dunning1874

Murray has the exact same league record as Allan Evans after the same number of games. All of Evans' games were during administration, a far worse position to be managing in than Murray has. An irredeemable charlatan, there's not even a debate to be had about him being the club's worst manager in my lifetime.

A due diligence process on a six-figure sum, as envisaged by an actual lawyer.

“Our focus remains on managing the club’s finances responsibly, reducing costs where possible and ensuring we have the strongest possible position as we look beyond those months." It evidently isn't, because reducing costs where possible would have meant letting Moore & McLuckie go and not replacing them with another cost. That was a possible reduced cost which has now not happened. If Robinson is on a wage as tiny as £300 a week, that's £4.8K up to the start of January. If he's on £500 a week, that's £8K. There is a four figure sum being spent that did not need to be spent, meaning we are not going to be in the strongest possible position because we're going to be at least close to £5K worse off than we would have been without paying a wage to Robinson.

The Herald article is considerably worse than the letter. So by Gordon Ritchie's own telling of events, he's demanded a mass resignation of both boards in July, on the basis that a donation in the region of around £150K will be made upon their resignation. The response from the boards is to ask who and where the money is coming from. He said no, I'm not telling, the donors have to remain anonymous. They say okay, can you provide us proof of funds then so we know the £150K will actually be delivered? He says no, are you taking the piss? These people, whose identities I'm refusing to disclose, are multi-millionaires! How can you possibly dare to ask for proof of funds from these people despite not knowing who they are because I won't tell you? Why can't you take the word of me, Gordon Ritchie, who single-handedly turned the club around and kept it running during Covid, who is now openly admitting to being the MCT member taking legal action against MCT and openly states a personal vendetta against both current boards? You should take me at my word with no further evidence! So he takes the huff and takes the offer off the table as both boards haven't resigned en masse immediately because Gordon Ritchie said so, but then the board get back in touch with him again themselves with a further offer by three directors to resign; he again says no, then says those directors who made an offer to him to resign which he refused have "put their own interests above the club" because they won't "step aside and give up their free pies and sandwiches in the boardroom". The Tele letter and Herald article appearing on the same day really are an amazing juxtaposition. The Herald article ends with "I was recently willing to put £75k of my own money into the club. If anyone else wants to put that money in then they can criticise me and accuse me of not having the best interests of Morton at heart. Until someone else does that they can shut up." Unless you have £75K to put in yourself you can fuck off and shut up seems an odd position to take for someone who claims to passionately believe in fan ownership and talks in his letter about "the principles of openness and honesty with members".

"My involvement at Cappielow came to an end in circumstances that are now the subject of legal proceedings." Did Gordon Ritchie just admit that he's the member suing MCT? Wasting time and money on petty bullshit that could instead be put towards the club?

Yes. It's not Murray's call to make and even without McLuckie he already had a massive squad to choose from, especially in McLuckie's position. If he's unhappy with that then tough. We're supposed to be making every saving we can to reduce the shortfall, if you have the opportunity to move bit-part players on and claw a saving back you do it. Adding other players back onto the wage bill when we've already got a shortfall is completely wild. That's before considering that this will likely end up costing the club far more than any McLuckie v Robinson wage saving by completely destroying the credibility of the fighting fund. No one is donating to it to fund signings, and by making signings that increase the wage bill and increase the shortfall that's ultimately what the fighting fund ends up being used for.

They already have contracts to be paid up, so we can't release players with no cost and and also need to have enough of them to fulfill fixtures. We also already had 22 of them without including the coop loans we can bring back at any time we like, the squad is fucking massive. The threat to keeping GMFC afloat is the shortfall in the budget this season. Signing more players is a barrier to reducing that shortfall. If we happen to be in a lower division with lower income in future we can adjust our expenditure to account for that, as we have no contractual commitments beyond this season. Signing more players this season however, when we already have contractual commitments which can't be met, is jeopardising the club's survival. Making more signings is not saving money. The wage bill being lower than it was when Moore and McLuckie were here (and we don't know for sure that this is the case) does not mean we have saved money by signing Robinson. If he receives a wage, he costs money. Moore & McLuckie out - saves money Robinson in - costs money These things are not dependent on each other as you could do the former without the latter. The signing is costing money, money which we do not have. It is gambling with the existence of the club and is a shambolic way for the club to conduct themselves at the same time as asking for donations to keep the lights on.

