Motherwell' Stuart Kettlewell on saving Ross County millions, TV sacking, David de Gea and Neil Lennon's shock Celtic phonecall

Lookalikes are a subjective thing. You may think you’ve spotted a dead-ringer but I might wonder if you need to book an appointment at Specsavers. Stuart Kettlewell is surely unique in Scottish football, though, in being a doppelganger three times over.

Stuart Kettlewell was unveiled as the new manager of Motherwell last week.

One is Joe Ledley, formerly of Celtic, and another – more leftfield than left midfield – is Ben Mitchell from EastEnders, a soap character who since a custody battle as a kid has suffered abuse, been shot, jailed, lost his hearing, fathered a child and come out as gay – a pretty normal Albert Square existence, in other words.

Motherwell’s new manager laughs when these two are mentioned. “I just don’t see it – in either case,” he says. But somewhat less obscure are the similarities made with David de Gea – indeed made by the Manchester United goalkeeper himself.

In August 2020, when boss of Ross County, a Sky Sports interview with Kettlewell was seen by De Gea who immediately tweeted astonishment about his long-lost twin brother, with Reds team-mate Marcus Rashford joining in the fun. “I remember my phone exploding,” Ketts says. “We’d just beaten Motherwell, as it happened, in the club’s first game back in the Premiership and I thought that was the cause of all the excitement. My daughter Olivia told me I was all over social media. I’d never have known because I don’t go near it. Does De Gea look like me? Of the three that’s probably the best resemblance and it still gets mentioned now. But I’m not sureany of these guys would take tookindly to being compared to Stuart Kettlewell!”

Kettlewell takes his Motherwell team to Ross County, his former club, today.

As yet, three games into an impressive start in North Lanarkshire, no one in claret and amber has mentioned any of this to him. “I think they’re too scared and still trying to suss me out.” Perhaps there would have been an opportunity on the long drive north for today’s fixture which returns Kettlewell to Victoria Park.

There were good times with County and then one highly dramatic bad one. “I don’t think anyone had ever announced their own sacking on TV before,” he says with a wry smile but no bitterness. It’s all about his new club now – “Kettle’s ’Well”, according to the punning headlines, and the need for three valuable points. Reflecting on those 12 years as a Staggie, though, is unavoidable.

What do we know about the man? The distinctive features – the long face and hipster beard – have become more familiar beyond the Highlands as, between jobs, he’s punditised for BBC Scotland on radio and TV. To good effect as well, and the media gig could have continued, but he wanted another go at management, so here he is at 38, still the youngest in the top flight willing to put his head above the dugout canopy.

This is the players’ day off but Kettlewell is in his Fir Park office. With Jack Ross’s comment on these pages from a few weeks ago still resonating with me – football management, he said, had become “dehumanising” – I ask Kettlewell the question a few different ways: why come back for more potential punishment?

Ross County chairman Roy MacGregor and Kettlewell back in 2019.

He says: “The game’s my passion and to be honest with you, when I was a young player I’d walk the possession areas with a notebook and jot down drills. I knew I wanted to be a manager way back then.”

Another answer can be summed up thus: it ain’t rocket science. “I hate it when you get a guy coming into the room and going: ‘I made that player … I did this, that and the other.’ As a manager you’re a facilitator. You pass on information, you try to push buttons. It all comes down to people, players and backroom staff. They create success. You’re trying to maximise the skill sets.”

Kettlewell – son of a Cumbernauld joiner – will apologise for using words like “maximise” and “facilitator” and “project”. He’s sorry, too, for being “long-winded” but completing this attempt at my question he continues: “As managers we all want to be the cleverest guy: ‘I’m doing something tactically better than him.’ Really, we’re all doing the same thing. If I thought that for this weekend [County boss] Malky Mackay wasn’t trying to pick holes in my team, just as I am his, then I’d be kidding myself. I’m not in football to say: ‘Look, I’m in football!’ There are a few like that. In this building, though, I see good people. It’s up to me to push those buttons. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I could do that.”

Okay, let’s have a third go, this answer being more revealing. “I hope this doesn’t sound arrogant but I feel there’s unfinished business. I think I had a good degree of success doing the job before and, when money was tight and budgets were being cut, was able to save Ross County millions of pounds through player development and sales – Ross Stewart, Jamie Lindsay, Jason Naismith, Josh Reid going to Coventry after just 20 first-team games. That’s something about which myself and Steven Ferguson [Kettlewell’s co-manager before he flew solo] are immensely proud.”

Kettlewell has been likened to Man Utd goalkeeper David de Gea in terms of looks.

All told, he was 12 years in Dingwall. Once again trying to avoid seeming boastful, there was a “body of work”. The 2010 Scottish Cup final, first-time promotion to the Premiership, a fifth-place finish. Then, as a coach, a title with the development side, elevation to the big team, a 40-game unbeaten run, a return to the top table and the Challenge Cup. And he had good support behind him – wife Katie and their four kids, with the hundreds of miles to away matches no impediment to them.

“I gave Ross County a huge chunk of my life,” he says. “I made myself borderline a cripple by playing through two years of agony when I knew there was something wrong but at the time we maybe didn’t have the medical care which could have solved the problem.” Eventually, arthritis in his left hip forced him to quit playing - his toughest day in football after the dismissal. “I’m not congratulating myself here but I don’t know too many people who would have done that for as long as I did to try and help the club gain success. We did achieve success in my time there so I go back without having to apologise for anything and, win, lose or draw in this game, I’ll be comfortable. Of course I’ll be trying to achieve three points for Motherwell. I’m going to give them everything, just as I did Ross County.”

