Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[TheMotherwell1]

19 minutes ago, Vietnam91 said:

The knee jerk in this thread after going away to a team with 18x the budget and recording a 2-1 loss with at least three, possibly four guaranteed starters out is the only idiotic thing I've seen today.

Stama got 25' last weekend, played in a bounce match in midweek where he probably got a commensurate amount of time in the legs or more and started today. Throw in a few training sessions. Wouldn't a natural progression be 25' to a bit more vs Everton to a half of football?

We have no idea on what's going on between the manager or physio's, we have no idea if it was felt there was merit to him being on the pitch at the start opposed to the second half for some advantage (none of us foresaw it so I doubt Sevco did too), we have no idea if he was due to be pulled at halftime or later.

Your issue seems to stem from the fact he was introduced from the start where the manager decided on when his game ends opposed to being introduced later where the referee's final whistle defines it.

I do not expect us to beat Rangers. Decent enough result that we can build on.

I think SK has done a very decent job since he came in. However, his inability to manage and put together a balanced squad is clearly hurting us.

We could’ve and should’ve started Robinson today and would’ve achieved the exact  result and not lost our main striker to injury. We’ve took a risk that never paid off and will pay the consequences of doing so.

He admitted last Saturday that he was blowing out his arse. It’s the exact same scenario as the Callachan scenario. In our current situation with a bunch of injuries it was f**king stupid to start Stamatelopolous. 
 

 

[DukDukGoose]

On 09/08/2024 at 14:37, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

Surely we've learned some lessons about playing people before they are match fit.

Well...

[well fan for life]

I would understand starting Stamatelopolous if it's a must win game. If it's the cup game coming up then you'd roll the dice. To risk him in a game like today is utterly stupid though.

 

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

1) Is there another option who can play there until he's up to speed?

2) Would it be detrimental to our season as a whole if we were to lose him to injury?

3) Have we already suffered muscle injuries when players were lacking match fitness?

4) Will the result of the game be unlikely to change by him starting?

This is probably the TL;DR version of my last post but with the answer to all four of those questions being yes, surely it's a no brainier not start him.

Edited August 10 by crazylegsjoe_mfc

[Jastons6]

1 hour ago, ropy said:

Do you think we will see the other keeper in the cup match to keep him interested? 

Hegyi did nothing wrong in the cup games, I don't think West Ham would have sent him up here if they didn't expect him to play 

[rowsdower]

11 minutes ago, D-Fens Foster said:

I wouldn’t start shouting Kettlewell out just yet but i’m not far away. 
Scottish football success stories pretty much always involve wingers. 
This wing back pish is really bursting my balls now. O’Donnell is a f**kin solid right back he isn’t a wing back. 

I really want Kettlewell to succeed but he’s making it hard with this wing back shite

Funny, because prior to SK joining we were all talking about how bad a RB O'Donnell was and how he would be better suited to RWB.

He is frequently our only out ball, and has been steady in that position for a while. Signing Koutroumbis and Kaleta suggests he's not the long term solution there, but he's hardly our biggest problem.

We had Lennon Miller and Ewan Wilson at attacking mid. They were hardly the worst players on the park, but we shouldn't be messing up the development of our young players to address a short term need.

I saw plenty of mentions of us only passing back, but there were many occasions where there was literally no one in a forward position to play the ball too.

I like wingers, and whether SK likes them or not, it would be nice to have at least one give us an option.

[Ron Aldo]

Kettlewell really does my nut in. He's clearly a good coach and can get the best out of individual players but when it comes to managing a team he's miles off it. The decision to play Ap Stam today is purely a management decision and he's f**ked it. 

He makes some daft decisions in general but playing a guy, who he knows is unfit, from the start in a game we're pretty much constant tly chasing is just daft. 

I don't think he's completely blameless mind you. What are the medical staff advising him? Regardless, Kettlewell will have had the final say and if a bunch of guys on a football forum can see it's a risk to play him from the start then why can't a professional football manager do the same? 

[D-Fens Foster]

2 minutes ago, rowsdower said:

Funny, because prior to SK joining we were all talking about how bad a RB O'Donnell was and how he would be better suited to RWB.

He is frequently our only out ball, and has been steady in that position for a while. Signing Koutroumbis and Kaleta suggests he's not the long term solution there, but he's hardly our biggest problem.

We had Lennon Miller and Ewan Wilson at attacking mid. They were hardly the worst players on the park, but we shouldn't be messing up the development of our young players to address a short term need.

I saw plenty of mentions of us only passing back, but there were many occasions where there was literally no one in a forward position to play the ball too.

