Stuart Kettlewell has criticised the decision to add just two minutes to the end of his side’s defeat to Rangers at Hampden, with the Motherwell manager feeling his side were in the ascendancy and may have had a chance to nick a late equaliser.
Motherwell had grown into the second half and almost pulled level when Jack Butland pulled off a superb save from Zach Robinson’s snapshot, and Kettlewell believes the Rangers backline were looking nervy as his men threw balls into their box in the closing stages.
He was astonished to see just two minutes of stoppage time being added despite a couple of injuries and a raft of substitutions taking place, and he felt aggrieved that his team had been robbed of the chance to apply further pressure to Rangers.
“In the second half, we had numerous changes from both sides,” Kettlewell said.
“We had a situation where their centre-back goes off.
“I just felt there was more than two minutes to be played in that game. It was a real surprise for myself, and I think most of you guys as well. Whether that makes a difference in the game, I don't know. But it certainly sometimes seems that when you're looking for a bit more added time, it's not there.
“I think that possibly becomes a wee bit disrespectful to Rangers [to say they were creaking]. Whether it was the players that were creaking, or they looked nervous or whatever, I felt at that point we were just on the ascendancy.
“I just felt as if we were carrying a threat. I just felt as if we had a bit of dominance in the game. You're always looking for that five-minute spell, ten-minute spell, whatever it be, where you carry a threat.
“I felt that was slap-bang in the middle of a spell. We were all right and we were good.
“As I say, their goalkeeper looked probably more nervous at that point than ours. So, yeah, disappointed that it doesn't continue for at least maybe another minute. Possibly two.”
The injury crisis that has hit Fir Park recently deepened further still as striker Apostolos Stamatelopoulos limped from the action late in the first half on his first start for the club, and Kettlewell is fearing he may be hit with another lengthy lay-off.
“It doesn't look good,” he said.
“He had a bit of tightness in his thigh. I think he's then stopped. Sometimes we always associate it with stretching for the ball, but he actually stops and at that point, he's obviously felt a much sharper pain in his thigh.
“He seems really robust. He's played a lot of games of football. He's generally available and fit, as are a number of the guys that are out injured at this minute in time. So, yeah, we're obviously worried about it.
“I'm not going into too much more detail until we see the right specialists and get things scanned and all the rest of it. But it doesn't look great.”
Ideally, Kettlewell would like to strengthen his side in attacking areas to compensate for his long injury list, but he admits that might be difficult.
“You need resources and you need money to do so,” he said.
“That's not to say that's not a possibility, but we are going to have to shuffle things here a little bit. “We thought we'd pieced together a strong squad and tried to do a lot of that business earlier. But it doesn't just become a case of clicking our fingers to go and get the next player.
“It becomes really difficult because we're not working with an awful lot of money here to go and do that. So, we're continuing to try and come up with solutions.
“We're continuing and the chief executive and board have been fantastic to try and help us in doing that. But also, what I don't want to do is just bring another player that I don't think contributes to this as well.
“It has to be someone that fits into what we're doing here and can obviously make some sort of impact. And that's what we'll continue to do over the next couple of hours, let alone the next couple of days.”
