dunning1874

Focusing on that and entirely agreeing, I had been resigned in my head to "oh fuck, we're burdened with so many two year deals so what happens if the income reduces for whatever reason" but on going through the first team squad the other day the only two currently are Murdoch and Brophy. No doubt Brophy would be an expensive wage for a club with a heavily reduced budget to carry if moving him on wasn't possible, but that's considerably less of a headache than it would have been last summer when we had 7 of them. If there is the potential for whoever supposedly has responsibility for recruitment to add players in January, then that absolutely has to be on 6 month deals because we cannot have a millstone round the club's neck of adding 3 or 4 contracts running to the summer of 2027.

That's alarming. If there's some negative news coming about Dalrada with the deal to be reviewed in January (no idea if that's the case but it's natural to speculate when something like this happens) the club's response shouldn't be to scour through their official channels to remove anything with comments from Brian Bonar so fans can't check what he's previously said. There are so many indications that the club have learned nothing from what happened in the summer. There is an institutional fear/hatred of transparency, the first instinct in every scenario is to obfuscate, cover up and hide; for the GMFC board, the worst thing that can possibly happen is the fans knowing anything about what's going on at the club. We saw it in the summer with covering up the embargo then taking days to make a statement when everyone knew something was happening with Dalrada but not what, allowing rumours and ITK whispers to spread in the vacuum caused by their silence. We saw it again once the deal was put to a vote with refusing to release the text of the deal, followed by Brian Bonar confirming at the public meeting that he had no issue with it being released in full and unredacted which then happened shortly before the vote closed. GMFC had simply point blank said no to MCT without asking him previously, hiding behind commercial sensitivity when that wasn't an issue. We've seen it since in not addressing failing to replace the Finance Director or General Manager despite saying they were working on these things and would provide updates, in the refusal to explain what Billy Davies' role was when he first joined and in the deliberately confusing statement last week about the current managerial situation that has left fans with no idea who's actually taking the team on matchdays, presumably because the club were scared of the backlash they'd get for explicitly saying Davies is in charge after how poor his caretaker spell was. We're seeing it again now in the deletion of official content with no explanation because fans might learn something from it that could be inconvenient to the board.

Our only hope of action on the immediate mess of the coaching situation is Davies going so far off the deep end that he says something so outrageous in his weekly meltdown interviews that gives them no choice but to sack him. Otherwise, the charlatans in the boardroom will stand by the charlatan on the coaching staff. The former are an existential threat to the club which is far more important than the latter ticket to League One, but that's a harder fight to have long-term that is going to be tied up with the Dalrada proposal/renewal coming in January. The mess on the park can be resolved much more easily by getting rid of Davies immediately.

Yeah, but that's the role Davies was already in when Imrie was here when he was obviously not taking the team. Although looking back at the first update when Imrie left it said "Billy Davies remains in his position as Technical Head Coach. He is currently overseeing first-team operations, leading the planning and delivery of training sessions throughout the week." So that does suggest complete continuity with the last four (abject) games.

Having attacked the ambiguity, I genuinely did think from that statement on Thursday that Miller would be taking the team on matchdays until we make an appointment. Yet Davies is doing the match preview for today and is talking as if he's still the one picking the team. The club's communication has been absolutely abysmal.

When you have a Director of Football and a manager or head coach, everyone knows that the manager/head coach is responsible for taking training and picking the team. It is completely unclear from that statement whether Davies or the new appointment will be responsible for taking training and picking the team. No one would care about the job titles if they actually defined what the roles involve, but right now what everyone is supposed to be doing is as clear as mud.

