Hibs v Motherwell: Marathon schedule puts players at risk, says Well boss

Stuart Kettlewell has accused Premiership chiefs of putting his players at risk with a hectic schedule of seven games in 22 days, which ends at Hibs this afternoon.

And the Fir Park boss doesn’t understand why their clash at Kilmarnock was slotted in to an already congested fixture list this month.

The sides scrapped out a 0-0 draw, with the original clash postponed on November 2, due to Motherwell’s involvement in the Premier Sports Cup semi-finals.

But since December 20 Motherwell have drawn 1-1 at home to Killie, lost 4-0 at Celtic, drew 2-2 with Rangers, lost 1-0 at Hearts, beat Aberdeen 2-0 and drawn 0-0 at Kilmarnock, with a trip to Easter Road just three days later.

Kettlewell said: “It’s arguably the most difficult a fixture as you could draw at the end of what has been a marathon for us.

“{Kilmarnock] was our extra game on a lot of clubs in the division and I don’t understand it.

“We potentially could have looked at that one to be played at a different time, I didn’t think we had to squeeze that one in amongst all of this.

“We’ve had plenty of muscle injuries, plenty of situations when we were looking at players and believing they were a bit fatigued.

“I thought we looked that [at Kilmarnock], a little bit tired and our reflexes and reactions were a wee bit slow.

“Now the focus for me is to get to 5pm against Hibs on Saturday, with the best performance that we possibly can, trying to see if we can get ourselves a result, and then I need to give the players a couple of days.

“I’m not huge on days off and that type of thing, but they’ve ran a race to this point, they really have.

“We’re at the stage where we’re majorly risking injury.

“I think we’ve potentially played a game or two extra on some of the English