dunning1874

Seeing the goal again, that's extremely well done from Moore. At the time I couldn't really tell how it ended up in the net, but for all that there's an element of fortune in that he's sort of just dangled his leg out and hoped for the best rather than deliberately placing it in the corner, he's done really well to get it on target anyway.

It was a poor performance and Raith were no better, but if you're going to be served up a grim game of football I'll take drawing through a stoppage time equaliser over 0-0 every day. Good scenes there. A few individuals had poor games, but focusing on the positives Blues and Wilson were back to their best with Wilson having his best game of this season and looking so much more like himself. McKay is all energy and little brain but that genuinely unsettled Raith, they didn't know what to do with the chaos factor. There's also something to be said for Moffat's approach today of being happy to just win set-pieces when he got to the final third rather than trying for the world class goal or cross whenever he gets there unlike some other players.

Sadly predictable that we'd still have two wingers and the biggest problem in the midfield, there's no reset happening here. Extremely bold of Imrie to persist with this.

Imrie singling out the full-backs for not giving the centre backs enough protection last week when we could all see what the midfield were doing is certainly a hot take. If it's a back four it has to be Moore beside Longridge. It wouldn't be the first time Imrie has responded to poor results with a switch to a back three/five and Comrie played on the right of a back three regularly for Dunfermline, so you could go Longridge - Moore - Comrie with Delaney & Ballantyne as wing backs, but I'd still rather see a four and a narrow midfield. Packing the middle of the park is more important than packing the defence and I'd be worried that we'd be too short in midfield with a back three, with past attempts at it seeing us play more of a 3-4-3 than 3-5-2. Flood the midfield with central midfielders. Wilson, Blues, Lyall and one of Gillespie or Robertson. You aren't going to get 90 minutes out of Gillespie but having him sitting would allow Blues to go properly box-to-box rather than needing him to be more reserved to support Wilson defensively. Whether you want to call them a diamond, a 1-3, a 3-1 or a 2-2 I'm not particularly fussed, but we need bodies in there to stop being so easily overrun every week. Garrity with freedom to drift playing off a centre forward, I'd lean to Adeloye as he's more of a goal threat but Brophy will cover more ground.

There are definitely people in this thread letting their off-field opinion on MacPherson affect their judgement of him as a footballer, with their minds made up that they can only come to one conclusion on his footballing ability because of their views on what he did. It's not the people criticising his performances.

I'll absolutely not deny that I don't like MacPherson as a person because of his previous, but I'm also capable of separating my views on a footballer as a person from my views on them as a footballer, rather than deciding they must be shite if the evidence suggests otherwise. People who thought we shouldn't sign Alan Lithgow and were (correctly) saying in December 2021 that he'd been dreadful for us weren't still saying he was dreadful by March 2022, because even if they didn't like him as a person his performances had obviously improved and no one could deny that he was playing well, even if they still didn't like the idea of employing him. It would be understating it to say I think Jai Quitongo is an unpleasant person but I could still acknowledge when he was good and having a positive impact as a Morton player. They're two separate issues. MacPherson made a positive contribution coming off the bench on his debut at Queen's Park, where his willingness to slow things down and take an extra touch in the hope of buying space did help us with getting up the park more in a game where both Wilson and Blues had been far too frantic under pressure and were routinely firing it back at the centre backs on their first touch, which MacPherson didn't do. In a sign of things to come he did also create Queen's Park's best chance of that game with two horrible mistakes in the space of 10 seconds, but as they failed to take it you can't dispute that overall he had a positive impact on our performance in that game, and no one did. We clearly got better with him and Garrity on the park that day and so there were calls for them both to start. At Arbroath again there was no substantial criticism of him - it was a game that largely passed him by, he wasn't the only midfielder that was the case for and it was neither a good or bad performance really, which is why he got no stick. He's taken a massive amount of criticism in all three games he's played since because he's been abysmal to the point of being the worst player on the park in all three of them. Against a Ross County team who looked toothless otherwise he gave them their goal by lunging in to concede a stonewall penalty when there was no need to go off his feet. That cost us two points as much as any incorrect refereeing decision did that day and that's bad enough in isolation, but then in the 25 minutes between giving the penalty away and going off injured he gave the ball away in our own half four times, twice by telegraphing a switch which was intercepted about 10 yards short of the full back he was aiming for. It wasn't a coincidence that the considerable second half improvement that day came with MacPherson off the park, because he'd been Ross County's best player. Ayr was more of the same, giving the ball away in our own half routinely, with the far too short telegraphed switch 30 yards from our own goal once again rearing its head. Luckily it was on the edge of the box rather than inside it but he blundered into a needless foul in a dangerous position once again. Both goals were a farce from the whole team defensively so pinning either on one player alone would be totally unfair, but his attempt at closing the goalscorer down for their first was terrible. It was a day where none of the starting central midfielders played well, but when the quadruple sub was made early in the second half that saw both Blues and Wilson taken off, MacPherson hadn't found a teammate with a pass yet in that half. He was the poorest of the three yet got 90 minutes and Imrie praised his performance as Premier League quality afterwards. When any player is getting protection and held to a far lower standard than the rest of the team by a manager like that it always makes them a target for fans. I don't need to recount what he did yesterday but anyone suggesting that he wasn't one of the worst two players on the park is at it, with Corr the only contender for being worse. He once again got 90 minutes with the other two central midfielders who hadn't been half as bad being taken off at half-time. It was a ridiculous performance, worse than anything Niall McGinn or Kirk Broadfoot ever offered in a Morton shirt; two players who took no end of abuse themselves without that stick being due to non-footballing reasons, because with them as with MacPherson the abuse was about being a shite footballer who was costing us points. Disliking him for other reasons might lead to people mixing those non-footballing reasons in with the stick they give him and anyone objecting to that is fair enough, but the reason the criticism is happening in the first place is that he's been Dylan Dykes levels of hopeless and is getting progressively worse with every game while Imrie has a blindspot for him.