Yeah, the club have actually managed to release a statement that doesn't even make clear who's in charge of the team. You could interpret that as Davies returning to the background with Miller now being the caretaker until we appoint someone permanent who will then be in charge rather than Davies, which is how I'm taking it, but you could also interpret Davies remaining as 'Technical Head Coach' as Davies remaining in charge and we're looking to recruit another coach to assist him. This is what happens when you invent ambiguous job titles and no one knows what anyone actually does.

https://gmfc.net/club-update-18-12-25/ That's about as clear as mud when they're not actually saying what the position they're recruiting someone "to work with Billy" actually is, but whether the person is ultimately called a manager, head coach or a secret third thing is I'm taking it that Davies is back to whatever it is a Technical Head Coach does, Miller is now the caretaker in charge and someone else will be appointed to be in charge.

The initial update on Davies being caretaker: https://gmfc.net/club-update-on-first-team-coaching-arrangements/ "The current coaching structure will remain until at least the Airdrie game on 13th December, after which we will provide supporters with a further update." It's now the Thursday after. Are the club going to lower themselves to informing fans what's happening at any point, or are we just to turn up at Perth on Saturday not knowing who the manager is and hope for a surprise unveiling in the dugout? Even if the update is merely a couple of sentences that the recruitment process is ongoing and Davies will still be in charge this weekend, say that. The club really make it hard not to criticise, the board have evidently learned nothing about transparency from the shambles of the summer.

I'm generally not someone who's bothered by managers choosing to do non-Morton related things in their free time. For example Ayr fans are routinely up in arms about Scott Brown doing punditry because it's a waking moment that he's not thinking about Ayr, but it never really bothered me when Jim Duffy was regularly appearing on Radio Clyde. If it's not distracting from their job and it's a neutral platform then there's not an issue. However, is it really appropriate for Billy Davies to be appearing on "The Gers TV" just now?

If you want the lengthy winless runs we sometimes saw under Imrie but with more defeats during them and without the lengthy unbeaten runs to balance them out, Kettlewell's your man. 10 winless games leading to his sacking by Kilmarnock, 10 winless games and only one win in 16 leading to his sacking at Ross County, one win in 9 up to his resignation from Motherwell which included him fabricating a load of lies about abuse from their supporters to deflect from his poor performance. Another in the category of obviously being a massive downgrade on Imrie, so why bother?

I suspect that this is exactly what the board wanted to do and that's why they initially kicked the can down the road to after the Airdrie game, in the hope that a little spell as caretaker would give Davies enough of the bug for managing that he'd want to take it. This has hit two problems: despite Davies stating in public several times since joining Morton that he really wants to be a manager again, he doesn't want to be Morton manager. You can take that at face value that he's behaving with integrity and wants to keep his word to Imrie that he wouldn't succeed him as manager regardless of the circumstances of Imrie's departure, or more cynically you can conclude that he doesn't want it because he genuinely believes the job is beneath him and he'll be able to walk into a job at a higher level despite last managing in March 2014, with that job going so spectacularly wrong that it destroyed his reputation. The second and bigger problem is that despite the kindest run of fixtures of the season so far, Davies' results as caretaker have been dreadful. Even if he did change his mind and decide he wants it, this has been a bad enough run of results that you can't justify appointing him. As an audition for the job, it's been an abject failure. I have no insider info here and I'm only speculating, but if that has been the board's approach and Davies isn't going to change his mind/even if he does they now accept that he can't be appointed, that would mean we're three weeks down the line and they haven't even considered alternatives, let alone interviewed anyone.

This is the problem, we know all the obvious out of work candidates who've managed in the Championship recently are significant downgrades on Imrie so would likely take us backwards, and we don't need to go all that far downhill to end up getting relegated. The only chance of getting someone as good who can similarly overachieve is to take a gamble, which by definition means a riskier appointment and more chance of ending up with a Johansson level dud who definitely rather than probably relegates us, but the alternative is managed decline and a slide towards the bottom two anyway.

Davidson is a dreadful manager. Had a few excellent cup runs but he consistently underperforms in the league, overspends and recruits terribly. Would relegate us.

He's had four games as caretaker, two games at home to relegation rivals and two against lower league opposition in cups. We should have been expecting four wins from that. He's managed one. That's a dreadful performance which means there's absolutely no way the club can justify appointing him.