Kmcalpin

I received a brief update on the recruitment process, by email this morning, from the Society. It doesn't say much but is welcome and attempts to bring the narrative back onto the stright and narrow. I would have thought however that it was more the responsibility of the CEO to have done that.

A very strange address and I just don't know what to make of it. I was expecting some clarification to emphasise that it's only a small number of fans involved and then to move onto progress in filling the vacancy. In other words an attempt to mend bridges, limit damage, and move forward. However that's not what we got. I now have more questions than answers. It's now seems that Stuart Kettlewell's issues may go back for some time and may be about more than just abuse from the stands. It seems odd therefore that Brian Caldwell didn't know about these issues until Monday. In short I don't know what took place but think he may have taken the right decision. I'm not sure either we should have been told some of the details about SK. Should they have remained confidential? In any event I wish him well. Football management is a high pressure occupation. I also found Brian Caldwell's morbid tone confusing. I get the upset this has caused the club and him personally, but thought his comment about agents and job applications a bit bizarre. Like it or not, as CEO, it's his responsibility to take forward the application and selection process. Its not nice, but a fact of life, that as soon as a manager leaves, irrespective of circumstances, there will be floods of applications.

That's my recollection too. I'm sure one of the flags was a league championship flag too. I don't recall which one it was.

I think that's a reasonable skill set on which to base our search. Certainly someone with a reputation for fielding attack minded sides would go a long way to rekindling the support's enthusiasm.

According to the BBC there had been over 100 applications as of an hour ago. No appointment before Sunday, which shouldn't shock anyone.

Its been unusually quiet on the vacancy front. No doubt our search for a new manager has been overshadowed by Stuart Kettlewell's departure story and I get that. However, everyone now needs to move on. I'm surprised however that the club hasn't released a short statement on the filling the vacancy. I know that we've been told that Stephen Frail will take over on a caretaker basis, but the club now needs to regain the narrative and be a bit more proactive.

Celtic's finest singing abusive chants about the Royal Family tonight (whether or not you support the Royal Family is irrelevant). Will that be reported by the Scottish media and several articles written about that?

He was suspended by Hibs in 2019 after an altercation with other employees.

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Yes, a decent shout. Raith tried to land him recently without success.

Just hope Celtic don't lay siege to Balcombe!

My last word on this topic before moving on. He certainly seems to have managed this episode poorly, although we don't know what took place behind closed doors. He's now made a few faux pas including approving the press statement and banning Under 14s from attending games alone. We'll cut him some slack though as he's reasonably new and still settling in.

Not strictly a former player, but Matty Connelly scored an OG tonight.

Whilst there's a lot of sense in what he says, I think it was inadvisable to say this just now. Maybe just adding fuel to the fire. We need to learn lessons and move on now. The club and Society have their work cut out to mend a few bridges. We need a united front.

No problem Gaz. I never thought about varying definitions of abuse but you're right.

A few folk have mentioned that to me.

Given Neil Lennon's time at Hibs, I doubt if he'll be considered, that's if he's even interested.

That may well be the case and I can't question you on that. Happy to accept your experience without quibble. A lot depends on where you were seated, if you we're distracted at the time, or were elsewhere ie toilets or food kiosk. However I can only repeat my experience. I saw and heard plenty of angry fans, but no abuse. All I'm asking you to do is to extend the same courtesy to me and accept my version of events as I experienced them.

Very much so. Its disappointing considering we're a fan owned club as well. A short statement condemning abuse from a small section of fans was all that was required, if absolutely neccessary. Who needs enemies when you have friends like this? Most clubs would have used an NDA in this situation.

Its very hard to say. We don't have a low down on out of work English managers or foreign possibilities. Also which Scottish managers with other clubs are not under contract or if they are would be "amenable to being approached"? John McGlynn has a patchy record in management and fans of Hearts, Livingston and certainly Raith Rovers might have something to say. Of the early names to be mentioned I'd say Scott Brown could be a possibility.

I can't say I was surprised to hear that SK has resigned. The signs have been there for some weeks now that he's been under pressure. He's been in trouble several times with officialdom. I don't know exactly what he said or how he said it but would be surprised if he merely said in a quiet voice "I think you've got it wrong ref". He criticised the fans in public and thats a definite no no - not much was made of that in the BBC or media. He then threw the players under a bus in public and thats never a good sign. Then we have rumours of a bust up in the dressing room and the players doing a passable impression of the walking dead in the Perth games. Now you can dismiss any one of these factors on their own as being something and nothing but not when taken together. Had he lost the fanbase? Not totally, but on the admittedly crude basis of an online survey I'd say somewhere between 70 and 80% of them. As said by a few others, I suspect there are other reasons for his departure and there's more than meets the eye to this. Thats not to dismiss the personal abuse issue though. I think the club could have handled it better as it seems to have to have allowed him free rein to say whatever he wanted in public. Very few other clubs would have allowed that degree of freedom. That said, perhaps there was more to the glowing reference that meets the eye. Anyway on a personal level, good luck to Stuart Kettlewell. A decent hard working pro.

100% on the nail. I'm not saying that the press statement put out by the club should have ignored the "abuse" issue but I think it was inadvisable to focus so heavily on it. Very few other clubs would have done so. the way in which it was writtten gives the impression that our fans are worse than those of other clubs. They're not. Yes, we have an undesirable element but which club doesn't?

