Motherwell boss laments Stamatelopoulos injury and hails loan signing Tony Watt's personality

Motherwell manager Stuart Kettlewell felt Apostolos Stamatelopoulos had proved his fitness before suffering an injury in his first start.

The club's biggest summer signing faces six weeks out with a quad injury after breaking down towards half-time in Motherwell's 2-1 defeat by Rangers at Hampden last Saturday.

The Australian had made his debut the previous weekend off the bench against Ross County and was catching up with his match fitness following his arrival days earlier.

Kettlewell, who now has eight players injured, said: "I'm really disappointed with Apostolos's injury on Saturday. We were again meticulous in thinking that he could start the game. He had 60-70 minutes in the week before playing against top-level opposition in Everton.

"So we'd sort of tested him at that level, several days before, nearly a week before, and he's had a lot of training sessions and he's been in a good place.

"If we had thrown somebody in off the back of one training session and no match practice then I would probably hold my hands to it.

"But obviously by losing him and what we feel he can bring as well, then we're quite clearly a bit of quality down on that side as well."

Kettlewell has now added Tony Watt to his forward line on a season-long loan from Dundee United but stressed that deal had been in the pipeline for weeks.

The signing has been met with a mixed response because of his departure from Fir Park in 2022 and amid questions over why United were happy to let him go.

But Kettlewell feels Watt's personality will be a positive for his squad.

"Tony's a guy I didn't know particularly well but several people here at the football club did, and the one thing that always comes out when you speak to anybody about Tony is