I like wingers, and whether SK likes them or not, it would be nice to have at least one give us an option.

I thought Wilson actually looked decent in midfield. He got caught out a few times but he looked solid for the most part. This is the most frustrating thing for me is that we aren’t a bad team but we just don’t have that creativity. 
i’ve seen 3 90 minutes so far this season Clyde, Partick and today. 
Every game has been crying out for Spittal. I know it isn’t easy tae find creative midfielders but it seems like we aren’t even trying

[D-Fens Foster]

1 minute ago, Ron Aldo said:

Kettlewell really does my nut in. He's clearly a good coach and can get the best out of individual players but when it comes to managing a team he's miles off it. The decision to play Ap Stam today is purely a management decision and he's f**ked it. 

He makes some daft decisions in general but playing a guy, who he knows is unfit, from the start in a game we're pretty much constant tly chasing is just daft. 

I don't think he's completely blameless mind you. What are the medical staff advising him? Regardless, Kettlewell will have had the final say and if a bunch of guys on a football forum can see it's a risk to play him from the start then why can't a professional football manager do the same? 

Very good sum up of things

[ropy]

2 minutes ago, D-Fens Foster said:

I thought Wilson actually looked decent in midfield. He got caught out a few times but he looked solid for the most part. This is the most frustrating thing for me is that we aren’t a bad team but we just don’t have that creativity. 
i’ve seen 3 90 minutes so far this season Clyde, Partick and today. 
Every game has been crying out for Spittal. I know it isn’t easy tae find creative midfielders but it seems like we aren’t even trying

Spittal got another 20 minutes for Hearts today, hasn’t made his mark yet.

[Vietnam91]

Before anyone is promoted from the youths or anyone comes back from injury, this is how we go into Kilmarnock if we go back to a 5-3-2 against a peer group. If Blamer starts and gets injured cotton fitted sheets will not be safe.

[D-Fens Foster]

1 minute ago, ropy said:

Spittal got another 20 minutes for Hearts today, hasn’t made his mark yet.

He was a big part of the Van Veen/Bair success. I really want Miller tae be a success but he ain’t Spittal. It seems like we’re trying tae force him into that role this season and it’s not fair on him or us. 

[Handsome_Devil]

5 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

1) Is there another option who can play there until he's up to speed?

2) Would it be detrimental to our season as a whole if we were to lose him to injury?

3) Have we already suffered muscle injuries when players were lacking match fitness?

This is probably the TL;DR version of my last post but with the answer to all three of those questions being yes, surely it's a no brainier not start him.

4) would getting him sharper with 45 minutes in a game we'll probably lose anyway possibly help us in a crucial cup tie next week and winnable games beyond?

There's always risk-reward but there's still no way I believe Kettlewell would have started him without the approval of the medical team.

I certainly blame SK for signing injury prone guys. The guys who were fit - or in Stama's case not fully match fit but fundamentally healthy - straining, tearing and breaking things all over the place is definitely not just bad luck but I'm looking more at the professionals in that regard than the manager's office.

I do, however, look a bit to the manager's office as to why he hasn't cajoled the board into making adjustments....after approaching 18 months with a decent record behind him, and millions in the bank that he generated, it wouldn't seem unreasonable.

Who knows, maybe he's tried hard for this, been rebuffed and I'm sure he's frustrated as everyone else. But regardless of how we got here, we clearly need to change going forward.

[TheMotherwell1]

4 minutes ago, Vietnam91 said:

Before anyone is promoted from the youths or anyone comes back from injury, this is how we go into Kilmarnock if we go back to a 5-3-2 against a peer group. If Blamer starts and gets injured cotton fitted sheets will not be safe.

11 new signings btw.

[Handsome_Devil]

12 minutes ago, D-Fens Foster said:

Every game has been crying out for Spittal. I know it isn’t easy tae find creative midfielders but it seems like we aren’t even trying

There's no doubt we're missing him massively and losing Nicholson robbed us of our in-house replacement.

I think the creativity issue went completely to hell not just because Nicholson got injured but both wing-backs ended up out all at the same time.

We already saw today that Seddon will offer a useful outlet on the left. Sign an attacking mid (and a second till January) which we were probably looking for already anyway, get JK fit on the right and you'd back us to improve a fair bit.

All theoretical of course but as stodgy as we've been in the last three games, it's not like there isn't an obvious path to take.

[welldaft]

19 minutes ago, Handsome_Devil said:

4) would getting him sharper with 45 minutes in a game we'll probably lose anyway possibly help us in a crucial cup tie next week and winnable games beyond?

