[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

38 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

Tierney is also contracted for next season.

Had completely forgotten about him!

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

40 minutes ago, Al B said:

Just as a wee counter to this given I agree with that being the situation, I'd say that it's extremely risky to put those choices in the hands of someone that's just arrived and doesn't really know what we need, or has completely different ideas that don't work with the slim pickin's we have left.

I fully believe the most valuable assets we could have going forward, that have the potential to make the most significant and tangible differences, are stability and longevity. You can't have either of those without riding a few rough patches. Especially when those rough patches still have us knocking on the Top 6 door.

I genuinely think constant new manager ideas are a much bigger cause of the constant rebuilds required (along with their associated costs), than natural player turnover is.

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. 

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

Following on from @Handsome_Devil's point re Jack Ross and Hibs.

Since the start of last season:

Dundee United sacked Jack Ross and sacked his replacement.
St. Johnstone sacked Callum Davidson and sacked his replacement.
Ross County sacked Malky Mackay and sacked his replacement.
Rangers sacked Giovanni Van Bronckhorst and sacked his replacement.
Aberdeen sacked Jim Goodwin and sacked his replacement.
We sacked Graham Alexander and sacked his replacement.

The obvious caveat to that is that Martindale has been at Livi all of that time and look where they are, but looking at that list it basically tells you that the more that managers are sacked, the more that they need to be sacked.

That also shows you that boards across the country are making the wrong appointments time and time again. Chuck into the mix that we either have the board we do just now, or an unknown quantity in a new CEO / Chairman who would be making the decisions. That's why it's a big call and there is a bit of me that does think the "better the devil you know" route might be the most sensible. I would need to be confident about a new manager to think it was worthwhile.

That said, if he does stay, the number of players he would need to sign, as things stand, could have a knock on effect on the club for years to come, so that is also a big consideration to make. 

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

14 minutes ago, Alanos said:

I fully expect Kettlewell to be offered a 2 year deal. He’s cleared the deck player wise over the last season. This summer, he’ll get a chance to shape the squad to his liking. This is the make or break part. Who he keeps from the current fannies and then the quality of the guys he brings in this summer. I don’t think he’s been awful. He just needs a plan b,c or d when plan a isn’t working.

Kelly won’t be dropped. If the defence can actually defend for a few matches, his confidence may improve. Over the next few games, he’s certainly gonna face a fair few shots. Actually saving some might be the start of redemption arc. However, I think the time is right for Motherwell and Kelly to part ways in the summer. Last thing on Kelly, he is absolutely going to the Euros as Clarke is very loyal to his players. He also tends to pick players who are actually playing for their clubs. Gordon is a way better keeper, but is kept out by Clark at Hearts so not playing regularly and neither is McCrory. If fit, Kelly goes, rightly or wrongly. 

I actually think Clark staying in at Hearts makes it less likely for Kelly to go to the Euros.

Gunn is a shoe in.

Clark is going to finish 3rd and has already shown to be favoured by Steve Clarke.

I'd then say, regardless of games played, I'd take the old experienced head who's done it at the highest level, over the goalie with one cap who's been hemorrhaging goals for a team fighting relegation.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

46 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

Interesting.

I dunno man, it kind of feels like we're reaching Samson/Griffiths here. Griffiths was probably hopeless, but we got immeasurably better defensively simply because he wasn't Craig Samson who gave everyone PTSD simply by being there.

That was the one which sprung to mind for me.

There's obviously the famous Man Utd one where Jim Leighton got dropped for the FA Cup Final replay for Les Sealey. Ferguson said that Sealey's confidence compensated for him being a lesser goalkeeper than Leighton with the state of mind Leighton was in.

I guess it depends what kind of character Oxborough is in that scenario.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

5 minutes ago, 'WellDel said:

 

Alexander would have shut up shop at 27 mins, giving zero fucks about the aesthetics of the remaining 63 and we would have headed back down the A90 with 3 points. 

His style of football was eye bleeding and he had his many, many faults, but if he'd been in charge tonight and we'd accumulated that lead, we'd 100% have won. I would never want him back, but Kettlewell could have done with a little of his single minded approach to winning to see us over the line tonight.

