MJC

No, the manager has my full support.

I’m certainly not making any judgements on him yet I’m just asking the question. As I said earlier he has earned his chance to make his own signings and give them the chance to settle in. Early signs are uninspiring but only time will tell how they work for us in the new season.

Well as things stand it’s a case of “so far, so good” from Stuart Kettlewell’s management of the team. To come in in February and lead us to relative safety from the position we were in when he took over was an excellent achievement so he deserved huge credit for that. What now though as we enter his first full season? We’ve lost KvV and Johnston, two of the key players in the Kettlewell revival last season and the signings we’ve made so far and the squad options aren’t exactly inspiring. But there is of course still time and the manager deserves his chance to get his first full transfer window under his belt before any judgements are made. At the moment he has done well enough but I have concerns heading into the new season. edit: just noticed the Stuart Kettlewell discussion thread. Feel free to delete or merge this.

He has a point, I don’t see anything wrong with what he has said. I don’t think it’s a suggestion that we actually sign any of those players mentioned, rather players of those standard who are quite a bit better than what we currently have on our books.

Absolutely agree, after all we’re Motherwell not Barcelona. We’re a wee club punching way above our weight. I’ve been proudly riding the rollercoaster that is Motherwell FC for years and am aware that we were in the first division in the early eighties. There’s still plenty of time for us to bring in signings and welcome them to our great wee club as we continue to exist to improve people’s lives. ’Mon the Well

We’re always ‘skint’ or so the club keep telling us.

If this is the standard of players we are bringing in then we are in big trouble. I am fully aware that we have budget restrictions (hiya weeyin, spiderpig etc) but signing St.Johnstone flops certainly doesn’t bode well. As things stand the first team lack goal threat and any sort of creativity and given how much we relied on van Veen last season for goals then you’ve got to be concerned about how we are going to cope without him.

Us drawing Airdrie give me the fear as they would almost certainly beat us.

Twitter or the standards of the contents of my posts? No arguments on the Twitter front to be fair…

You not read the club Twitter page then?

“Precautionary” according to Jim Goodwin on the radio. May well be the case but we heard Hammell saying similar on several occasions when Moult wasn’t featuring for us last season. The guy is made of glass these days. Still, Bring him home!!!!

As I said yesterday if we need to rely on Obika and Wilkinson for goals then we are going to be in trouble. Early days or not it is clear that neither of them will do.

We badly need to address the frontline. Has Steven Fletcher been signed by anyone yet?

Definitely. These games are tricky and often not a good indicator of how the season will go. The main thing is getting through them and winning them, which we have managed in in two from three so far. There are obvious concerns about the strength of the squad heading into the new season but we still have time to address the problem areas, one of which is up front. I don’t have a crystal ball but if we go into the new season with Obika and Wilkinson as our main ‘goal threats’ then we better hope that someone can step up and do what Liam Donnelly did in 19/20 and score goals from midfield/defence.

Job done, that’s the main thing.

We’re three League Cup group stage games into the season. If we are a bit mentality fatigued by that at this stage then god help us!

Conor Sammon would be an upgrade on him going by what we’ve seen so far.

Overall not great but we’re growing into the game and most importantly have the lead. Slattery looks a different player so far.

Kelly back in goal, Casey starts and Obika and Wilkinson start up top.

No chance. He’s done and he’ll be lucky to play 15 games.

Moult opens his account for Dundee Utd.

Yes and that’s all fair enough. And as I say I was one of those fans when Faddy initially rejoined for his 2nd spell and Moult came back on loan last year. But once they have come back and failed miserably to reclaim their status as top goalscorer because they couldn’t get anywhere near fit enough then I don’t see the logic in wanting us to try going down the same road again with them. That, in my opinion, is when the ‘romantic’ ends and ‘flogging a dead horse’ begins.

Yes every club has cult heroes and I fully agree that Faddy and Moult are two cult heroes of ours. But at the same time we can’t give players game time when it is clear that they aren’t cutting it anymore, for whatever reason. I was delighted when McFadden returned in February 2013 and then re-signed that July. But by the end of the 13/14 season he was clearly finished and that should have been the end of his playing days at our club. I was also pleased when we took the gamble and re-signed Louis Moult last August because I too wanted to believe and hoped that he would “have one last run in him”. However once it became clear in both players cases that it just wasn’t happening anymore then I accepted that the gamble wasn’t paying off and we needed to cut our losses and move on. That doesn’t diminish what both of them did for us when they were at their peak with us and nothing will ever take that away, but as a club we can’t afford to keep looking backward and hoping that Faddy is going to wind the clock back to when he was 19 years old with a red stripe in his hair and attracting interest from big clubs down south, or that Moult is going to go back to the player he was before he left us in 2017 and his horrendous injury luck since then. Sometimes some things are best left in the past.

I like both players by my point stems from the way in which we, imo, gave Faddy too many chances after it was clear he was finished. He looked done in 2013/14 and then he left at the end of that season, which seemed like his time had come to a natural end. He then goes to St.Johnstone, hardly features, we re-sign him again and he offers even less this time. As you say it was depressing and sad to watch him in his latter spell, but he continued to get game time. And then this summer, some of our fans wanted us to give a similar chance to Moult even though he was with us last season and we had to cut short a loan deal because he couldn’t get fit for the first time in five years. Now why would anyone want us to do that? To use up a wage and a place in the squad for a player that we know for a fact has had horrendous injuries over the past five years and who we released from a loan deal just a few months ago? I can’t see any other reason than for sentimentality. As I said, no one is bigger than the club and there is no room for sentimental signings. And to answer your final question, no I wouldn’t.

He was yes, no argument on that front, but Moult last season even when it was clear that he wasn’t able to contribute anything to the team still had fans gushing about his limited contributions and demanding he be given more game time. It was the same when Faddy returned for his third spell when he was clearly done, he could do absolutely no wrong. I’m not comparing the two players, just the way they are viewed by some Motherwell fans, there is a similarity there. But neither of them and no other player, coach or manager is bigger than the club itself no matter how good they were or what they achieved or contributed. I support a club, not an individual.