Stuart Kettlewell discussion thread

[pretzel]

I remember reading a post on Pie and Bovril from a County fan when Kettlewell took the reigns, he was complimentary on the guy in general but he mentioned that his signings lacked imagination he always spoke a good game but when stuff when wrong his selections became a tad erratic, which marries up to what we are seeing. 

Its scary to think we started the season looking solid enough, we were unfortunate with the loss of the forwards early in the campaign and maybe I'm just being naive but I thought the return of them plus Butcher would have been the answer to our problems. 

We have we from playing some nice neat and tidy football to putting in some real honking performances. 

It's funny cause earlier today a graphic popped up in the Rangers vs Livi game about goals conceded from set pieces, obviously we were on it but I think each and everyone has been conceded in the last three weeks. 

Sadly we will highly likely lose to Celtic at Parkhead, so by the time the Dundee fixture comes that'll be three months without a victory. 

[ppower]

2 minutes ago, smiddy said:

ross county fans on P&B predicted this outcome when SK was appointed

Well you just had to look at his record when he took over on his own at County. Lasted 6 months. Tenure ended with a beating from the Accies and a 29% win percentage. Heading the same direction at FP. When you can't beat Ross County and St Johnstone and concede 5 goals in those two games, sirens should be sounding loud. To be honest it is hard to see where a win is coming from. Pumped by Celtic next.  I have said this before. The man who kept Motherwell up last season was Kevin Van Veen, not Kettlewell. Now he doesn't have those goals our squad is getting shown up for what it is, full of guys you wouldn't take in a raffle. Most of them are Championship level at best and some couldn't even cut it at that level. Anyone thinking anything else either has claret and amber blinkers on at best or has a stick and a guide dog at their side.

[grizzlyg]

I believe Kettlewell paid £100,000 to sign Shaw from Hibs when County manager.

I have given him plenty backing but yesterdays selection and formation was just bonkers.   As far as I am concerned anything less than 3pts Home to Dundee and I think change is needed.   I like him and way he comes across but his signings have just been honking and now he is just trying bizarre formations.

V Dundee I would go Kelly with a back 3 of Casey Bevis and Blaney

Gent and Spencer wing backs with butcher holding midfielder with Spittal and Paton in front of him and Mika and Bair/Obika up top

[AllyMax]

27 minutes ago, ppower said:

Well you just had to look at his record when he took over on his own at County. Lasted 6 months. Tenure ended with a beating from the Accies and a 29% win percentage. Heading the same direction at FP. When you can't beat Ross County and St Johnstone and concede 5 goals in those two games, sirens should be sounding loud. To be honest it is hard to see where a win is coming from. Pumped by Celtic next.  I have said this before. The man who kept Motherwell up last season was Kevin Van Veen, not Kettlewell. Now he doesn't have those goals our squad is getting shown up for what it is, full of guys you wouldn't take in a raffle. Most of them are Championship level at best and some couldn't even cut it at that level. Anyone thinking anything else either has claret and amber blinkers on at best or has a stick and a guide dog at their side.

What a load of utter pish. Where did the opportunities to score the goals he scored come from ? Did he just pick a ball out of his shorts and pap it in the net ? Or did these opportunities to score and goals come from the type of football we played since SK took over and up to the end of the season ?

The problem is that last year, SK had a totally settled back 5 including Johnstone and Furlong that didn't leak goals, He had an emerging Lennon Miller and a striker on a rich vein of form and a team playing well and with confidence.

The problem, as others have said (as well as injuries) has been player recruitment. Too many signings not up to standard and playing the ones that are decent in the wrong places.

As said before, If SK goes back to the basics, plays the players he has to their strengths (this would prob have to include Gent at LB, despite suspicions of his lack of defensive prowess) and doesn't over complicate things, we should be fine. If not, we won't improve and he'll get his jotters.

 

[bobbybingo]

50 minutes ago, ppower said:

I have said this before. The man who kept Motherwell up last season was Kevin Van Veen, not Kettlewell. Now he doesn't have those goals our squad is getting shown up for what it is, full of guys you wouldn't take in a raffle. Most of them are Championship level at best and some couldn't even cut it at that level. Anyone thinking anything else either has claret and amber blinkers on at best or has a stick and a guide dog at their side.

In the final 5 games of last season we scored 9 goals and conceded 3.

In our last 5 games we have scored 8 goals and conceded 12.

I don't have blinkers on or a guide dug, and it doesn't look like it's a lack of goals that's killing us.

