Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[capt_oats]

2 hours ago, Handsome_Devil said:

I agree with the recruitment bit, without knowing where or why it went wrong it looks pathetic.

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.

Edited December 12, 2023 by capt_oats

[Swello]

16 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

Speaking of which, the average open rate for a MailChimp mailer in the Sports industry is 24.57%

I would also imagine that email is a bit like printed newspapers and linear TV in that you might only reach a certain (relatively older) demographic that way.

[YassinMoutaouakil]

Don't blame me, I voted for the American guy

[rowsdower]

19 minutes ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:

Don't blame me, I voted for the American guy

He would have already packed it in once he realized he couldn't vote to pick the team. Also, I was in nashville at the weekend and didn't see him anywhere, so he's full of shit.

As for running the club, maybe we drop back to having a COO answerable to the board rather than CEO?  Might be easier to source.

I do think a lot of assumptions are being made re:lack of planning/direction/etc. Communication could be better, but I personally don't care about the non-football stuff outside of an update every few months.

The society is still very amateur, so hopefully the new board members help fix that. I'd like a better understanding of how the society holds the club accountable.

 

 

[D-Fens Foster]

If we lose in Paisley on Saturday are we all agreed Kettlewell is done ? I’ve seen a few folk say he might get to the Livi game but if we do lose at the weekend then Tavernier gets a hat-trick of pens on Christmas eve then we’re off to Aberdeen. If the worst happens would that be a 16 game winless run ??  I can’t say for sure but that must be up there with the worst sequence of results we’ve ever had

[well fan for life]

29 minutes ago, D-Fens Foster said:

If we lose in Paisley on Saturday are we all agreed Kettlewell is done ?

Nope. I honestly reckon he's here well in to January.

[welldaft]

I said it before I reckon he will get until the Livi game regardless of what happens over the next 3 games.

Lose those (most probable) and then lose at home to Livi and that would be game over as far as I am concerned. 

5 points from 51 and no wins in 17 is not survivable nor should it be.

Of course I hope we somehow pick up some points before the Livi game, then win that game and we can get back on track from there. Hopefully result in getting some more distance between us and Livi. 

[camer0n_mcd]

1 hour ago, D-Fens Foster said:

If we lose in Paisley on Saturday are we all agreed Kettlewell is done ? I’ve seen a few folk say he might get to the Livi game but if we do lose at the weekend then Tavernier gets a hat-trick of pens on Christmas eve then we’re off to Aberdeen. If the worst happens would that be a 16 game winless run ??  I can’t say for sure but that must be up there with the worst sequence of results we’ve ever had

Not punting him after the humiliation in Dingwall signals that they plan to stick with him. My guess is that he'll get to the game against Livi on the 30th at the very least. 

[joewarkfanclub]

1 hour ago, D-Fens Foster said:

If we lose in Paisley on Saturday are we all agreed Kettlewell is done ? I’ve seen a few folk say he might get to the Livi game but if we do lose at the weekend then Tavernier gets a hat-trick of pens on Christmas eve then we’re off to Aberdeen. If the worst happens would that be a 16 game winless run ??  I can’t say for sure but that must be up there with the worst sequence of results we’ve ever had

I dont think anyone expects us to beat St Mirren, Rangers or Aberdeen on current form so having given him a stay of execution so far, I dont expect SK to he emptied before Livvy.

However, if we dont win any of those games he  goes into that one with no win in 15.

Lose to Livvy, a direct rival, then we are likely bottom of the league with no wins in 16.

No one survives that.

[YassinMoutaouakil]

Saturday will be a piece of piss, btw

[joewarkfanclub]

3 minutes ago, YassinMoutaouakil said:

Saturday will be a piece of piss, btw

Revenge of The Biereth!

[AdamMFC]

2 hours ago, welldaft said:

I said it before I reckon he will get until the Livi game regardless of what happens over the next 3 games.

Lose those (most probable) and then lose at home to Livi and that would be game over as far as I am concerned. 

5 points from 51 and no wins in 17 is not survivable nor should it be.

Of course I hope we somehow pick up some points before the Livi game, then win that game and we can get back on track from there. Hopefully result in getting some more distance between us and Livi. 

I agree. He was never going to get the sack after the St Johnstone game when we scored ANOTHER late equaliser so I think he'll be here until at least Livi game. The only way I can see us emptying him before then is if we get absolutely pumped by Aberdeen. We all know we're not going to sack someone for losing to Rangers and as for this weekend I'm pretty sure that even if we lose on Saturday (which I think we will if I'm being honest) he'll stay in the job. If we do get rid of him after Livi then it doesn't leave the new manager, whenever we were to appoint him, much time to prepare for the January window and we'd likely be playing catch up on getting new players (again) but I don't think any of us would be that surprised given the state the entire club is in right now.

