This is an excerpt from this week's Claret and Amber Alert, a free Motherwell newsletter written by Graeme McGarry that goes out every Thursday at 6pm. To sign up, click here.

When you hear about your club breaking new ground, you would hope it would be for something like an unprecedented run of wins, or for raising record revenues. Motherwell this week though achieved the feat of announcing the first ever managerial contract extension by way of apology.

As it turns out, weeks or even months of debate between ‘Well fans about the merits of offering Stuart Kettlewell an extension to his contract, widely believed to be up in the summer, have been rendered obsolete.

Why? Because he had already triggered an extra year on his deal by keeping the club in the Premiership last season. It’s just that nobody at the club thought this was a pertinent piece of information to share with their supporters.

When it came to light at the club AGM on Wednesday night that this was indeed the case, they were then forced to retrospectively announce the news on social media, eight months or so down the line.

READ MORE: Motherwell announce Stuart Kettlewell contract extension until 2025

I am not strictly a communications or PR professional, but I have to say, that sounds like the sort of news your core customer base probably should have been informed of. And if I was a comms guy, I’d probably want to release that information at a point when it would be warmly received.

Let’s say, oh I don’t know, in the summer maybe when the manager was riding the crest of a wave and was enjoying win stats the likes of which had never been seen at Fir Park? Just a thought.

I applauded interim CEO Derek Weir for releasing a lengthy video a few weeks back in an attempt to be more open with the Motherwell support, but this was quite the omission. And quite how in that same video he can rubbish the notion that the club need to invest in their communications while knowing this had not been relayed to the fans is perplexing to say the least.

Is it that he thinks a proper comms department is a waste of money because a club the size of Motherwell doesn’t require it, or is it because he doesn’t think the fans deserve to know this sort of stuff?

It’s probably a bit of both, and I feel for the media boys who were getting it in the neck given they can only communicate what has been communicated to them. But even this ‘oversight’ – if we are being kind – wasn’t the most alarming thing to come out of this week’s AGM for me.

Rather, it was the details emerging of the potential investors in the club that had been brought to the table by the now infamous promotional video. None of which, regrettably, were Taylor Swift.

From American streamers to Australian moneyball merchants, the thing that they all had in common was that they weren’t looking to throw money at Motherwell out of the goodness of their hearts. Rather, their involvement would be conditioned upon acquiring a controlling stake, thus diluting the influence of the ‘Well Society.

They would also want to bring on board their own CEO, presumably, which would make the ongoing process of hiring one to step into Weir’s breach by the end of March fairly difficult.

I can completely understand the motivation behind seeking outside investment, and why many fans would be behind it. It is getting harder and harder for Motherwell to compete financially even with peers who may have a wealthy backer given the fan-owned status of the club.

With clubs falling over themselves to sign up to feeder arrangements with EPL outfits too, there is a real chance that Motherwell could be left behind if they don’t find that extra revenue. If the annual playing budget falls to 11th or 12th in the division, then chances are, the club might eventually fall out of the division completely.

But I think it is far too early to be jumping onto the bandwagon of people out there who take the club’s financial struggles as evidence that fan ownership has failed. The ‘Well Society has had its faults, no question, but the injection of new blood onto its board recently seems to have given it a fresh energy and direction.

The promising thing for me that came out of the AGM then was that the ‘Well Society have also begun stating their own case not only to plug the financial shortfall, but hopefully to help shake the club out of its torpor without ceding control to someone with less altruistic motives.

READ MORE: Fans losing faith in Motherwell backline, and backbone

Want to attract more fans and raise brand awareness? What’s stopping you? It is fresh impetus that the club requires as much as investment, and I’d like to hear the ‘Well Society’s proposals for providing it before we throw in our lot with anyone who might not have the long-term survival of the club as their top priority.