dunning1874

Considering their conduct at the AGM and since I think everything points to us dodging a bullet in not having Estrella with the club, but it is absolutely wild to say this is a more serious offer than Estrella. It's considerably worse in every respect.

Everyone being united to kick the consortium dogshit out is the most important thing so reluctant to go to the same detail on the competing statements from different MCT board members, but broadly there's a Thomas Francis shaped flaw in the McLennan and McMaster statement. If the existing MCT board were so disorganised and incompetent that there was no communication with new directors joining the board amid total failures of governance, to the point that working with them is "untenable" and they felt they had no choice but to first ask for their resignations then try to start a coup when that offer was refused, why is another new board member who was elected at the same time as McLennan & McMaster putting his name to a statement alongside those existing board members? A statement that not only disputes McLennan & McMaster's characterisation of events but explicitly raises concerns about "Graham McLennan's behaviour"? The examples they give of issues they've seen are very light on specifics as well, and where there is something specific it's extremely flimsy. The Estrella deal not going to a vote was the choice of members at the AGM to vote for postponement then Estrella taking the huff and doing a runner in response. Take that up with your pals in Estrella whose own statement at the AGM blew it up. Also as an aside, once again in this statement legal action by Estrella is mentioned; are we supposed to be sad that people who were seriously considering legal action against us didn't gain a stake in the club? The offer of £120K-150K brought by Gordon Ritchie has already been proven to be completely unserious nonsense which couldn't be taken to the membership, by Gordon Ritchie's own public telling of events. Also trying not to be too judgemental, we've seen MCT emails go out with errors as well, but there are so many grammatical issues in their statement that I can't even figure out what they're trying to say in some places. The justification for the underhanded whatsapp message (a justification given after claiming they have no idea why members have submitted votes of no confidence in them) is totally muddled. As for the "we volunteered for this vote, will anyone else?!" attempt to muddy the waters, nice try. John McMaster can make that claim to martyrdom if he likes as he's done it without the requests for a VONC in him meeting the 10% threshold, but Graham McLennan would be facing this vote regardless of whether he wanted to because the 10% threshold was met. It's happening because the members demanded it whether he liked it or not, not because of his decency in putting himself forward for it.

So, the consortium open with: "We would like to make it absolutely clear that our involvement with Greenock Morton Football Club is not driven by any intention to take over the club or to purchase GMFC. We are not coming forward with an agenda, nor are we looking to take control of the club." This is complete nonsense. You are literally trying to purchase GMFC and take majority control of the club by asking for 60%. It is blatantly false to claim otherwise. "We appreciate that supporters and members of the board may naturally have questions about our intentions, and we believe it is important to be transparent from the outset." You've already failed to do that, we don't even know who four of you are! "We have not approached GMFC with demands or a list of conditions. We have not said that we want to buy the club, take it over or dictate its future direction." You are literally offering to buy 60% of the club! That is buying it, taking it over and having the power to dictate its future direction! "A 60% shareholding is our minimum requirement." So you claim to not have any demands or conditions, you claim to not be wanting control of the club, when you are in fact demanding majority control? Do you think everyone buttons up the back?! "What is the minimum MCT contribution required for the consortium's £150,000 commitment to continue, and how does this reconcile with the consortium's stated assumption of primary responsibility for future funding? The minimum required contribution is £12,500." So this confirms, MCT have to pay the exact same amount as the consortium at a minimum to dilute their shareholding and lose majority control of the club along with ownership of Cappielow as the consortium have to pay to gain all of the above, and when MCT payments inevitably drop below that level the funding from the consortium will immediately stop. This is absolutely outrageous, it's genuinely offensive to expect anyone to accept this disgrace. "We would want Cappielow to remain available as potential security should additional funding ever be required through a bank loan or a loan from one of the consortium members. In such circumstances, a standard security over the stadium could be considered. This is not to suggest that such borrowing will necessarily be required, but we believe the option should remain available as a standard means of financing a business." The GMFC board never being able to jeopardise the future of Cappielow in this fashion is exactly why it's been moved to a separate company to protect it. This can never be allowed to happen. Nice touch as well to float the idea of it being a consortium member who provides the loan secured against Cappielow. So the consortium can get majority control of the club, have a loan from one of that consortium secured against Cappielow, wind down funding themselves, oversee the club they control failing to make repayments on that loan, and oh look, now a consortium member owns Cappielow themselves! How convenient! "During the contracting phase we would agree a contractual structure that provides MCT confirmation that Cappielow would not be sold and only used for football." Doesn't stop you using it for security as a loan though that could make this invalid though? Or charging an extortionate rent once you've seized control of it if you can't go as far as demolishing it to grab the land? "4 of the consortium members have asked for their identities to be kept anonymous at this stage. This is in part due to the negative social media directed to some of the other consortium members. All members will be identified prior to the final vote." This is transparent bullshit. How could they have wanted to withhold their identities when the consortium was first announced due to negative social media attention towards other consortium members, when no one knew who the other members were then either? It's clearly total nonsense. Announcing the rest of their identities only after an initial due diligence vote is also not acceptable. It couldn't be more obvious that the point of this consortium is an asset grab and they couldn't care less about what's good for Morton. Letting them into the club would be a death sentence, this needs to be stopped on Monday.