[Handsome_Devil]

6 hours ago, AdamMFC said:

If we do get rid of him after Livi then it doesn't leave the new manager, whenever we were to appoint him, much time to prepare for the January window and we'd likely be playing catch up on getting new players (again) but I don't think any of us would be that surprised given the state the entire club is in right now.

Definitely not and I think - though this is maybe unfair ofc as a view from the outside - this is what is winding folk up so much. The problem is not that we are making wrong decisions on big things but the appearance of simply not making any decision on them.

Now there may be good reason for this, in which case, as far as commercially possible, tell us.

Everyone, even the the perfectionist loonies in our support, understands that we'll occasionally get things wrong but a wrong decision will usually have some logic in the process and you say 'fair enough'.

Our current predicament flows directly from May 22 when rather than back or sack Alexander, we did neither.

There were obvious pros and cons to both paths but I'm pretty confident either would have been better than the ridiculous middle path we tried to walk, as fun as early kettlewell was.

Getting to the situation where we're one deflection or dodgy VAR call from sacking our manager hours before or into a crucial window because we've let it get to an all-or-nothing six-pointer is fucking mental, whether we're run by well-meaning amateurs or not.

If the decision has been made to give Kettlewell the window come hell or high water, fine, but communicate it and get everyone back on board.

Edited December 13, 2023 by Handsome_Devil

[JamesP_81]

I reckon we'll limp through Xmas and new year , he'll be given the window to bring in a scattergun of out of favour/injured attackers and left backs then get punted when we get pumped out the cup by Alloa. 

[well fan for life]

16 minutes ago, JamesP_81 said:

I reckon we'll limp through Xmas and new year , he'll be given the window to bring in a scattergun of out of favour/injured attackers and left backs then get punted when we get pumped out the cup by Alloa. 

[Allroy for Prez]

If/when we lose on Saturday, even although historically and realistically Aberdeen away and any game v Rangers are big/inpossible asks, if we lose them we would be zero wins in 16 and he shouldn’t get the Livi game. 

[capt_oats]

3 hours ago, well fan for life said:

It's a classic.

Absolute nail-on-head post from @Handsome_Devil btw.

One of the more interesting things with the Kettlewell situation for me is to what extent the club are invested in Kettlewell (if they are at all).

By which I mean (without any disrespect) he's always felt like a more temporary or transitional figure in so much as he has/had no previous connection with the club beyond his short time as LDC so there's none of the legacy baggage that Hammell had and equally he wasn't an external hire in the same way Alexander was.

You could see why we'd be willing to give both a longer leash.

Ketts was parachuted in to dig us out of the hole we'd got into by the initial failure to either back/sack Alexander which was then compounded by the Hammell appointment and there's no argument of the job he did on that front. He was then asked to essentially cut all the excess and bloat that we'd accumulated on the playing staff side of things and the backroom restructure we'd put in place for Alexander was quickly dismantled and never spoken of again.

What I find interesting (and it possibly points to the board having learned a lesson) is that we were very quick to extend Robinson's contract he got the job on an initial deal to the end of the 17/18 season on 15th March 17 we then extended it again 13th October 2017 to take him through to the end of 19/20 that announcement was just before the Semi-final against Rangers.

Similarly after Alexander's year of excellent form we announced his extension on 10th January 22 to take him through to the end of 24/25.

Hammell clearly wasn't in the job long enough to even reach the point of having a new deal offered to him.

After the job Kettlewell did not only in keeping us up comfortably but also his success in moving on the likes of Shields, Danzaki, Efford et al in a way where we've been told we didn't take a hit in having to cancel their contracts then given his start to this season it wouldn't have been out of character for us to look to extend his deal - but we didn't (AFAIK).

@crazylegsjoe_mfc made a good point the other day (and I see he's typing at the moment so may well make it again) in saying that we've generally afforded our managers a January window to try and fix things so if we were to bin Kettlewell now he could reasonably feel a bit aggrieved at not getting the chance that other have had, especially in the context of the job he was asked to do through the summer.

I mean, you couldn't call a run of potentially 16 games or whatever without a win a harsh sacking but there's no doubt he could point to the fact that we've only lost 2 of our last 6, we picked up a point at Parkhead and it's clear that the team themselves are still digging in with the last minute equalisers and stuff.

There's also the question/risk of who takes over - if there was a really obvious candidate then I think it'd probably be a much easier decision to make. Since there's not I can understand why we might be willing to let things play out until they hit the point where it's genuinely untenable and the club aren't going to get blowback for a 2nd manager in a row failing to last longer than 12 months.

Either way, I think he's toast and I very much doubt he'll be our manager come the end of the season.

