Ross County legend Stuart Kettlewell opens up on a manager's role in a relegation battle
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When it comes to a relegation battle, Stuart Kettlewell has been there and done that.
As a player, he was part of the Clyde side who went down from the then-First Division in 2009, and finished one spot above the relegation places two years later with Ross County.
Then, as a manager, he had a baptism of fire with the Staggies as they got relegated from the Premiership in 2018, and battled to stay in the top tier upon their immediate return.
He has plenty of insight, then, into what it is like to be struggling at the bottom of the table – and the weight that must be carried throughout it.
"I was asked recently if you fear the sack, and I could honestly say I was never fearful of being sacked," Kettlewell recalled.
"My biggest fear was not succeeding. I suppose both go hand in hand, but there are different angles to the pressures that come.
"If you've got a connection and a history with the football club, like I did at Ross County, then it hurts you as much as it hurts the fans because you've given up so much of your time to be a success.
"It's important to understand the implications that relegation can have. That was maybe the biggest burden I felt when I was fighting relegation.
"Myself and Steven Ferguson took over at Ross County for 10 games, and we found ourselves relegated. We knew what that meant for people that we knew and liked – some people lose their job off the back of relegation.
"You do carry that burden, because you want the best for the football club, you want to be a success and you want people to achieve their goals, but I've always embraced a challenge. Staring down the barrel wasn't intimidating in any way, but the other aspects are a challenge."
Affecting preparation
Sometimes when a team is battling against the drop, you start to hear about a toxic culture in the dressing room that essentially dooms a team to failure.
As far as Kettlewell is concerned, if the situation does begin to affect players – or if they are not at their best for any other reason – it is the manager's job to stay consistent and positive.
He also needs to know, though, that his players can be trusted to react to set-backs in the right way and show the right character when faced with trials and tribulations.
"You could always tell by how people presented themselves and their body language whether they're in a bad mood or a little bit down, so as a manager I always thought you had to be the one that nobody saw break," he explained.
"You need to come in and look everyone in the eye with a positive mindset and body language. You can't affect what's gone before, but you can affect what's coming next, and games can't keep slipping away.
"Trying to strike that balance is really important. You can't just pretend everything's okay, but it doesn't help anybody if the manager or the coaching staff comes in and they're downbeat and negative.
"I always think that success and failure comes down to people – you need to understand who's 100 per cent with you.
"Who's taking responsibility and accountability for what they're doing on the park? I think we live in a culture now where we're constantly trying to blame another factor.
"That could be that the manager has dropped you, the pitch wasn't great, how long we trained in a session during the week, but you need to strip all that back. People might mope about, but the buck stops with you.
"I've never seen a manager who has made a change and taken their best player out, someone who is scoring, or keeping clean sheets – you'd be insane to do that.
"If you're losing games it's your job to come up with a solution. I don't think you go scatter gun on that, you don't need to make 10 changes, but you're not going to drop your best player or someone who is putting in good numbers. You're just trying to make slight adjustments.
"You need to see the whites of people's eyes to understand that they're with you, and even if they're out of the team they will still go and train properly, warm up properly and if they're asked to go and play 20 minutes they will do that to the best of their ability. If you don't have that, you need to move that negative influence out.
"People might not appreciate me saying it, but I don't think players take the same responsibility and accountability now compared to 10 years ago. I know the world has changed, but I don't remember blaming anyone for my own shortcomings.
"I would look at myself and what I contributed, and I would say I need to do better, and I can offer more. It's the manager's role to identify who's with him and who's 100 per cent behind him. If you do that, you give yourself half a chance of getting out of the situation that you're in."
Tactical flexibility
When results are not going a team's way, it can be easy for the fans to demand something different – but it is not always as simple as that on the training pitch.
A manager's principles will rarely change, even if tweaks to formations and personnel come about.
Kettlewell does not believe wholesale changes are the way to go either, although he does say it is the manager's job to find some way to win the match in front of them.
"I've been asked many times what my philosophy is in the game – for me to tell you my philosophy, I would need you to tell me what group of players I'm working with, what the weather is going to be like, what the pitch is going to be like and who the opposition is," Kettlewell reasoned.
"Then it's the manager's job to react and be versatile, and have flexibility.
"In my experiences at Ross County, we were the under dog, so you'd be going into most games as the second favourite, so it was my job to find a way of playing that was going to be effective.
"Your basic principles never change – so if I'm asking you to get back into shape when we lose the ball, I'm not going to waver from that whether we're playing a 3–5–2, a 4–4–2 or a 4–2–3–1.
"If I'm looking to cross balls and attack wide areas, that can be slightly different depending on your shape, so you have to adapt to what your surroundings are and what players are availability to you.
