Stuart Kettlewell: Motherwell must ward against bad run despite strong start

Motherwell boss Stuart Kettlewell says his side need to work hard to maintain their good form, having seen a promising start turn bad last season.

The Steelmen have a draw and two wins from their opening four league games, and have also progressed to the League Cup quarter-finals after defeating Kilmarnock.

That positive start was put on pause for the international break but the team are back in action when they take on in-form Aberdeen at Pittodrie this weekend.

Kettlewell says the hard work has continued through the break as he and his players refuse to sit back and reflect upon their strong start.

“I never get carried away and a big part of our week was about trying to drive this forward and to try and push boundaries,” he said.

“The idea of taking days and days off to enjoy a win at McDiarmid Park and three victories in a row, that was never going to be a thing for me.

“What you have to do is strip it back – there was a lot of negativity surrounding this football club, and I said this before the St Johnstone game.

“I had heard a lot of noise about some of the players that we had lost and how that was going to be an issue for us. And listen, that might still be, I’m only talking about those three games.

“It’s just the knee-jerk reaction of Scottish football that now ‘Everything’s great, everything’s brilliant’. I don’t work in those terms and the players don’t work in those terms. We know what we’ve done over those three games to get a result.

“But I’ve also said that I think we can perform an awful lot better. We have to ward against playing an awful lot worse.”

The Fir Park boss says he can’t ignore the warning of last season, when Motherwell picked up ten points before the international break, only to then go 15 games without a win.

“I would touch on what happened last year,” Kettlewell said. “Sometimes these things stare you right in the face.

“You can go on a bad run after an international break and a great start to the season, as it was last year. I don’t want to be sitting here feeling comfortable about myself or the group or what’s happening here.

“We have to work exceptionally hard to make sure we don’t go on to a bad run like we did last year. I know a lot of people try to shy away from that but I don’t. I put it right in front of you and mark it down as a challenge that we need to overcome.

“It’s something we faced last year and we don’t want to face this year.”