Stuart Kettlewell admits Motherwell need to ‘shuffle things’ after latest injury

Stuart Kettlewell admits he will have to “shuffle things” after new signing Apostolos Stamatelopoulos joined Motherwell’s lengthy injury list in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat by Rangers.

The Steelmen took to the Hampden Park pitch for the William Hill Premiership fixture with seven first-team players missing and there was more concern for Kettlewell when his 25-year-old striker, who signed from Australian side Newcastle Jets last month, had to be replaced by Zach Robinson just before half-time.

By that point, Rangers winger Vaclav Cerny had curled in a shot from the edge of the box for his first Gers goal, after an own goal by debutant defender Robin Propper had cancelled out Cyriel Dessers’ opener for the Light Blues, playing at their temporary home due to a delayed refurbishment at Ibrox.

Kettlewell conceded afterwards that Stamatelopoulos’ thigh injury “did not look great” and asked if he could add again to his squad, he said: “You need resources and you need money to do so.

“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.”