it genuinely feels like it was a personal choice and he felt that promoting Kerr was enough. Which is fucking nuts.

Tbh, it's an entirely watchable interview. A fair amount of interesting stuff about how he sees things at the Football Club and how he ended up getting the job at the Football Club. Am paraphrasing here but the things that I picked up on were that he thinks we're still a couple short in terms of staff. He had Richie Brittain as his assistant at County and Don Cowie as first team coach. The interview is (obviously) post-Frail coming in so it'll be interesting to see if he wants a similar set up with a First Team Coach being added. He says that 352 isn't his go-to formation but he felt it was the best fit in terms of getting 2 strikers on the park and fixing the defensive side of things. There's loads of chat about his time at County which was genuinely interesting as ngl I knew absolutely f**k all about his career and it's quite insightful in terms of how he views the game and his relative coaching experience. He also implies that we have a better infrastructure/support staff than he had when he was at County (they were doing all the recruitment stuff themselves). Another point that seems very relevant to a lot of chat in this thread is that he's saying that he thinks every team needs a destroyer to win the ball back.

The whole series has been pretty much exactly what I wanted from it. Mazin and Druckmann have pitched it perfectly.