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Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons


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Wilkinson has been a funny one. For all he's tall, he's not physical, and for all he has a decent touch for a big lad, he's as slow as treacle.  He would need to be deployed in a very specific role which certainly isn't Kettlewell's wild centre mid shout, I think we can all agree.

He's scored a couple of decent efforts, but it just seems like one of those moves that hasn't worked out well for either party and an amicable parting of ways would be best for all concerned. If we could offload both him and Shaw and replace them with one really decent forward option in their place, then that would be the perfect scenario. Sounds promising on the outgoing front, let's see if we can improve on an incoming.

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On 24/12/2023 at 20:44, ropy said:

I really want to see us play with a formation where someone different does the wrestling with the centre backs and Biereth picks up the scraps and knock ons to run in on goal.

There was a bit of this yesterday, Bair seemed to be the central player and Biereth off to the left, Kettlewell should tinker with that set up, and make it work, presumably Shaw is injured for Tuesday so the midfield should be bolstered. I doubt Obika could produce whatever SK was expecting from Shaw.

Blaney, Butcher or Mugabi at the back?  Or a fourth right back?

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On 07/11/2023 at 23:17, ropy said:

I’ve decided I like Bair, he won his first header when he came on, he had a great run down the left to get a cross in, he was always looking to knock the ball down for a team mate.  But he did manage to clear the ball off the line when Biereth laid it on a plate for him.

We should have won that.

I joined the fan club in early November, get on board.

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13 hours ago, capt_oats said:

Anyway, on the point of daft team selections and Ketts tying himself in knots here's our form since Gorgeous Georgie Gent and Davor began starting.

Screenshot2023-12-30at20_12_37.thumb.png.8e2c7b6fe69450853efde897cc5bb98b.png

There was a point early door’s yesterday where Davor hit a cracking first time ball in behind the Livi full back for Gent to race on to, he left him for dead and put in a peach of a cross for Biereth- who in all honesty really should have scored. 

But still, tears in my eyes stuff. Reminiscent of Goss to Max Johnston last season and everything I’ve been screaming about for months. Crazy the difference having some natural pace and width in the wing back roles actually makes. Last few weeks is by far the most balanced we’ve looked in months.  

Think it was after the Hearts game where I really lost faith Kettlewell. When despite Gent’s impressive cameo in Perth a few days earlier, he started that day with Spittal at lwb and finished it with Mugabi up front. Then two games later he went up to Dingwall with SODS at lwb and Wilkinson in midfield.

I genuinely think Kettlewell’s been his own worst enemy at times this season. I honestly think if he’d started Gent from the Hearts game onwards and shown a bit more trust in Davor, we’d have picked up at least another win by now.

I’d say all things considered, he can count himself fairly fortunate to have gotten through to the window still in a job. However I’d have probably said the same about Robinson in the 18/19 season and in fairness, he learned from his mistakes and managed to turn things round significantly.

Like others have said, it’ll be interesting to see if Kettlewell makes the most of his reprieve and where he goes from here. 

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18 minutes ago, mcfadden22 said:

Anybody any idea why Hibs & St Johnstone were the only 2 teams not playing yesterday. I know they played one another on 16 Dec but it doesn’t seem fair that two teams get a week between fixtures while the others only get 3 days

They were due to play the League Cup finalists that week so rather than a blank weekend they brought this one forward. 

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21 minutes ago, mcfadden22 said:

Anybody any idea why Hibs & St Johnstone were the only 2 teams not playing yesterday. I know they played one another on 16 Dec but it doesn’t seem fair that two teams get a week between fixtures while the others only get 3 days

 

2 minutes ago, ropy said:

They were due to play the League Cup finalists that week so rather than a blank weekend they brought this one forward. 

What Ropy said

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3 hours ago, Casagolda said:

I genuinely think Kettlewell’s been his own worst enemy at times this season. I honestly think if he’d started Gent from the Hearts game onwards and shown a bit more trust in Davor, we’d have picked up at least another win by now.

Couldn't agree more with this.

Like I said earlier in the week, I feel like we've been in quite poor form, and he panicked a bit with the Wilkinson midfield nonsense, and tied himself in knots in fear of Gent's defensive frailties/his off the field stuff, and Davor being thrown about like an empty trackie in Paisley early in the season.

I thought the criticism of the second half was a bit over the score yesterday, we're a team low on confidence keeping a team fairly comfortably at arms length. Baby steps.

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30 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

Actual fucking LOL

Other than, I suppose, Mika there isn’t another player at the club I would have trusted (anticipated/expected?) to pull that off.

The club video of his first showed it to be a better finish than I first thought.

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15 hours ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

I really don't get how some on the match thread are bent out of shape about the second half performance. We scored three goals, had another disallowed, as well as two or three other good chances before half time. Instances of us having a first half like that and continuing to play with such fluency in the second half must be few and far between. Today was about finding a way to win a game, having not done so for so long, and we did it. 

It'll be interesting what happens now. Kettlewell has only really had one long good run and one long bad run as manager. I wonder if this will kick off a good run of form, whether we'll revert to the form that we were in or whether we'll finally see us win, draw and lose games in a more equal proportion.

I'm usually pretty optimistic but I had a bit of a moan in the match thread about that second half. 

Livi are unbelievably shite, they've scored 3 goals in 12 games and taken 2 points from 36. As good as we were in the first half, their performance was utterly shambolic. As soon as they changed shape and got organised they completely nullified us. I don't think we'd have beaten any other team in the league with yesterday's performance so for me nothing has really changed. I agree completely with you about finding a way to win a game, but I'm still pretty pessimistic that this will be any sort of turn around - there is no evidence that we gain confidence from results that should give us a lift (last minute equalisers, 1-1 at Parkhead), and that second half performance just added to that. 

Tuesday will be interesting. A decent result and I could start to believe there's some sort of shift in the mentality, yesterday did little to change that though. 

 

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