This is an excerpt from this week's Claret and Amber Alert, a free Motherwell newsletter written by Graeme McGarry that goes out every Thursday at 6pm. To sign up, click here.
As we are now in the two-week purgatory period between voting opening on the proposed investment in the club by Wild Sheep Sports and the results being announced, it is a welcome distraction that a little bit of competitive football is breaking out this weekend.
Ok, a home tie against Edinburgh City in the Premier Sports Cup group stage doesn’t immediately set pulses racing, but there is a fair bit of intrigue attached to these early outings for Stuart Kettlewell’s Motherwell this season.
Friendlies are always a hotchpotch of experimentation, but what we see on Saturday – injuries apart – should be much closer to what we are going to be watching on a weekly basis, and there are plenty of questions to consider.
Who will be in goals, for instance? Will Aston Oxborough take the gloves at last, or will Kriztian Hegyi be the man in possession? It is doubtful that West Ham allowed the Hungary under-21 internationalist to come up to Scotland just to warm the bench, after all.
Who will make up the back three? With Paul McGinn injured for a couple of weeks, it would seem that the trio who started the friendly against Livingston would be the favourites to do so again, with Dan Casey and Shane Blaney either side of Liam Gordon, though Kofi Balmer is also in contention.
Incidentally, beyond allegedly causing much of Motherwell’s early season injury worries with his rather agricultural approach to training, Gordon looks to be a terrific signing. An old school, no-nonsense centre-back who can also play when required.
Stephen O’Donnell’s influence is huge, and he will likely play in the right wingback role, while I would expect new signing Steve Seddon to be the man entrusted with getting up and down the left flank. Perhaps though, there will be another opportunity for Ewan Wilson, who impressed against Livi, to show he is worth keeping around as a back-up action at the very least.
Which, eventually, brings me at least semi-adjacent to the point I want to make. Players mature at different rates, of course, but Wilson is 19 now, and it would be good to see a little bit more of the likes of him, Dylan Wells, Mark Ferrie and Luca Ross over these group fixtures.
The manager has often spoken about his desire to blood more youngsters into the first team, which is an admirable notion, but often proves difficult when the pressure is on and fans are demanding results.
Lennon Miller is an outlier, because he is quite clearly the most technically gifted player at the club. That’s not to take away credit from Kettlewell for playing him when he was just 16, but he could hardly leave him out any longer.
It is the players who are taking just that little bit longer to establish themselves where the issue lies, and it is something of a chicken and egg situation. These young players need games at the level to develop and eventually prove that they belong there, but the cut-throat nature of a 12-team division doesn’t naturally lend itself to an environment where managers can afford to be patient with their young talent.
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I think the starting midfield this term for the most part will be Miller, Davor Zdravdovski and Andy Halliday, but it would be nice to see Wells play a significant role too. Trouble is, he now also has Ross Callachan and Tom Sparrow to get past, before even factoring in Callum Slattery once he has overcome his long-term injury.
I’m not having a go at the manager for bringing in experience, and I realise that it is up to Wells to prove in training that he deserves a shot ahead of these older heads. But as a general rule across the Scottish game, pathways to first team football for youngsters often become blocked in such a manner.
Further up the pitch, the same problem – if you want to call it that – applies. Even if Theo Bair leaves, there is the on-fire Moses Ebiye, Zach Robinson and Filip Stuparevic to get through before either Ross or Ferrie will be given a sniff when it comes to league action, you would assume.
Hopefully then, some of these young players will be given decent game-time in these League Cup group matches, and it is then up to them to seize their opportunity.
Honing young talent and giving them the platform to thrive is the lifeblood of the club. Without it, and the transfer fees that these players can bring in down the line, then people would probably be far less relaxed than they are about the prospect of the investment from Wild Sheep being rebuffed.
After Miller though, it is a little hard to see just where the next prospect breaking through into the first team on a regular basis is coming from, never mind which of them might go on to earn the club a significant sum of money.
I believe Kettlewell when he says that developing young talent is his passion. The priority of course, is building a competitive squad.
I just worry though that by stacking that squad with the ‘experienced heads’ that he has, he may have inadvertently clogged up the pathway for some promising young players.