"If you're Ange Postecoglou at Celtic right now, I think you've got the best group of players and you dominate the ball with about 70 per cent of possession, so you can pretty much not waver from what your philosophies are.
"If you're facing that, it would be insanity to try and go toe-to-toe with them and try to outplay them, so you're going to have to alter things.
"Would you completely rip up your starting line-up and your basic principles of how you play? No, but you have to come up with a different gameplan.
"I remember playing against Celtic in my last season at Ross County, and we lost 5–0 at home. We played 4–3–3, and I thought we probably controlled as much of the game as any Ross County team has ever done against Celtic.
"A couple of months later, we go and play Celtic at Parkhead and played a 5–4–1 that we hoped would become a 3–4–3, and we beat them 2–0.
"What's right and what's wrong? We tried an open and expansive style, and we played as well as any Ross County side I've seen, and lost 5–0. Then we were far more pragmatic and defensive, getting numbers behind the ball with a deep block, and beat them 2–0 in the cup.
"That was a learning curve for me that you have to try and find a way to win a game of football.
"I had been told just before that game that I only had a couple of games to save my job, and Celtic, Aberdeen and Rangers were my next three games. That is a challenge in itself.
"For me, behind closed doors, that was an extreme moment of pressure knowing that my job was on the line and I needed to come up with a result, and we did, so it's not one size fits all. It's the manager's job to find a solution."
Public, and private, challenges
Pressure from outside a club can build to a breaking point, but what the press and the public sees of a manager is only a tiny fraction of their week.
Hours will be spent on the training pitch coaching players, in meeting rooms devising strategies to beat upcoming opponents, talking to boardroom-level executives about the wider club situation and even at home, milling over all of the aforementioned in "down" time.
Kettlewell has experienced that first hand, and knows it can be a lot to deal with when trying to turn fortunes around.
"I think everybody will acknowledge that management is a difficult job," he said.
"It's really hard to keep 20-plus guys in a Premiership team happy, but your job at times is to make sure that you have a good structure and you have your non-negotiables in place, and everyone is on the same page win, lose or draw.
"I remember going down and playing against Kilmarnock when they went down to 10 men, and they beat us, and I remember being really angry and hurt at our naivety at the end of the game.
"I always tried to be the same in front of the press as I was to the players, because I didn't want to send a mixed message. I tried to highlight where we had to improve, but I didn't hide behind it and put on a false positive.
"That's a real danger as well – everyone has to be in agreement and understanding of where we are and where we can improve.
"People need to remember that you're dealing with human beings too. If someone makes an error in a game, it's not a robot that has been programmed to do things right, it's a human being that's made a mistake and that's the same with the manager.
"You take it home with you, you don't spend time with your wife or kids, you're not present in the room even when you're there.
"I'm not asking for a sympathy vote, but people have to realise what goes on behind the scenes – what you see at 3pm on a Saturday isn't the full picture. There's a lot of heartache, emotions, anger and happiness.
"I loved the pressure and the responsibility, I genuinely did, but you have to realise that nobody is actively out there trying to fail – it's the complete opposite.
"Overall in the game there has probably been a bit more patience this year with managers than there was during Covid when there were knee-jerk decisions, so I would urge people to give managers time to flourish and come out the other side of things.
"Mikel Arteta at Arsenal is the best example – it would have been so easy to chop and change but if you've brought someone in and believe in them, sometimes you've got to go through the difficult spells with them, and a lot of the time you come out the right side afterwards.
"Another things that needs to be mentioned – what are the circumstances you're managing in? My remit at Ross County was to save money.
"People maybe thought we spent more than we did, but my remit was to save money, and we significantly did that through player sales and promotion.
"We're in a January transfer window, and it would be great to bring in players and fish in a different pond where you can get quality, but you might be stuck with the group of players you've got. Then your only solution is to coach your way out of it."
Chances of survival
Right now, Ross County sit at the bottom of the Premiership, three points off safety with 16 games still to play.
A lot can change between now and the end of the season, but how does Kettlewell rate his former club's chances of staying up?
"I'm looking at it from the outside, but I obviously know a lot of people there, and there are a lot of good characters," he added.
"They are in a difficult spot, there's no hiding from that. I think they need something to spark them now.
"I might be stating the obvious, but to get out of this position they're going to have to find a route to scoring goals. By the sounds of it they have been creating chances, so you can narrow that down to converting them.
"If they can do that, they can certainly get out of the position they're in, but it's going to be a tough task. You need a group of players to step up to the plate and have an impact on a Saturday.
"It's close at that bottom end of the table, two or three wins would inevitably build confidence and I could see them going from strength to strength.
"If Ross County can get a win on the board in the coming weeks, they can go and do something similar to last season when they went on a decent run."