Thats pretty much my view too. I was at both Perth games. I'm not saying that he wasn't abused but I never heard any of that. There was widescale booing at the culmination of both games and shouts of "resign" or similar but that was about it. I didn't hear any cursing, oathing or personal abuse. That would be out of order. I have to say our fans are no worse than those of any other club. I've not read or seen anything nasty on social media.

Yes changing managers can be costly but so can inaction. If we don't change and lose say 2/3 league places that will be costly. If we're caught up in a relegation dogfight that could be extremely costly. Relegation? If we wait until injuries clear up when will that be? McGinn out for the season; Robinson out until next season; Ox out for 2- 3 months, Seddon out for another 2 months. All that assumes we don't pick up any more injuries. We will not be able to field our strongest team this season.

Why Motherwell fans are turning against Stuart Kettlewell By Craig Fowler Columnist I'm going to tell you about a Scottish football manager. This man has been in charge of his current club for almost two years. He has a 40 per cent winning percentage from 92 games despite not managing one of the bigger clubs in the division. He currently has his team in the top half despite their best player being a teenager with less than 50 career top-flight games. And in each of the last two seasons he has been forced into selling his top goalscorer, having significantly improved each of those players' form, making the club over £2 million in the process. I am, of course, referring to Motherwell manager Stuart Kettlewell. A man who, for all the successes I laid out above, is not a popular figure with a sizeable chunk of the Fir Park faithful. Tensions increased last week when Kettlewell took aim at his critics in a pre-match press conference ahead of his side's trip to St Johnstone in the Scottish Premiership. "I’ll not be influenced by any noise or opinions from people that have never done the job and never dedicated their life to this game," he said. That line lacks context in isolation. Within the overall body of what he told reporters on Thursday, it appears more respectful and comes across as an honest assessment of what most managers think. Any coach who alters his team and tactics at the whim of supporter sentiment is not going to last in the job very long, as the team would soon become an incoherent mess with the gameplan ripped up on an almost weekly basis. However, Kettlewell has been in the game long enough to know that any direct shot at supporters is going to be isolated in the media and hungrily feasted on, which is what happened. Even by social media standards, Motherwell fans were outraged by the comment and it further strained a relationship which wasn't exactly harmonious beforehand. Other than Stephen Robinson, Kettlewell is Motherwell's most successful manager in over a decade. He inherited a mess of a squad heading for relegation when Stevie Hammell was sacked and quickly turned things around; he's kept their head above water despite being in charge of some average-looking squads; he rebounds from losing his best players and, as I'll reiterate again, they're in the top half of the league. This is despite a perplexing injury list that has had a Motherwell-supporting colleague of mine often wondering whether they host training on an active minefield. This injury list now includes Lennon Miller, a generational talent and the team's fulcrum. So why are some of the supporters so unhappy? It all goes back to an aspect of the game by which all managers are judged: the style of play. It is correct that the most important thing in football is winning matches. If you win games above expectation then you are going to be safe and secure in your job. However, the manner in which a team goes about trying to win those games still matters very much. That's because a manager who wins matches by playing a brand of football which supporters aren't happy with isn't going to accumulate much credit in the bank. So as soon as things start to go sour there is no grace period, the knives are immediately out, and that's what has happened at Motherwell recently following a sequence of just one victory in their last nine games. Motherwell are, statistically speaking, the most passive team in the league. No Scottish Premiership team presses the opposition with less intensity, which would be more forgivable in the eyes of fans if the team weren't also happy to concede possession to opponents. With just a 39.2 per cent share of the ball across this season so far, no side holds on to it for less time than Kettlewell's men. They also hold the third worst Expected Goals (xG) tally and second highest Expected Goals Against (xGA) mark, suggesting that the success of this season has been built on a foundation of sand. Putting that to the side, even if every single point accrued to this point has been deserved, for supporters it's been done without much joy. Even the one victory in the past nine, the 2-0 win over Aberdeen (*sarcastic slow clap*), fans went away from the stadium grumbling after a disheartening second-half performance against ten men. In the end, victory will always pacify, but there are rarely ever positives to take when it doesn't happen, which is why supporters were so furious with the exit to St Johnstone in the Scottish Cup. Motherwell went out with a whimper to an opponent who'd previously managed just two draws in nine games and have now beaten them in successive weekends. There are also questions with regards to squad building. Thirty-five players have been signed by Kettlewell but there aren't many undoubted success stories, and there are still gaps in the squad. The Fir Park corps is bursting with forward players but only Apostolos Stamatelopoulos is truly adept at holding the ball up and playing with his back to goal. Without him in recent games due to injury they've struggled to make it stick. Fans are also sick of seeing a three-at-the-back variation which gets played regardless of who is fit and in form. Ewan Wilson has made the breakthrough this season at left wing-back and impressed earlier in the campaign, but his form has struggled recently as he's been asked to carry too much in a system that only really functions at its best when the wing-backs are flying. So long as the Steelmen remain in the top half of the table then Kettlewell will remain in a job, regardless of what fans think of him. But you can basically throw a duvet sheet over the Premiership table from Motherwell in fifth to Kilmarnock in 11th. If the league position starts to reflect recent results then there aren't going to be many defenders left among the support when it comes time for the board to discuss the manager's position.