That and a team of less shitebaggy players...

Graham Alexander never had a three goal lead in the league as Motherwell manager, never mind one after 27 minutes at Pittodrie, so it's an utterly pointless discussion to have. 

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

I'm trying to cast my mind back to how we reacted in all of those games we were 3-0 up under Alexander.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

With 12 draws, we're now at our 2nd highest total since the 38 game league started in 2000 (with 13 games of the season to go). The only time we've drawn more was under Brown / Gannon in 2009/10, a stat which doesn't surprise me.

7 points clear of County and 13 points clear of tells me that it's growing more and more unlikely we will go down. We've lost one game in nine. Do you hear of teams going down with stats like that? I can't really remember hearing of teams in the thick of it in April and May because they'd drawn too many games.

My biggest annoyance is that we seemed more organised and resolute against St. Johnstone, Killie and Ross County, only to have seemingly undone all of that in the last week, with everyone back to being a quivering wreck every time the ball goes near our box.

Kelly was every ounce a man absolutely stripped of confidence tonight and as I said yesterday, it appears to rub off on those around him.

[The Dons v Motherwell]

6 hours ago, welldaft said:

Don’t know why. We have Kelly helping you along as a reminder of a goalie prone to blunders.

It's somewhat nicer to remember the opposition goalie blundering than your own

Aberdeen fans may correct me but Joe Lewis seemed to save his bad games for us. He looked perfectly capable against other teams when I saw him.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

I might be miles out and others might disagree, but my perception of Kelly is that his performances often reflect the mood in the camp.

When we are doing well (his loan spell, the run-in last season, when Alexander was shitfesting wins), you tend either to not notice him, or only hear good things about him. 

As soon as the chips are down and we are playing badly, he seems more likely then to make things worse than better and that's when all of his mistakes come out.

Goalkeeper and captain are two roles who you need to step-up during a crisis. Unfortunately, ours is the same guy and he doesn't.

On another topic, had a chuckle at this sentence. Looks like the club asked ChatGPT to write them a jargon-heavy, sophistocated sentence about a financial / data partnership.

This strategic collaboration will empower us with cutting-edge analytics tools and invaluable financial insights, propelling the club into a new era of data-driven decision-making.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

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.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

I was fortunate enough to have a prior engagement and miss Friday, which probably makes me less angry than most, having not wasted any time on it. I don't think that us losing to lower league opposition is acceptable, but unfortunately it's not that unusual.

Since I started going to see Motherwell in 1997 (ironically in a cup game against lower league opposition, which went to a replay), I've worked out we've failed to beat lower league teams over 90 minutes 28 times in 28 seasons. Of course there are some occurrences of league cup group games over recent years where the games haven't been "knockout", but still. You can obviously chuck in being knocked out of Europe by Sligo and Stjarnan over two legs as well as poor single leg results against Llanelli, Flamurtari and Coleraine which we managed to recover from, if you want to labour the point further. I don't know how that stacks up against other teams, but it seems high to me.

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. 

As desperate as I am to see us win a trophy, I've long since stopped thinking that it's something I need concern myself with this season. My two concerns really now are the money lost from a trip to Celtic Park (given all the talk about finances of late) and the effect on the confidence of the team ahead of the run-in.

There is still a bit of me that is content that we had our mare against a lower league club and didn't capitulate against a team around us in the league. We all know where not a great team and we hadn't had a stinker since county away and teams of our ilk do have stinkers now and again. We've made lots of marginal steps forward since then and whilst it's still raw and disappointing, I hope we see it in the context of a game and don't rip it up and start again. I'm not saying I'm against 2 or 3 changes to freshen things up, but sometimes for me, Kettlewell is at his scariest when he's got lots of options to choose from.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

Since Craigan and Lasley, we've had a distinct lack of leaders, long serving players who are automatic picks and good centre backs or holding midfielders. They all probably feed into each other.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

When I heard murmurs of this at the game on Tuesday, I thought it was nonsense. I've never heard of this happening before.

I will qualify this with saying that I don't think Shaw was good for us prior to the break, but I certainly don't think this is the disaster some make it out to be, especially on a lesser wage.