Has the reduction in the budget through Moore leaving permanently and McLuckie leaving on loan (co-op loans are required by the rules to have no payment so we will not have a penny of Black, Murphy or O'Toole's wages covered by Renfrew) wiped out the shortfall left by Dalrada's arrears? If the answer is no, which it is, then using those savings to sign more players and therefore pushing the cost of the wage budget back up rather than taking the saving is a completely indefensible thing to do when we have been told that shortfall will see the club run out of money before the end of tbe season. It is reckless and unjustifiable. Unless Robinson is for some reason playing for free - and he could have signed on amateur terms if that was the case to allow him to leave for a club willing to pay him whenever he liked - the only explanation here is that the club are behaving irresponsibly. This will kill any momentum in the fighting fund, because no one is donating money to subsidise signings.

Making more signings which add to wage bill with everything else going is completely unacceptable. We have a budget shortfall of an unspecified amount which is seemingly an existential threat to the club. The existence of this shortfall has led people to make donations in the hope they're helping the club avert that existential threat, with donations currently sitting at £70K and counting. In these circumstances all the loan signings are absolutely fine. While they clearly aren't allowed by the parent clubs to explicitly say so, it's extremely clear from what's been said about the loan signings that we aren't paying a penny towards the wages of any of them. This is a sensible way to go about things, bringing costs down wherever possible is the right thing to do and we were explicitly told that the wage bill was lowered since the fighting fund was launched through Moore's departure. The decision to then go and make another permanent signing defies belief. Even if we say for arguments sake that Robinson's on a lower wage than Moore was and so the wage bill is still lower now than it was at the end of August, that's not the point; expenditure needs to come down by cutting costs wherever possible to reduce the shortfall, and instead we're putting it back up by making more signings. Anyone making a donation to the club believes they're doing so to help avert an existential threat, not to top up the wage bill. Adding more wages to the outgoings while talking about not currently having enough money to make it to end of the season is actively taking the piss out of every single person who's donated. For what it's worth Robinson was a great Championship player when he was with Dundee who should be a massive upgrade on Brophy even if he's dropped off a bit with his own fitness troubles, but the quality of the player is totally irrelevant really. The decision to sign Carse when we did was questionable at best with what we learned shortly after; the decision to sign Robinson knowing what we do now is disgraceful, and will remain so even if he scores a hat-trick in every game for the rest of the season.

Not to mention that in that time period there already was a massive uplift in prize money in the second tier. In the final season of the SFL in 12/13 we got £67K for finishing 2nd in the second tier; we got more for finishing 10th the following season and when we came back up and finished 5th in 15/16 it was £211k. By 18/19 the League 2 winners were getting the £67K we had for 2nd in the First Division, while 2nd in the Championship was then on £475K. Pretty much every club, Morton included, did the same thing with it; increased the wage budget to pay the same players more money and got caught in an inflationary cycle where anyone who didn't join the arms race would get left behind, so they all went along with it and had nothing to show for it but for the same standard of player. No doubt purely in terms of the effect on competition the game would be healthier if there was a more equitable split between the Premiership and the rest and it would be less likely for clubs to go straight back up, but we have recent enough evidence to suggest that clubs would just do the same thing all over again and use the increased funds for short-term, short-sighted spending. Why put money aside for long-term revenue generating projects if you can chuck several hundred pounds more at Zak Rudden or Nathan Shaw?

With last night's defeat, Murray now has a worse league record (so kindly for him discounting the 5 defeats out of 5 in cups, only one of which was against a side from a higher level) than Kenny Shiels and Gus MacPherson. On league points per game there are only three poorer managers in Morton's history; Allan Evans who was managing during administration, John S Thomson who was an owner who appointed himself as manager then finished bottom of the SFL, and Willie McLean who only managed us in a 10 team top flight. If we lose next week then Murray will have the same record as Allan Evans after the same number of games. An Airdrie defeat today that sees them sack Rankin and want Murray back is our best route out of this, but he's probably arrogant enough to think he's above dropping to League One.