Huge MCT update has just landed with the sign up for Monday's meeting, the responses from the consortium to questions put to them, confirmation that George Anderson has resigned while a vote of no confidence will be held in Graham McLennan & John McMaster, a statement from Graham McLennan and John McMaster and a statement from the rest of the MCT board. Going to take a lot of time to go through everything, but it's only taken two sentences from the consortium to reach a nonsensical and blatantly untrue claim.

Reminder of the prize money in this tournament now: Winners: £150,000 Runners-up: £100,000 Eliminated in semi-finals: £75,000 Eliminated in quarter-finals: £50,000 Eliminated in Round of 16: £40,000 Eliminated in Round of 32: £30,000 Eliminated in league phase: £15,000 - £18,500 (depending on final league position) I've always wished we would take this tournament more seriously, but especially now we have to. A proper run would be massive financially, we can't have a repeat of the nonsense elimination last season.

It was always likely to be Miller & O'Halloran for the rest of the season, I don't really understand why anyone is expecting a different appointment. Now that they've actually won a game it would also take a minimum of 24 games for them to have as bad a record as Murray's this season.

Frank McKeown resigns as Dumbarton manager after losing 4-0 to Clydebank. Wonder if they can now tempt Ian Murray away from his presumed gardening leave and save us some money.

I was reliably informed by every journalist who doesn't have a clue what they're talking about that Ian Murray was powerless to do anything as no manager could possibly get results with this team. Well well well! Obviously it was far removed from total football, but there were some massive performances there. When we conceded so soon after going 2-0 up there was a very obvious script for losing 3-2, but for all that it was natural to shite yourself every time Arbroath crossed the halfway line there wasn't actually a clear cut chance in that whole time, just a lot of getting into dangerous positions and doing f**k all with it. Gillespie was terrific, the number of times it was him breaking out of midfield when we'd won possession was ridiculous and he was often leading the pressing as the highest player up the park when Borso and Garrity were knackered as well. He's an injury prone 35 year old holding midfielder who's never been blessed with pace, that was an outrageously good shift. Thought it was harsh on Croker to be dropped after how well he played last week and he was excellent again today. That's two games not being managed by Ian Murray and two games that Sandilands has looked like a player having seemed miles out his depth before now, his run for the second was so good. Garrity's best game of the season today as well, for all that he should have given it to Sandilands for a tap in when he hit the post. Cupps however; for all that it's a howling decision from the referee to send him off when it's obviously not a clear goalscoring opportunity, it was dreadful defending to even end up in the position he was committing a foul in the first place. The ball should have been dealt with easily before getting that far. Extremely funny that we're not even bottom of the league now. Even if we average a point a game for the rest of the season which is a tall order we'd only be on 30 points; we are obviously still clear favourites for 10th, but we are not going to be Brechin. Our first win since f**king March. That's an occasion to ignore the off-field bollocks for an evening and feel happy about football. I was so close to not going today, I'm so glad I woke up and decided fuck it, I'll go.

Having been another dire performance until we scored, that was a team transformed after the equaliser. Easily the best we've played this season from that point until the final whistle, which is a low bar and there were still some bad performers - how bad is Carse in training that Robertson got 90 minutes playing that badly instead of putting him on? - but you can see what a bit of confidence does for the players without Murray draining every bit of energy from their souls. Some of them are still shite footballers, we should not see Bashir again unless we have no one fit, but grinding points when we actually have a fit centre forward shouldn't be out of the question. We created more chances in the second half than we have in the rest of the season combined.

I've no idea which any of the current staff hold, but by the SFA licencing manual the bronze licence requirement is that you need the manager to hold a B Licence and one other first team coach (not including the goalkeeping coach as that's a separate licencing requirement) to either hold a B Licence or be working towards it. We've got Bill Orr in the building as well as Miller & O'Halloran, although it wouldn't be a surprise if he followed Murray out the door in the event he was placed on gardening leave or punted. I do get the point that bringing someone external in as manager is fundamentally doing the same thing that we're all (correctly) morally objecting to with Robinson in spending more money on the first team when we're also asking for donations to get through the season. It's why I'd just appoint one of the internal options, it is impossible for it to get any worse than Murray anyway.

John S Thomson was a nutter owner who decided to appoint himself as manager. He led us to our worst league finish ever in 1960/61, finishing bottom of the entire SFL (19th in the Second Division, 37th overall). If we lose again next Saturday with him still in charge, then Murray will have a worse league record than Thomson.

If the reason Murray hasn't been sacked is that we can't afford to pay him off (though we can apparently afford to throw thousands of pounds down the drain on signing players who haven't played in 2 years due to injury and then shockingly get injured after one appearance) then he has to be placed on gardening leave immediately. He can never be allowed in the dugout again. That was by a mile the worst performance of the season so far, and it'll get worse if the worst manager in the club's history is allowed to remain in his post.

This is tragic. It's not so much East Fife valiantly trying against Celtic as it is Andorra against England or Germany, it just looks like a group of players who have absolutely no business being on the park with their opponents. Once again a goal conceded which has everything to do with Murray's setup despite the atrocious standard of player.

I agree with your views on this deal being a total heap of shite, but the legal position on the Estrella deal was only shared at the point they were sharing an actual investment agreement, not an outline of the proposal. They didn't have a legal position stated when they were sharing an overview of Estrella's deal either. If we ever get to the same point with this consortium I'd expect details of any concerns in the legal advice to be shared again, but hopefully it's binned long before we reach that point anyway.