Edited December 13, 2023 by capt_oats

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

4 hours ago, Handsome_Devil said:

Our current predicament flows directly from May 22 when rather than back or sack Alexander, we did neither.

This is spot on for me. I'm pretty sure it was well understood that Alexander's budget was used by the time we played Sligo. Then all of a sudden Hammell takes over and is able to sign Penney, McKinstry, Moult and Aarons, with only really Ojala of note going in the other direction. If we weren't willing to give a manager the full May - September budget, we shouldn't have been willing to give him any of it. Especially when Hammell was able to get nine bodies in, with only five bodies out (including Moult and Aarons loans terminating) in the January as well. So Alexander's squad had three extra bodies come September 2nd (4 in / 1 out)
It then had four more extra bodies by February 4th (9 in / 5 out). That means that eventually last season, we had a squad size 8 greater than we were willing to give Alexander to start it. I know that wasn't ideal in that we wouldn't have pushed the boat out as much at the half way mark had we not needed it to, but if you don't trust a manager, it's time to get rid of him. 

I think the club probably thought it would've seemed bonkers on paper - sacking a manager after finishing fifth and qualfying for Europe, but I think when our form went off a cliff as much as it did, if those in the boardroom had balls, they would recognise the direction the team was going in and agree it was a good time for "mutual consent" to happen.

I'm not going to be the one to turn around and say that Hammell deserved longer, he didn't, but we backed him in the transfer market in January / February, but not the pitch. He signed players then who did contribute well to our upturn, but the way he laid the team out in his last game (Van Veen and Danzaki as wingers for starters) showed me that we wouldn't have got the best out of them anyway.

As for backing or sacking Kettlewell, last season, his starting XI was clearly defined to me (Kelly; Johnston, McGinn, Butcher, Casey, Furlong; Goss, Spittal, Cornelius; Van Veen, Obika), at that moment in time, we were playing reserve games with 7 or 8 first team players, we could've had a second XI of (Oxborough; O'Donnell, Mugabi, Lamie, Blaney, McKinstry; Slattery, Tierney, Paton; Mandron, Aitchison). I put McKinstry at wing-back given Carroll wasn't fit and his penchant for playing Spittal there this season. For me, that second XI isn't a massive drop off in quality to some of the starting XIs this season. Four of them have been pretty much nailed on starters. Particularly in terms of transfers, we absolutely have not "backed" Kettlewell. If anything it's been the opposite. You could argue on the basis of Obika & Souare's injury record, Gent & Davor's lack of involvement and Oli Shaw's performances that he's proved that he didn't deserve backing, but that's a separate issue. 

I'm not going to say that this run of games is acceptable,  or that Kettlewell hasn't done anything to baffle me this season, because both are absolutely true, but asking a manager to take over a team at the foot of the table, keep them up and then repeat the process after slashing the squad in both quality and numbers would test anyone's resolve and decision making.

I think we've probably come to the end of the road with Kettlewell. Things are so cyclical now that I don't think that the fact we've come to the end of the road is a Kettlewell problem, it's a football club (to borrow some of his patter) problem. But what happens next? Are we going to be sitting round the table with applicants, telling them that the squad is the squad and there's no more money to improve it? Or are we once again chucking the kitchen sink at it in January, before cutting our cloth again in the summer? There's got to be a better way.

The board could be hedging their bets and hoping he turns it around and keeps us up, without showing too much dissent about lack of funds available, if the alternative is a low calibre of manager willing to take on this shit show. There is a lack of quality in the league as a whole where fore me, there is a scenario that we keep Kettlewell on, continue to have a shit season but for the odd result and finish 10th.

A big thing is the summer for me. By my reckoning, next season we only have Casey, Blaney, Paton, Davor, Wilkinson and Miller signed up for next season. If a new manager does come in to the building, he's going to have to be trusted with a massive rebuild next summer. Regardless of what division that may be in, I wouldn't predict against us being back here in the thread next December, discussing how the players he's brought in aren't up to it.

 

 

 

[thisGRAEME]

Sitting nodding in agreement here, particularly with @crazylegsjoe.

Mentioned it before, but clubs fail managers far more than managers fail clubs, it's a belief that I stand by with basically every sacking.

Stop applying plasters to a gaping wound, then being surprised when it doesn't heal a problem. 

Another manager in now will simply be a temporary fix, to limp on until the summer and hope we get a reaction, and we rinse and repeat and do it again. It's fucking terrible business as we continually end up paying off players and coaching teams who either fall out of favour, or weren't up to it in the first place.

[Al B]

I'm really just adding this post in as a sort of bookmark for myself, but I just have a feeling there's a turnaround on the way. I think Kettlewell will still be the manager come the end of the season, and I think we'll be comfortably mid-table.