I don't think the fans' opinion of him would be as low, if we didn't have such a chaotic use of strikers in general in the first half of the season. There were points where he was one of four strikers being brought on as a sub in a game. When we were playing someone up beside Mika, all four of the other guys got a shot at it and there was never any chance for momentum or consistency.

Many were shouting on us to sign just any striker when the window closed. We've done that and people are still unhappy.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

22 minutes ago, well fan for life said:

Is it worth a read, overall? Looked at it when I was in buying a copy of 1923 (great book even if you don't care about cycling) but decided against it. 

I read it on a flight home from Tenerife.

I've never really been a fan of Nevin - both from the part he played in our spending years and his "I'm an intelligent footballer who likes music and reading" persona he likes to flog in the media, but to be honest I really enjoyed reading the book.

The main reason probably being that I enjoy reading football books and there aren't that many around about Motherwell and this one was really in-depth and added context to a lot of things that happened at the time.

I finished it having slightly more sympathy for Nevin on his time at the club than I had previously, but I'm well aware that was how he would've intended to come across and we never heard any other sides to the story.

[Motherwell v Ross County (7:45pm Tue, 6th Feb)]

1 hour ago, eliphas said:

I think Kettlewell will stick with the same starting 11 but I'd like to see some changes bled in over the next few games. 

-Not a huge fan of the Mugabi/Butcher/McGinn back 3. Butcher seems to be coming back to some form now he's playing. Mugabi is always round the corner from a disaster and McGinn often looks awkward on the left. But I'd probably leave it as it is over chopping and changing for now.  I do think Casey/Butcher/Blaney is probably where we want to get to though. 

- Miller is too much of a talent to be sitting on the bench much longer now he's back. So someone needs to give way and it's Davor or Halliday.

- Paton has been very busy but 99% of the time just doesn't have that final ball or shot. I'd as a minimum hope to see Nicholson get longer off the bench and if he proves to be a better option than Paton he should take the spot.

I find it hard to disagree with any of these points and agree with @capt_oats that last season's back three should be our destination. 

In defence of not making those changes tomorrow, we've got the opportunity to play the same team three on the bounce, we've had two fairly positive results and some of the players in that XI (Davor, Halliday, Butcher & Gent) look like they are getting up to speed. To start tweaking things in such a big game might not be so wise.

I wouldn't be averse seeing Nicholson, Miller, Buyabu and Devine in from the start on Friday, with them being bed in from there.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

8 hours ago, Swello said:

I don't think we should read too much into the fact that a bunch of young boys signed on Thursday night aren't pitched straight into an important game less than 48 hours later (and the team played reasonably well across the St Johnstone and Killie games - so it would have been weird to make wholesale changes..

We've got 3 games in a week, so I would be surprised if we didn't see them at some point this week after they've had some actual training sessions - and it's up to them to dislodge the ones that are getting picked.  Nicholson I would hope would be close to a starter when he is match fit, I still think we'll see Gent and Buyabu playing in the same team - and Miller surely would be back to being a starter at the expense of Halliday.

I agree with all of this.

What I would also say, is that if all the January signings succeed in doing is to get another level of performance out of those already here, then you could still consider it to be be a success.

Even from the perspective of training - I'm sure things will be more intense and competitive than they were when the first XI would've had to line up against 4 strikers, Oxborough and 6 weans.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

1 hour ago, Handsome_Devil said:

Coyne overall was the best of the lot (I'm taking a liberty in defining Faddy slightly differently to avoid an impossible comparison.

I only saw Tommy Coyne towards the end of his time with us and I was just a young child, but he was my first ever hero and made me fall in love with Motherwell and football so he always gets top spot for me.

I think Faddy was perhaps in some ways a victim of playing in the wrong era. We're probably only discussing him as a centre forward because he played back when front twos were still in their pomp.

When he went down south, all the front twos seemed to be a big target man and a nippy wee guy, of which he was neither. At the same time, old style wingers that played on their strong side, ran past a full back and put a cross in were still a thing, which he wasn't really either. I never thought watching him growing up that his best chance of playing every week in the EPL would be the graveyard shift in a 4-5-1 for Birmingham.