There's always risk-reward but there's still no way I believe Kettlewell would have started him without the approval of the medical team.

I certainly blame SK for signing injury prone guys. The guys who were fit - or in Stama's case not fully match fit but fundamentally healthy - straining, tearing and breaking things all over the place is definitely not just bad luck but I'm looking more at the professionals in that regard than the manager's office.

I do, however, look a bit to the manager's office as to why he hasn't cajoled the board into making adjustments....after approaching 18 months with a decent record behind him, and millions in the bank that he generated, it wouldn't seem unreasonable.

Who knows, maybe he's tried hard for this, been rebuffed and I'm sure he's frustrated as everyone else. But regardless of how we got here, we clearly need to change going forward.

I agree with your posts 99% of the time.

But starting Stama in a game we had little likelihood of winning was a massive own goal. 

The Manager has the final say. Up to this point I had sympathy for Kettlewell but whatever injury Stama has is squarely on the decision to play him from the start.

I mean if you pick a fight with a guy that batters you every time. Eventually you will avoid him. 

If we had no injuries then fine you could almost accept it. But everything around you is screaming don’t take that risk with our star player. 

There is NO excusing what happened today. I hope he is not out for long. But it would not surprise any of us if it was at least a couple of months. 

 

 

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

17 minutes ago, Handsome_Devil said:

4) would getting him sharper with 45 minutes in a game we'll probably lose anyway possibly help us in a crucial cup tie next week and winnable games beyond?

There's always risk-reward but there's still no way I believe Kettlewell would have started him without the approval of the medical team.

I certainly blame SK for signing injury prone guys. The guys who were fit - or in Stama's case not fully match fit but fundamentally healthy - straining, tearing and breaking things all over the place is definitely not just bad luck but I'm looking more at the professionals in that regard than the manager's office.

I do, however, look a bit to the manager's office as to why he hasn't cajoled the board into making adjustments....after approaching 18 months with a decent record behind him, and millions in the bank that he generated, it wouldn't seem unreasonable.

Who knows, maybe he's tried hard for this, been rebuffed and I'm sure he's frustrated as everyone else. But regardless of how we got here, we clearly need to change going forward.

Does a footballer ever start a league game when the intention is to remove them at half time? I'd have been all for him building on his minutes from last week as a sub, when players had tired and the game had opened up, but I genuinely see there was little to gain from him chasing shadows from the start.

I do agree that Kettlewell would have got a professional opinion before he played him today. However, I think there's still a bit in his court to weigh up the risk based on what I wrote in the last post. I'd also say that taking fitness aside, I don't think, personally, that starting him was the right way to go about today's game tactically.

[camer0n_mcd]

31 minutes ago, Vietnam91 said:

Before anyone is promoted from the youths or anyone comes back from injury, this is how we go into Kilmarnock if we go back to a 5-3-2 against a peer group. If Blamer starts and gets injured cotton fitted sheets will not be safe.

No chance that'll be our lineup next Sunday, by then we'll have had 5+ new serious injuries.

[Handsome_Devil]

1 minute ago, welldaft said:

But starting Stama in a game we had little likelihood of winning was a massive own goal. 

The Manager has the final say. Up to this point I had sympathy for Kettlewell but whatever injury Stama has is squarely on the decision to play him from the start.

It certainly turned out that way. 

The manager has the final say but on matters of health, fitness and rehab he's going to trust the professionals, and you'll never convince me otherwise that they didn't approve the plan.

And if they approved - perhaps even encouraged - a 45-minute run out, you think SK should overrule their years of experience and expertise? Clearly we can be facetious and say yes because the medical team seem shit and we'd all sack them but you can only piss with etc.

 

[Handsome_Devil]

20 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

Does a footballer ever start a league game when the intention is to remove them at half time? I'd have been all for him building on his minutes from last week as a sub, when players had tired and the game had opened up, but I genuinely see there was little to gain from him chasing shadows from the start.

I have no idea...I expect he'd have been given a maximum by our medical experts, what it was is pure speculation. I can't imagine 45 would have been thought safe though 50 fatal but who knows. There are obvious pros and cons to starting him to gain fitness but fundamentally it's not any less logical than having a guy on the bench for 20 minutes at the end. 

Edit to add that tactically I probably wouldn't have done it either (tbh I'd mentally written off today so gave our team no thought whatsoever) but that's not really the point we're kicking the arse out of, it's whether SK was irresponsible in even playing him. Caveats about us not knowing the story, but on that alone you either say he was because of the result or he wasn't because he trusted the process and it's not on him someone else screwed up within that.

Edited August 10 by Handsome_Devil