[Spiderpig]

Things are not as bad as they seem Aberdeen getting pumped 6-0 today by Celtic means we move up to 8th so it's onwards and upwards to the top 6 😁

[FirParkCornerExile]

2 hours ago, Spiderpig said:

Things are not as bad as they seem Aberdeen getting pumped 6-0 today by Celtic means we move up to 8th so it's onwards and upwards to the top 6 😁

Aberdeen are shite and they weren't that good against us despite their fans thinking they were outstanding. Puts our performance / result against them in perspective.

[Kmcalpin]

I uncovered an astonishing statistic today, well to be truthful it was Casagolda on P & B. We have not scored a goal in the first half of any game since 3 September, 10 games ago. I knew we were slow starters but...........

[mfc]

22 minutes ago, Kmcalpin said:

I uncovered an astonishing statistic today, well to be truthful it was Casagolda on P & B. We have not scored a goal in the first half of any game since 3 September, 10 games ago. I knew we were slow starters but...........

That's a horrific stat and it taking for us to be two nil down in recent games before we even remotely show any interest is clearly telling us that we have serious issues that I don't think kettlewell has the answers for.

[wellsince75]

23 minutes ago, mfc said:

That's a horrific stat and it taking for us to be two nil down in recent games before we even remotely show any interest is clearly telling us that we have serious issues that I don't think kettlewell has the answers for.

I think you could further and say we've not had a shot on goal in the first half for most of the games. Most of our first shots at goal come in +70th min when we've brought subs on.

[bobbybingo]

20 minutes ago, wellsince75 said:

I think you could further and say we've not had a shot on goal in the first half for most of the games. Most of our first shots at goal come in +70th min when we've brought subs on.

Ourselves, Kilmarnock, Livingston and Aberdeen all managed one shot on target this weekend. St Mirren had the sum total of zero and Ross County went daft with two. It's a shit league, which is lucky for us.

[ppower]

6 hours ago, AllyMax said:

What a load of utter pish. Where did the opportunities to score the goals he scored come from ? Did he just pick a ball out of his shorts and pap it in the net ? Or did these opportunities to score and goals come from the type of football we played since SK took over and up to the end of the season ?

The problem is that last year, SK had a totally settled back 5 including Johnstone and Furlong that didn't leak goals, He had an emerging Lennon Miller and a striker on a rich vein of form and a team playing well and with confidence.

The problem, as others have said (as well as injuries) has been player recruitment. Too many signings not up to standard and playing the ones that are decent in the wrong places.

As said before, If SK goes back to the basics, plays the players he has to their strengths (this would prob have to include Gent at LB, despite suspicions of his lack of defensive prowess) and doesn't over complicate things, we should be fine. If not, we won't improve and he'll get his jotters.

 

Who the fuck signed the players not up to standard??. I stand by every word. He failed at County after 6 months and that pattern is being repeated. He is to blame for our current predicament but the board is to blame for the total joke we have become in continually fucking it up big time.

[ppower]

6 hours ago, bobbybingo said:

In the final 5 games of last season we scored 9 goals and conceded 3.

In our last 5 games we have scored 8 goals and conceded 12.

I don't have blinkers on or a guide dug, and it doesn't look like it's a lack of goals that's killing us.

Cherry pick all you like. Freak game were we scrambled two late goals against County. Apart from that result and the St Johnstone result show we mainly have one goal in us.  Two problems, lack of a competent manager along with an incompetent board. 

[bobbybingo]

17 minutes ago, ppower said:

Cherry pick all you like. Freak game were we scrambled two late goals against County. Apart from that result and the St Johnstone result show we mainly have one goal in us.  Two problems, lack of a competent manager along with an incompetent board. 

It's hardly cherry picking to point out the huge increase in the number of goals we're losing now compared to when we were winning games. You can blame the manager and/or the board for that, but until our defence stops leaking like a sieve, we're gonnae keep losing - and even last season's van Veen would struggle to stop that.

[joewarkfanclub]

Wasnt at the game yesterday, but when I saw the team selection alarm bells were ringing and unfortunately my fears turned out to be correct.

Ive backed SK thus far and I still think he has what it takes to get us out of this. He has been very unlucky with injuries and suspensions at key times.

However, he is starting to over think things and is contributing to his own downfall.

Yesterdays formation was understandable v Kilmarnock on a horrible plastic pitch. But having seen it fail there and with the improvement in performance when we started getting the ball down and playing football again, to repeat the same mistake yesterday on our bowling green is unforgivable.