Ketts may not think he’s unique regarding all those lookalikes but he can claim membership of one exclusive club – for players who’ve scored from halfway. “It’s more exclusive than that,” he chuckles. “I must be the only guy who, after scoring from halfway, got himself sent off ten minutes later.” This was for first club Queen’s Park away to Cowdenbeath: “They’d just gone into the lead with a penalty – a horrendous decision. I argued with the referee about it which was typical of me. In my playing days I was the sort who’d fight with his own shadow. I told Robert Dunn and Paul Cairney to set the ball up from the restart and I’d try and score. Robert, being the experienced one, thought it was a stupid idea. Paul, being the daft one, said: ‘Great!’ So I scored – shooting from that distance definitely wasn’t my forte – but when the ref made another shocking decision he couldn’t take any more of my ranting.

“That was midway through the first half. Right away I called my wife to say I’d scored a worldy. She said: ‘Surely the game’s not finished yet?’ ‘Ah well, you see, I was sent off right after.’ I think in my career I got 14 red cards. My dad was alright with my crazy tackling but after that one he didn’t speak to me for two whole weeks.”

Kettlewell went through the pain barrier while playing for Ross County.

Kettlewell describes himself as a product of “street football”. “We played street vs street and my one was Birch Road close to Abronhill High School where Gregory’s Girl was filmed. The games would last for days, only stopping when it got dark and resuming on the same score. Football was all we had but I had a brilliant upbringing and am really proud of it.” His mother Carole is a nurse at Monklands General Hospital and, like his father Alan, still working. “They’re both real grafters. I get my work ethic from them.”

After his sacking and having moved the family to be nearer them, he became a joiner’s mate. “I’ve not talked about this before but it was great going to work every day with Dad. It got me up in the morning, gave me a routine and helped me clear my head and reset. As to how handy I was with a saw, you’d have to ask him.” The nights were spent reading a biography of the wonderfully eccentric Argentine Marcelo Bielsa, thrilling to the chapter where the former Leeds boss back in his homeland faced down angry ultras at his front door while wearing pyjamas and wielding a grenade. As yet the new Fir Park manager hasn’t copied Bielsa’s upturned bucket for a touchline perch but has presumably ruled out sitting on a kettle.

Kettlewell left Abronhill with good enough grades to follow big brother Keith to university but he reckons he would have hated his young life being ruled by the structure of a lecture timetable. An aunt helped him get a job with the Clydesdale Bank in Glasgow’s Buchanan Street – “It was all women, they mothered me” – and at 17 Queen’s Park handed him his debut in front of an empty Hampden.

“I was on £14-a-week expenses and in a hurry to become a full-time footballer.” Too much of one, and the first three of those red cards were acquired in unseemly haste. “I was a hothead,” he says, remembering an altercation with East Fife fans who’d run on the park to celebrate their team’s title success. “That was the time I got sent off after the game in the ref’s room.” Kettlewell’s function, when he remained within the laws of the game, was as a “destroyer” and he continued in this combative midfield vein at Clyde before heading for the Highlands.

He pauses to thank Spiders manager Billy Stark for his mentoring but if the Queen’s Park changing-room was “brilliant” then it was probably topped by what he encountered at Victoria Park. “Because of the isolatedness, with so many of the guys away from their families, we became one to each other. Iain Vigurs lived across our street and even though he had no responsibilities or any connection with children we could get him to babysit for us.”

An old newspaper Q&A with Kettlewell dug out of the files mentions his disaffection for fancy-coloured boots. “If I had my way,” he stated, “everyone would play in black Adidas Copa Mundials.” These were his favourites until in his final year Predator undercut the price. What, he had to buy his own boots at County? Not only that but right through those 40 games undefeated everyone was paid the same. “There were no egos, we were all equals. It was absolute genius.” Don’t worry, though, Steelmen, your new gaffer has no plans to introduce uniformity of wage packets and boots, or to copy the example of the Queen’s Park youth coach who armed himself with a tin of paint to turn all footwear back to black. “Completely unworkable these days,” he laughs.

The end for him at County came just before Christmas following a run of four defeats, although two of them were to Rangers and Aberdeen, hardly fixtures which would have been especially targeted for victories. Just prior to that, Kettlewell had steered the Staggies to a first-ever victory at Celtic Park in the League Cup, but that seemed to count for nothing.

Kettlewell announcing on air that the axe had fallen on him brought the club hierarchy heavy criticism, the suspicion being he’d been forced into it. Not quite true; in the chaos he simply decided to make the announcement himself.

Steven Ferguson, his friend who’d become chief executive, helped him pack up but rather than go home right away Kettlewell set off randomly in his car. “I just drove; can’t remember where. That day was the toughest, the darkest, and it was about to hit our family. Looking back, it possibly wasn’t the smartest thing to have done because they were worried about me. When I eventually got home my son Ethan, who was in the County academy, said: ‘Does this mean I have to leave, too?’”

At gone 11 o’clock that night Kettlewell got a phonecall. It was Neil Lennon whose life at Celtic had been made significantly more uncomfortable by that shock cup defeat, but he wanted to sympathise with Ketts, to praise him for the fine job he’d done in Dingwall and to wish him well in the future. “Even though Celtic were going for the quadruple treble the day after, he took that trouble – a touch of class.”

The future is now for Kettlewell and when he took up the new post the man who sacked him, County chairman Roy MacGregor, was among the first to offer congratulations. Today, he repeats, is no grudge match. He loved his time in the Highlands and friendships made there are built to last, but that chapter is closed. “I’ve got a chance at Motherwell to build more success and maybe add some little bits of history to this club,” he says. Keep a lookout for him, David de Gea.