I wonder how he'd have got on down there playing as a number ten, or off the right.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

Whilst it's being discussed, I always think Scott McDonald is always unfairly overlooked in these discussions.

If I was picking my all time XI (97 onwards) it would be Coyne and Higdon up front with Faddy either in the hole or on a wing.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

15 minutes ago, MurrayWell said:

We're torturing ourselves here, now of all times, to be reminiscing over our best strikers

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

Moult or Van Veen is an interesting debate.

I'd probably take Moult into the trenches with me and have Van Veen as the cherry on top of an already good side.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

47 minutes ago, Handsome_Devil said:

With some caveats I agree now we're here, and I'd previously have binned him. Certainly unless some we'd consider a nailed on improvement hints they're available and that's not going to happen.

The whole point of enduring this season is to have a solid base for the next one. Starting a recruitment process in May to end up with someone who is no more than 50-50 at being better is entirely self-defeating.

As @Desp hints at above, he needs to want us as well as us wanting him.

If we go our separate ways, he would be back on Open All Mics and Sportscene the following week. I know which of the two jobs seems preferrable just now. He'd end up on a coaching (perhaps not managing) role somewhere too.

He's taken over here, reshaped a side in danger of relegation and got them to finish a comfortable 7th.

He's then been asked to take that team who were struggling to survive a mere three months later, slash it both in terms of numbers and quality and try to get it to survive. 

If we do survive this season, he could move on with his CV intact. Regardless of the 1 win in 18, All the strikers or no strikers, Spittal at wing-back, Wilkinson in centre-mid patter we've endured, keeping this team in the divison can be viewed as a success.

We've got seven players signed for next season (Casey, Blaney, Davor, Halliday, Paton, Miller, Bair). The players who we would want to keep from this squad (Spittal for example), could possibly stay in the division and up their wages if the St. Mirren stuff we're hearing is true. What does he do then? Go out and try and sign circa 15 players? Give new contracts to those not firing with us currently in a "better the devil you know" situation?

You couldn't argue with his cahones if he took that on, but you also couldn't argue with him walking away from it. 

I'm still not sure to what proportion our shortcomings in the transfer market are split between being his fault and being the environment he's had to shop in.

 

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

I saw that Scott Burns said we are paying for last January, but for me our current playing budget is probably paying for years of mismanagement.

Season 2020/21 - Robinson overloads the squad on forwards and ignores massive gaps in defence.
Season 2021/22 - Alexander gets a massive wage bill and spends circa £500k on transfer fees, probably going down the "speculate to accumulate" line, but Slattery and Kelly look set to leave for free this summer.
Season 2022/23 - We sack our manager before the league season starts, then overspend letting the new manager bring his own players in, to then sack him after using two of them for the first time (admittedly deservedly so).
Season 2023/24 - The manager who performed miracles with the squad he inherited is forced to slash his squad massively, with his first eleven often made up of players who were at the club the previous season, but couldn't get in the starting XI.

As for this window, I would sum it up as:

Centre-back: Repurposing SOD as a centre-back, where he has looked very comfortable makes perfect sense, rather than entering the market - especially with our track record of signing centre-backs probably since Aldred left. Aside from Sammon's goal, there's also encouraging signs the Butcher of last season is on his way back.

Wing-backs: There's been much exaggeration for effect. As per @capt_oats formation thing, I would consider McGinn and O'Donnell as centre-backs now. Elliot is a project. We have aspirations to play Gent further forward. We are now in a place where we won't need to use Spittal there for the rest of the season.

Centre midfield: Signing Halliday (as well as Miller returning to fitness) is again another encouraging sign that we won't need to use Spittal as a 6, a sitting midfielder or whatever it's called in FM these days. 

Forwards: Nicholson will hopefully give us other options and perhaps even allow for a change of shape. Gent could end up being decent in that role too. Vale has potential to be a good signing. Would I have wanted another striker? Absolutely. However, there have been plenty of other times in recent past where our squad has only had two number 9s.

I honestly think we will be just about fine this season. It's next season that's giving me the scaries...

 

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

I'm pretty sure that we didn't find out we'd signed Obika until the following day last season.

[Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons]

5 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

He's Sydney Devine's grandson. According to his Wiki.

Tam Cowan likes this.