As others have said, he needs to get back to basics. Get the square pegs back in the square holes, and the round ones in thebround holes.

If he does that he should be fine. If he cant or wont, he could be gone after the Dundee game.

We need Spencer at RWB and Gent at LWB to give us width. Against the bettter teams we should get back to playing a diamond in midfield that gave us control over midfield and will allow us to playbthe ball into Biereths feet, instead of humping it long to him.

Against the weaker teams we could forego a midfielder and play someone else up alongside Mika. Whether that be Wilkinson or Bair, I dont really care, but we should never see them.as a 3 again.

Thank goodness for the international break and some serious thinking time.

[pretzel]

11 hours ago, Kmcalpin said:

I uncovered an astonishing statistic today, well to be truthful it was Casagolda on P & B. We have not scored a goal in the first half of any game since 3 September, 10 games ago. I knew we were slow starters but...........

One compliment I remember saying about Kettlewell when he took over last season was that we were quick out of the blocks. We scored 7 goals in the first ten minutes in 14 of his games.

[texanwellfan]

6 hours ago, pretzel said:

One compliment I remember saying about Kettlewell when he took over last season was that we were quick out of the blocks. We scored 7 goals in the first ten minutes in 14 of his games.

I read that as 98 goals but I’m sure that’s not the message 😄

[ropy]

I am not interested in changing the manager at the moment but he needs to give himself a shake, someone at the club needs to have a word and get him to go back to the simple things that brought him success last season.  No more overthinking things.

[grizzlyg]

7 minutes ago, ropy said:

I am not interested in changing the manager at the moment but he needs to give himself a shake, someone at the club needs to have a word and get him to go back to the simple things that brought him success last season.  No more overthinking things.

The first 4 games in December will make or break him.  I hope it's the former but time will tell

[GazzyB]

Given he has survived the weekend I expect he gets these 3 huge games coming up. The board won’t sack him after we get beat by Celtic so it looks like he gets the run of games after that.

 

Good luck to him but I fear the writing is on the wall. We can’t score goals, and our ball playing midfield and reasonably sturdy defence have gone to shit lately. We are just not very good.

[wunderwell]

On 11/12/2023 at 3:26 PM, ppower said:

Well you just had to look at his record when he took over on his own at County. Lasted 6 months. Tenure ended with a beating from the Accies and a 29% win percentage. Heading the same direction at FP. When you can't beat Ross County and St Johnstone and concede 5 goals in those two games, sirens should be sounding loud. To be honest it is hard to see where a win is coming from. Pumped by Celtic next.  I have said this before. The man who kept Motherwell up last season was Kevin Van Veen, not Kettlewell. Now he doesn't have those goals our squad is getting shown up for what it is, full of guys you wouldn't take in a raffle. Most of them are Championship level at best and some couldn't even cut it at that level. Anyone thinking anything else either has claret and amber blinkers on at best or has a stick and a guide dog at their side.

Not sure you see much Championship games but the standard has taken a big nose dive.

[Clackscat]

21 hours ago, ropy said:

I am not interested in changing the manager at the moment but he needs to give himself a shake, someone at the club needs to have a word and get him to go back to the simple things that brought him success last season.  No more overthinking things.

Trouble is once you have a succesful set up (as in fairness we had), the opposition look for ways to nullify so you need a Plan B, and SK hasn't been able to find one

[wellsince75]

31 minutes ago, Clackscat said:

Trouble is once you have a succesful set up (as in fairness we had), the opposition look for ways to nullify so you need a Plan B, and SK hasn't been able to find one

certainly not one that worked .    

[wunderwell]

On 11/12/2023 at 3:28 PM, grizzlyg said:

I believe Kettlewell paid £100,000 to sign Shaw from Hibs when County manager.

I have given him plenty backing but yesterdays selection and formation was just bonkers.   As far as I am concerned anything less than 3pts Home to Dundee and I think change is needed.   I like him and way he comes across but his signings have just been honking and now he is just trying bizarre formations.

V Dundee I would go Kelly with a back 3 of Casey Bevis and Blaney

Gent and Spencer wing backs with butcher holding midfielder with Spittal and Paton in front of him and Mika and Bair/Obika up top

The exact team I would play

[texanwellfan]

Maybe Obika and Mika will be the magic combination up front to Lift us back up but need to cut down on the hoof balls. Ok to play over the top if Mika in a good position to run onto it but most of the time they are hit and hope(less)