Motherwell have been dealt a major blow with news that captain Paul McGinn is out for up to four months with the recurrence of a thigh injury.
The Fir Park club go into Saturday’s Scottish Cup fourth round tie at St Johnstone with nine key first-team players out long-term.
Goalkeeper Aston Oxborough, Jair Tavares, Steve Seddon, Liam Gordon, Lennon Miller, Ross Callachan and strikers Zach Robinson and Apostolos Stamatelopoulos are amongst the walking wounded.
On McGinn’s injury, which previously kept him out for months this season, Kettlewell said: “Everyone would have had a reasonable expectation as to the extent of that, just by Paul’s reaction. He was devastated at the weekend, we’re the same, but we’ll support Paul the best way we possibly can.
“The medical staff have that process well up and running to try and start his recovery as quickly as we possibly can.
“But we will all understand, that looks like ‘season over’ for Paul, which is really disappointing.
“From a personal point of view, I feel he’s one of, if not the, most consistent players since I came to the club a couple of years ago.
“He was made captain, and he’s a big influence in everything we do, on and off the pitch, so it’s obvious disappointment and an obvious blow for us.
“Paul generally trains and plays all the time. I know he’s just come back from a longer-term injury, but he’s not really been used to it in his career.
“The fact that he’s well over 500 games would suggest to you that he has been a robust player and somebody that’s always out there, through thick of thin.
“That has a particular mind-set. There are players who can be unfortunate and have had lots of injuries, and they’ve had to brace themselves from an early age to deal with that.
“I was someone that had pretty much one injury in my career and it was the one that finished me at 30. I’m not suggesting that for Paul, but it’s something that you’ve never faced.”
On his other stars, Kettlewell said: “The team news is not great, we’ve encountered a lot of issues since the start of the season, but this is possibly the worst stage that we’re at.
“In the last check, looking at the board last week, we were looking at nine pretty serious injuries and players that we’re without, and that’s hard for us to absorb. These are massive blows for us.
“From that, you’re looking at a lot of significant players.
“On the injury front, it’s a bleak outlook.
“We’re looking at a couple of months for Steve Seddon. He had further investigation yesterday and the fall-out from that is that we’re probably looking at two months for him.
“Aston Oxborough looks like it could be three months.
“We hope Lennon Miller gets his boot off next week, but we need to wait and see how that goes.
“Jair Tavares had been for further investigation, he had sustained an injury at the tail-end of last week.
“Liam Gordon is currently following concussion protocol, which the medical guys are well on top of.
“Ross Callachan is back on the pitch, but Ross hasn’t played really, I think he had a few minutes against Ross County.
“Apostolos looks like he’ll be out for another couple of weeks as well, there was an injury there in terms of a tear in his calf.”
As a result of the extensive injury list, Kettlewell has spoken to chief executive Brian Caldwell about bringing players in during the January window.
He said: “What we want to try and do is try and make sure that we’ve got options in positions. I’m sure you’ll see with some of the names that we’re talking about there and some of the people that are missing, that it’s a huge loss.
“But what we don’t have is, I’m watching one or two clubs out there paying fees for players and have significantly bigger resources than what we do.
“If we can try and be cute and clever and pick off one or two players that we think can help us along the way, that can sort of step in to the obvious voids that we start to see, then that’s what we’ll try and do. But this is really difficult.
“It’s difficult for a lot of clubs. But essentially what happens with clubs like Motherwell – and it did for us last January as well – is we need to wait for so many things to happen at potentially bigger clubs before anything starts to move.
“Only at that point, because you don’t have hundreds of thousands or even millions to start throwing at players which will make a decision quicker, then you have to be dependent on other clubs and other things shifting there.
“We’ll have to be patient. We’re trying our best. We’re working endlessly to try and make sure that we can strengthen the group and help the group out, but I can’t really put a time-scale on that.
“What I can do is say the club have been supportive in that.”