"An incomplete Investment Agreement was issued to MCT members without Estrella's knowledge or consent, contrary to the arrangements that had been agreed and in breach of the NDA governing the process. In addition, the proposal was communicated by MCT as giving Estrella "majority control over GMFC whilst being a minority shareholder". Estrella did not see these communications until 18 August." Later in the statement... "Our decision to speak publicly at that stage was driven by the circumstances immediately preceding the AGM. Incorrect information about the nature of our proposal had been communicated to MCT members" The AGM was held on 17 August. How could the statement at the AGM be a response to the narrative created by an email on 15 August if Estrella didn't see that email until 18 August?

Also you use the phrase prematurely leaked, but a finalised agreement had been made as of 31 July then negotiations were reopened after the AGM was called and a date set for the vote to open, which all sides agree was done at Estrella's behest. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of Estrella feeling it was necessary to do so in light of the change in the club's financial position, that's why there wasn't a finalised agreement to share. The email containing the agreement as it stood was sent only 2 days before the AGM, with a later email saying agreement had been reached on the outstanding clauses coming less than 2 hours before it started. If the email with the IA as it stood is what Estrella are arguing has been a breach of the NDA by MCT and so is a basis for legal action, would it have been appropriate to wait another two days to share it? How would any MCT members have had a chance to properly scrutinise it and discuss it at the AGM if that was the case and we all only had an hour and 45 minutes to read and understand a 30 page (discounting the 20 odd pages that just listed existing shareholders) legal document? For that matter, if the MCT board sharing the IA with the MCT membership was a breach of the NDA and Estrella have cause for legal redress as a result, was briefing individual MCT members about the progress of negotiations not itself a breach of the NDA as well then, before even getting to the content of the statement? You can of course argue that they shouldn't have shared the legal advice regarding the veto and argument of majority control along with the agreement and instead kept that back for the meeting or otherwise communicated it separately, but I'd also say not sharing the legal advice the MCT board received from their lawyers with the membership whenever there's something beyond 'all good, nothing to see here' about the deal with members would itself have been an unacceptable lack of transparency. We've had contradictory statements of fact made about the course of events by all sides here, with all claiming they have a paper trail as evidence to support their version of events. None of that evidence has been shared with the membership to allow a concrete "this person is indisputably lying about this and this person is indisputably telling the truth" conclusion with evidence backing it up to be known among the membership. We now find that one of the parties is threatening the other with legal action over breaking non-disclosure agreements. You can interpret that many ways: one side did fuck up and the other side therefore has a right to take legal action against the other knowing they'd win, both sides or neither breached the agreement and a legal threat is a bluff, or in the same scenario a legal threat is not a bluff but they'd lose. Maybe a majority of the MCT board feel they're bang to rights and have no choice but to avert legal action because they'd lose, maybe a majority simply think it's the right thing to do because they want the Estrella deal back on track regardless, or maybe a majority don't think they're in the wrong but legal action isn't a risk worth taking because it would be more time and money diverted away from saving the club. Whatever the case may be, a cynic could certainly conclude though that threatening legal action over the NDA is ensuring that those paper trails which provide evidence of who was telling the truth at the AGM will never see the light of day.

A return to Airdrie when they sack Rankin is a more realistic chance of another club actually wanting him, but Murray may still be too arrogant to want to drop back to League One. Have to hope either Livingston, or Inverness if they sacked Kellacher, are daft enough to go for him.

It was 100% openly discussed at that May 2025 meeting that Dalrada had missed payments previously in 2025, although they weren't in arrears at the time of that meeting. I can't remember the dates given for sure but think it may have been January 2025? The explanation given was that there was no formal process akin to a direct debit or standing order set up for the payments to be sent, Bonar was just doing it himself manually whenever a payment was due, and so when he was ill the payments didn't happen. It was presented as a one-off issue which wouldn't be repeated with the new deal as there'd now be a proper process.