Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[Swello]

I can't go from saying - "it's a meaningless game" to being raging when we lose it, so I won't do that. I'm not sure what you can tell from last night other than the fact that we were playing against a better team than Saturday, our level dropped pretty considerably as soon as we went behind to a farce of a penalty and everyone's view on our defence, goalkeeper and manager will remain unchanged.

Last night was (jointly with that night in Dingwall), our worst defeat of the season and one of the very few games where we've been completely out of it - so I don't feel like it's significant in any way. If we beat Saints on Sunday (and I think we'll do that), then our bottom 6 has been fine.

 

[Al B]

"Lads, I've got a cracking idea for our next Youtube video!"

"Ah nice one! What's the plan?"

"Well, we get Liam Kelly to sit and describe to everyone who watches it, in intricate detail, the tricks he uses to try and fool a penalty taker into going the way he wants him to"

"Ahhh that's a winner! Let's get it filmed"

 

*several days later*

 

"I can't believe Maolida didn't fall for my fake one way then dive the same way move! He just rolled it into the empty side!"

 

We're SO  Motherwell sometimes it's almost a parody.

Edited May 16 by Al B

[joewarkfanclub]

2 hours ago, witchfindergeneral said:

I like Kettlewell. But I think his tendency to overthink/put square pegs in round holes is a massive issue though. Last night we are chasing and he takes SOD off for Davor and still keeps his 3 at the back. Then all the midfielders are just running around aimlessly.

Hopefully over the summer he gets players that will give him different options and he actually uses them.

I thought we had gone to a 4.

McGinn seemed to come out to right back and was pushing forward in support of Paton and Spittal.

[Busta Nut]

I also don't like this "meaningless game" stuff either.

Considering how much we were going on about investment we can't just turn our noses up at positional prize money.
 

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

Kettlewell had a bad run of games without a win. Our form has more than recovered since then. We don't need to revisit the autumn after every single defeat - it gets boring.

Three clean sheets for any reason is poor. However, 55 goals for any season is pretty good. In our position, having good attacking stats will normally mean compromising defensive stats.

We have achieved our expectations this season, league wise. If we don't have outside investment, I think we have to accept that 7th - 9th is going to be a good season, however unsexy that may be.

Kettlewell hasn't had a clean slate with his squad, like Robinson got shortly after becoming manager, or indulged in increasing it like Alexander or Hammell were. He had to bring numbers down whilst lumbered with all the deadwood of the previous regimes. For that reason, he gets slack this season. He is going to get that clean slate this summer, so I will be happy to judge him more going forward.

 

Edited May 16 by crazylegsjoe_mfc

[RandomGuy.]

Your judgement on Kettlewell should depend on whether you think he's learning and improving, or whether he's just fluking onto things that work and when you lose a key player it'll all fall apart for a while as he flails around trying to stumble onto something else that works.

To me he's still reminding me of Davidson who was always doing enough when needed to keep his job, but was never actually learning anything and just kept making the same mistakes constantly. The one benefit you have is Kettlewell isn't saddling your squad with dross to kill it slowly.

[well fan for life]

3 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

The one benefit you have is Kettlewell isn't saddling your squad with dross to kill it slowly.

Might bookmark this for around November time and we'll see how this summer turns out. 

[Busta Nut]

29 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Your judgement on Kettlewell should depend on whether you think he's learning and improving, or whether he's just fluking onto things that work and when you lose a key player it'll all fall apart for a while as he flails around trying to stumble onto something else that works.

Nailed it for me. I think he's learning f**k all. The win v Rangers is always a plus. Coming back to beat Dundee was also great. We're complete shit otherwise and since Christmas we're getting by on beating RC and Livi. 

If people are happy with that then fair enough. There's too many folk who don't want to be tagged as a moaner or othe shite patter like knicker wetter etc.

As much as I dislike it just now. The team and manager have my support in game. I only moan like f**k on here or to my pals. 

[welldaft]

Kettlewell has guided us to safety when relegation or the play off was a distinct possibility.

He has then guided us to safety with one of the lowest budgets of any team in league. 

Do I wish we were top 6 and in a Euro spot. Yes. Did I expect him to achieve that this season. No.

He has done his job and reasonably well in the circumstances. Next season will be a crucial one. He was hamstrung by players on longer contracts than they should have been on. Next season is a clean a slate and for me more close judgement will follow based on signings. 

You have seen with Hibs and Aberdeen how successful they have been binning Manager after Manager. If he can get us battling for top 6 and keeping clear of bottom 2 spots then I see no need for any change in the near future. 

[MurrayWell]

I'm still not 100 per cent convinced by Kettlewell, but I think he's probably gotten more right than wrong overall this season, although I thought he was an absolute goner after our December defeat in Dingwall. Not a glowing review, but I'm fine with him getting the summer to rebuild and then see what he can do. 

He's managed to comfortably keep us up, while trimming the wage bill and helping us recover a bit from a few seasons of overspending,  by all accounts, so I think he at least deserves the chance to bring in his squad and see what we can do next season. The squad clearly have his back and we've seen consistent improvement in a number of players, so I think the board have been vindicated in not emptying him in December. 

[welldaft]

As to this Sunday. The game may not mean that much, although we can still get 8th spot were we to win and Hibs don’t. An extra £60k is not to be laughed at.

But more importantly it is the last game of the season at home. I don’t want my last trip to Fir Park this season to be a loss. I never want any trip to be a loss but more so the last game. 

