wellfan

You could blame Caldwell for that.

I can see Caldwell moving on at the end of the season. He came in at a difficult time and I don’t think he’s handled a few things very well so far.

I can only assume Frail has put him on the naughty step for hurting his best pals feelings.

You’ve completely missed the point of my post. According to Frail, surrendering possession wasn’t a deliberate tactic. It just continued to happen because we’re generally shit. And if it was a deliberate tactic, which it wasn’t, then that’s fine, so long as we have the players to make it work effectively and to score more goals than the opposition, which we don’t.

If we win today, the Kettlewell debacle will very quickly be old news, but the former won’t happen.

He shouldn’t have to say anything, although these things always come out in the wash anyway. He’s currently the victim according the press etc, but I’m sure that may change in time. My point was that the media has had a feeding frenzy on what Caldwell said via the resignation statement etc, and not because of anything Kettlewell has said directly on his resignation. Kettlewell’s tactics were indeed shite and Crags has already said his piece on that. The true victims here are our eyeballs. Not Kettlewell.

We now have a 33 man first team squad, not including those we’ve sent out on loan. 10 of these players are loans. Strangely, we now have 11 forwards, with 6 of these being loanees. These are bonkers numbers. But what about the midfield?!

My point wasn’t about stopping using loan players - as I see the value in the system - it was more about not relying on them and/or having 8 of them in at any one time.

Even as Kettlewell’s biggest critic, I don’t think that’s fair to say about him at the moment. The resignation narrative has been led by Caldwell, albeit echoing what Kettlewell told him, but I don’t think Kettlewell has had a fair chance to publicly say his piece as yet.

Another point would be trying to not rely on loan players. It’s something I highlighted last season under Kettlewell. I think I was trying to make the point that loan players should be the exception and not the rule. Plus, I’d rather we didn’t spend our time and budget developing numerous other clubs’ players each season, only for them to bugger off and leave us back to square one, again.

Stuart McCall, please! His win % and PPM are the best I've seen in my four decades as a 'Well fan. Halcyon days.

"Callan Elliot spent a spell at Motherwell but admitted the weather had not suited him." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czx8pllvpv7o I guess him being too afraid to remove his tracksuit is what led to him playing zero competitive minutes for Motherwell.

Aye. You have to wonder who may be leaving if that's the case.

The manager bought a bunch of forks and tried to use them to consume a bowl of soup, but the soup was actually water and the forks turned out to be ladders. Apart from the odd success here and there, it's generally been a total clusterfuck since late 2023.

When can he start?

It, therefore, seems that regularly conceding 70% possession was the result of us just being total shit due to Kettleball. However, at least Kettlewell now has a highlight reel demonstrating the art of turning an active possession approach into a passive one.

Frail confirming that Mair has the same injury as Oxborough confirms for me that someone has indeed placed a hex over the club. Or perhaps Kettlewell has been breaking mirrors to save him from taking his rage out on the match officials.

I would suggest that if you (and others) do take the decision to not renew your season ticket, that you put the reason in writing to the Club and the Well Society. They need to see that their (in)actions that negatively affect the fans of a fan-owned club have real financial consequences.

There's clearly a better balance to be struck between quality vs quantity at a club like Motherwell, and I don't think Kettlewell and Daws ever got that balance right.

🥴

And in doing so has also done himself no favours at all. I think we’ll see the new Chairman address things, hopefully in a much more diplomatic way, to try to smooth things over.

I guess we’ll be waiting a while to find out as the CEO seems to be in mourning instead of doing his job.

This isn’t going to end well.

For the hard of hearing and illiterate amongst Scottish football, please note Kettlewell did not lose his job, he quit. Putting the concerns around Kettlewell’s reasoning for quitting aside for now, a red flag for me is that Caldwell seems to have been watching a different run of games and performances to the fans of late. And let’s not forget that bad run in 2023. We have been utter shite and have clearly been at risk of free-fall, but Caldwell’s words would have you believe otherwise and suggest that he was generally content with Kettlewell. Perhaps he wasn’t, but him appearing to publicly side with a former manager over the fans will only fuel the unhelpful ‘us vs them’ narrative that has developed following that resignation statement. This whole debacle has unnecessarily grown arms and legs, and I don’t think it’s over doing so.

Kettlewell and Caldwell have shown us that the limited budget line is a bit of a red herring. We can’t be skint at the same time as being able to build a squad as big as it currently is. I’m certainly not suggesting we’re flush enough to afford Campbell, but we’d be a helluva lot closer to affording quality players if we didn’t pad out the squad with a quantity of injury prone guff and gambles.