You do have to wonder what on earth Hart is doing in training that he can't get a game ahead of Corr. I really don't think it's an overreaction off the back of today's game to say that Corr and MacPherson should never play for Morton again barring a ridiculous injury crisis. If Delaney's obviously terrible performance last week prompted the kneejerk reaction of 'you deserve to be dropped for that, so I'll do it even when the obviously worse alternative of Grant Gillespie being shoehorned in at left back is the only way to drop you' then playing Sonny Hart instead of Corr or one of the 8 million central midfielders who aren't 'Cami' really isn't that drastic a move in comparison.

Not subbing MacPherson is just an absolute disgrace. Imrie reaching Craig Levein levels of stubbornness where he's actively harming the team to stick two fingers up to the fans who are obviously objectively correct in giving stick to a player, who he's decided is one of his favourites based on absolutely nothing he's done on the pitch.

We're flattered by this scoreline. Don't think you can blame Storer for any of them but needless to say every single outfield player has been an absolute disgrace. Special mentions need reserved for Corr, who's miles out of his depth with St Johnstone knowing it, and MacPherson who was directly responsible for two of those and climbs dozens of places in the worst Morton players ever table every time he steps in the park. He's now overtaken Dylan Dykes. Need a total reset after this. Can't hide behind spurious excuses about referees again here, it's just an abysmal performance and a result which has been coming with performances getting progressively worse.

1 win in 11 will continue to be the far more pertinent stat, because hardly losing is actually not particularly helpful if you never win. We'd be in a much better place if we'd won 5 and lost 6, and in that scenario would be looking up the table as credible playoff contenders rather than the reality of where we are, which is a fight to avoid 9th where any slip up against Airdrie or Queen's Park would be disastrous.

Delaney's closer to a gross misconduct sacking than a fine for that. Just absolutely disgraceful defending with no justification. There's no massive upturn like previous seasons coming from this team because there's nothing to click. This is just exactly how mediocre this team is and they're going to deliver about 40 points, which luckily with Airdrie and Queen's Park should be enough for 8th but will certainly see us looking down the way all season.

And never will, because he's simply a much poorer player than Lyall is. About five different opportunities to deal with that before it eventually resulted in the goal. It had felt like a goal was coming for the first half hour, we got away with it and went through a spell without any pressure, then had a sustained 30 seconds of every defender being a clowncar at every opportunity to deal with. Once again, there is no indication of how this team is supposed to score a goal. It's get to the final third then hope for the best rather than an actual attacking gameplan.

We had a 1-0 defeat at home to Queen's Park in there as well.

People keep saying this, but we had the same number of points and a better goal difference after 9 games last season, and had more points after the first quarter in 22/23. Of course last season we then followed that up with three defeats in a row, conceding 10 and scoring 0, so as of game number 10 we are better off.

The equaliser was scored in the 93rd minute so it's not like playing too much stoppage time was a factor. The issue was inviting them to score for the entire half and not being able to ride our luck for that long, when they hit the post or bar three times and had several sitters from set-pieces where we were consistently all over the place.