I also would like Raith or Partick to come up for some freshness. So as much as I don’t dislike the farmers I think they will find the play offs a tougher prospect than Ross C most probably. 

I want us to be right at it on Sunday. Get a win and send us off to the summer in a positive mood

Edited May 16 by welldaft

[Handsome_Devil]

37 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Your judgement on Kettlewell should depend on whether you think he's learning and improving, or whether he's just fluking onto things that work and when you lose a key player it'll all fall apart for a while as he flails around trying to stumble onto something else that works.

That's a fair set of conditions but raises the interesting question of what timeframe you put on it.

In general, you would never expect a player to be the finished article at 21 and he'd probably already have made a couple of seasons of mistakes. With more to come probably.

Similarly, the chance of getting a fully rounded manager by age 40 is virtually non-existent. You want a manager who learns from his mistakes but you also want one who has the courage of his convictions so he's not going to flip on things overnight.

So if you accept that changing manager regularly is a recipe for disaster, you probably tolerate quite a few mistakes unless your situation is looking fatal.

It used to be quite common a manager would get two to three years to build a team before being judged. You can't quite turn back the clock but I think several clubs would do better by taking a deep breath, enduring a bad season and letting the same manager attempt a rebuild than emptying the bath every 12-18 months.

On SK specifically, every Motherwell manager makes mistakes. He did well in 2023 and he kept us up comfortably this year despite what he will claim is a budget disadvantage to several peers (in terms of what he could freely spend, not what appears on the accounts). I'm undecided about whether he'll do well or not next season but he's earned the chance to try.

 

[Handsome_Devil]

10 minutes ago, welldaft said:

I also would like Raith or Partick to come up for some freshness. So as much as I don’t dislike the farmers I think they will find the play offs a tougher prospect than Ross C most probably. 

I've been convinced the 11th side would win the playoff for a while but from what you see and read of St Johnstone, they'll be in bother if they don't escape on Sunday. County have mistakes in them, as we saw on Saturday, but their attitude to the fight just seems better.

It's quite remarkable St J managed to find two decent (from the outside at least) strikers in January, have arguably a top two goalie in the league and are still dismal.

And for all it doesn't matter much, if we go through a full season without beating them in four attempts, it'll annoy me considerably. Though they'll probably be more annoyed at not beating us having led each game so far.

[Vietnam91]

3 hours ago, witchfindergeneral said:

Our downfall all season has been the defence and we all know it needs improvement. But there are also things you can't account for i.e Kelly clangers/constant SOD handballs/pish refereeing/heids gone red cards!

The issue with the defence is collectively they conspire to be less than the sum of their individual parts.

[Mr Hahn]

I'm not sure if I'm in the minority or not of those who watch us regularly but I've liked Kettlewell since he got the job and am more than content for him to be our manager for the foreseeable. 

Some of the criticisms of him are reasonable and not trying to pretend he's perfect but honestly, I don't know if there's much better out there for us. He doesn't have much of a plan B outside of his system and the defence has been an ongoing issue this year, most notably from set pieces.

But the team is also pretty fun to watch in my opinion especially given our budget level. We score a load of goals and our attacking play is entertaining. He's improved / got the best out of several players in his time. The obvious one being Bair, but Spittal, Gent, Furlong, Johnston, Goss, Van Veen, O'Donnell (from a low baseline under previous two managers) all looked like better players under Kettlewell.  

His team also has fight in it. We've taken draws / wins from some very unlikely positions this season. Can certainly argue it's taken some poor play to get us into some of the positions in the first place, but a team that doesn't give up and can fight back when taking something looks unlikely is something that comes from the leadership and management.

It's possible my baseline level of expectation is low after watching Alexander and Hammell's teams. Especially Alexander's side made me consider whether I wanted to attend football matches anymore for the first time in my life. When we were winning, it was shite, when we drew, it was shite and when we lost, it was really shite. Some of the football his team served up made me embarrassed to be a Motherwell fan.

So now, to have an entertaining team that isn't perfect but comfortably stays out of trouble, leaves me happy enough. Kettlewell's poor run this season wasn't great but I'm glad we stuck with him and always felt to me that he'd get out of it eventually for whatever reason. That differs from Alexander and Hammell's poor runs where I honestly couldn't see us winning a game again.

Tl:dr - I'm happy enough with Kettlewell, he's considerably better than what we had before.

 

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

20 minutes ago, Mr Hahn said:

Tl:dr - I'm happy enough with Kettlewell, he's considerably better than what we had before.

You are spot on with your assessment in my opinion. 

I'm glad we've broken the vicious cycle of sacking managers and stuck by him this season, after he recovered from a very tricky spell. Continuity is good for a number of reasons, but Kettlewell's era so far has coincided with us being run much more efficiently as a business. We aren't paying three managers and we don't have over 30 first team players on our books any more. The constant cycle of replacing a manager and his players can only negatively impact what limited budget we had. As I said in my last post, he can be fairly judged next season with his own team. 

[Alanos]

18 hours ago, MurrayWell said:

Wasn't Bair who was off, was Miller.

Did the ball not get played through off of a Hibs player?

Is that offside or not these days?

[boozyBJ]

Steven McLean couldn’t wait to get his flag up on several occasions

[Stevie Kirk]

1 hour ago, Vietnam91 said:

The issue with the defence is collectively they conspire to be less than the sum of their individual parts.

Nailed it .

[Swello]

15 minutes ago, boozyBJ said:

Steven McLean couldn’t wait to get his flag up on several occasions

Didn't realise it was him at the time - but it got to the point where everyone was clapping every time he did it