dunning1874

If the vote this week was a final yes/no I'd be leaning to no because of the current lack of detail about safeguards, but ironing out those things is going to be part of a due diligence period and is exactly why it's the right approach to have one vote about proceeding to that stage and another about the final agreement. I don't see any reason not to go ahead and apply greater scrutiny now, knowing we can still say no further down the line if we don't like the look of the small print. The stuff about appealing to an international audience did strike me as total pie in the sky, but that was the only thing that I felt was some kind of red flag. Even if my gut instinct is correct that generating any sort of credible income from that avenue is simply never going to happen and believing it's even possible is worryingly naive on their part, it's not like they seemed to be putting all their eggs in that basket either and the rest of what they're aiming for coming to fruition would still be good in and of itself. It's not like they're proposing a Caley Braves type business model where the whole thing is dependent on that outside interest.

It moved on right after you dropped off as well!

I didn't post anything during the game about it because I genuinely wasn't sure and wanted to see it back, but the highlights confirm that Ballantyne's tackling leg is completely on the ground, he hasn't missiled into it in midair the way Main later did for that stonewall red, and he clearly plays the ball. I think a booking for that would be understandable for taking both man and ball and the speed of it although slightly harsh, a red is just a complete head loss of a decision.

I understand why Stuparevic is an obvious name for people to jump to, but we don't even know if he's in the UK at all. He could have returned to Serbia after being released by Motherwell. Murray really needs to start using all his subs. It was daft last Saturday when we'd had 3 games in 8 days and it was well beyond cutting his nose off to spite his face today when we were down to 10 men and players were understandably knackered from the extra running required. I'm fine with a manager deciding there's a core group they trust but in the last two games it's reached the point that it's objectively bad management to not get more legs on.

Even with 10 men we were well in the game and creating some chances, with Main costing us an equaliser by being so greedy and selfish in shooting when he could have squared it to Garrity for a tap in. That he's then compounded that already dreadful error by turning the game into a training exercise for Airdrie with his rampant stupidity should end his Morton career.

Send Main back to Ayr tonight. As effective a footballer as Adam Coakley and considerably stupider.

I'd have thought conceding three last week would be the impetus to get Wilson back into midfield with Owens or Moore beside Lopata-White, but Murray's done enough so far to trust that he knows what he's doing.

I'd say this is must not lose rather than must win, but there's a pretty nasty run of fixtures coming up after this as well. It would be good to get the win and surely put worries of Airdrie catching us to bed; losing a 10 point lead with 9 games to go would take an awful collapse.

A bin with some great pubs. That's the real quiz.

Pre-season tournament between Morton, Rimini and Cascais. The midpoint of all three places would be about halfway between Nantes and Bordeaux. Pre-season tournament in Nantes, Nantes is class. Or the French club they're interested is now fourth tier Bordeaux. I would hope there is a preferential buyback clause so MCT get first dibs on the shares in the event they sell up, but equally they can't force us to buy them if they wanted £750K back: if we choose not to stump £750K for them they'll have to accept less or sell them elsewhere.

One thing I did think of there typing '£750K' out several times for that post, and this is maybe an extremely stupid point but I don't know how these things tend to work with foreign investment, I assume the agreement would be based on them spending that value in Pounds rather than them spending what the current equivalent is in Euros? You wouldn't want two years down the line to have seen a massive economic collapse in Europe that means the amount of Euros they invest is actually worth far less than £750K. Similarly I suppose you could once again see a huge spike in inflation in the UK that means £750K is actually worth far less in 2028/29 than it is in 2026, but that's an unavoidable reality with any investment over time regardless of where it comes from.

That's a valid question that needs answered, but at face value with no insider knowledge I wouldn't particularly expect further monetary investment to continue after the first three years and £750K, on the basis that £750K is the price of the shares they're buying and they'll then have bought them. Maybe I'm wrong about that and more money would flow in, but if my guess is right then while they could at that point stop providing the services they value at £150K annually for free as well, that would strike me as cutting their nose off to spite their face. Once they own 35% of the club and have sunk £750K of actual money in, it's in their interest to see the club do well so the value of those shares increases, in the absence of having access to anything to asset strip with Cappielow remaining wholly in MCT's hands. If £150K a year is being diverted away from other areas of the budget then that's less to spend on improving the infrastructure of the club or putting a better team on the park. All the clubs they have a stake in having continuing free access to the facilities they provide seems to be the whole point of their "horizontal model" exercise (the LinkedIn speak does make me want to throw up any time I quote any of it, but it makes sense in this case).

It seems huge to me, putting the overall value of the club without Cappielow at over £2.1M. The detail is going to be important here in terms of safeguards, eg is the full 35% shareholding being delivered immediately on the deal being signed, what recourse does the club/MCT have if there's a default on some of that £750K versus the agreed payment schedule, but I'm cautiously seeing nothing to immediately dislike about this while needing more information to be fully convinced.

We do have a pretty nasty run of fixtures coming up after Airdrie. A six game run where the three home games are against the top three with the three away games being Ayr, Raith and Dunfermline. League results have still been good under Murray despite yesterday, 8 points from 5 is solid and gives you confidence that we can win a couple of those. If we pick up points at the same rate and take 16 from the remaining 10 games that'll be really good and enough to see us comfortably somewhere between 5th-7th, but we could really do with a win over Airdrie now to build a huge gap between us and them before hitting that run of games.

Aye, bang in line with the halfway line I only suffered smelling it once in the first half but there were some people moving around to get away from it saying it was going on all game.