TopCat

Imrie and Morton have revived the fortunes of a number of players who had hit a bit of a dip in their careers - Muirhead, Crawford, Oakley, Gillespie, Quitongo, Wilson and even Strapp (to an extent) fall into that bracket. I'm fully confident Dougie can continue to do that, particularly with a slightly bigger budget behind him. The likes of Muirhead, Oakley and Crawford moving on after a couple of years good service is always going to be the norm for us. Chucking big wages and multi-year deals at mid-table level players in in their late 20s in order to keep them is far riskier than trying to look for replacements who sit comfortably within our budget. I'd argue that Arbroath fell foul of this exact issue in the last 18 months - their premium part time squad ended up with too many miles on the clock.

https://x.com/iain_latto/status/1786685580622938139

I don't particularly like Muirhead as a player and the thought of standing in a freezing shed next January watching him put in yet another hissy fit of a performance doesn't exactly fill me with excitement. However, 10+ goals a season from a wide player on our budget isn't to be sniffed at, particularly if Strapp and Oakley are likely to be away.

A dive in the box, plus doubling down with dissent doesn't seem extremely harsh couple of bookings to me.

Basically showing why he's bumping around the bottom end of the championship despite his obvious ability. Muirhead's great value when he's on form, but far too often lets his emotions and lack of focus get the better of him.

Our win rate without Oakley (league games) is zero for the season. We beat Elgin and Stranraer in cup games in his absence.

Will our financial position be significantly worse than Ayr, Airdrie, Livi and Inverness/Hamilton? Falkirk, Queens Park, Dunfermline, Partick and one of Raith/St Johnstone/Ross County would normally outbid us in a straight offer but I don't see any reason as to why we couldn't compete directly with the first group for signings.

A painfully mid-table performance from Greenock 'mid-table' Morton. Looking forward to next week to (presumably) give a fair few of these lads a decent send off for their efforts. We had some great entertainment in the middle part of the season, but a squad refresh is required.

True, but the main issue with that is that he's too slow and stiff to get close enough to do it a lot of the time.

We've had a hard time from other managers, pundits and (to some extent) referees this season and the 'big bad Morton' line has been an easy excuse for folk to justify performances when we were steamrollering the whole league in the middle of the season. However, some of our players discipline has been terrible in recent weeks. Baird made an arse of himself last night, Broadfoot has had a few moments of losing the plot and Power has been leaving the studs in a few times too often. The overall number of fouls we're giving away and bookings we're picking up isn't constructive at all - it's one thing to play with physicality and aggression and another to lash out when things aren't going your way. That needs reigned in for next season.

Offer deals/keep; Strapp, O'Connor, Blues, Crawford, Garrity, Muirhead, Oakley, Power Release; MacDonald, Waters, Broadfoot, Gillespie, Quitongo, McGrattan, French (into the sun) Consider a loan out until January; Bearne, King, Garrity I'd keep Power for cover for another season but we really need a good upgrade on Gillespie to make that one work. Given that the competition for players will only increase with the clubs likely to be in the league, I'd hope we'll already be chasing players from League One who look like they're on an upwards trajectory. We need a bigger squad but it's likely to be cheaper young players and loans we can afford to do that with.

I think Blues can be really effective in a 5 man midfield but really painful to watch when it's more like a midfield 3. The decision to offer him a contract should come down to what the rest of the midfield is going to look like, or if we have the budget to keep him as cover/a runner for harder away ties.

We really lack a creative spark without Wilson and Strapp. Everything just looks ragged. Hopefully we can get those two up to speed for the last few games and get as much prize money in the pot as possible. It'll likely be 10 full time teams in the league next season, every penny is a prisoner now.

I've heard him speaking about this a couple of times. I think the context is that he thinks that every signing should be as part of a plan to push us towards promotion or improve year on year, as opposed to cobbling together a team for championship survival. You could make an argument for e.g. the likes of Power being a part of that but the likes of Midge, Broadfoot etc. fall more into the decent, but seeing out a final season of their career category. I'd argue that the overall transfer strategy isn't something that should sit completely with a first team manager on that basis.

Completely agree with this last part. We've had two atrocious runs of form this season, only one of which can really be partly excused by an injury crisis. This would suggest that there are a number of first team players who just aren't good enough for a top half finish, along with squad players who aren't good enough to dislodge them. As much as I'd like to see all of our youth players do well, I'd be happy for the club to be ruthless with them in the summer as well. Quitongo, French, Waters, Strapp and Broadfoot are the obvious wages that are likely to be freed up (plus anything left from Boyd and Harkness). We don't need replacements to compete, we need improvements on these players as well as on the likes of Blues and Gillespie. That doesn't look very likely if we hold on to all of our 'prospect' players.