dunning1874

I didn't particularly want any of the unemployed recently managed in the Championship options when we were initially managerless because I saw them all as a downgrade on Imrie, but Murray is by a considerable distance the most appealing and I can't keep pining after Imrie forever. I'd much rather have him than McCabe or Doolan and we'd hit the point where even total duds like Rankin and McPake have been rumoured to have turned it down, so to end up with a manager with Murray's pedigree when you were starting to panic that Michael Tidser might actually be the least bad option left would be good. The job he did with Dumbarton in challenging for the promotion playoffs means there's actually a track record of achievement on a small budget that is relevant experience for the Morton job, when many of the other names mentioned have never worked in those circumstances. The 22/23 season with Raith also gets mentioned and I do feel that maybe gets overrated a bit, in no small part due to making that direct comparison to Imrie having us 14 points above Raith with a more difficult job, but again it's a situation where he's had less money to work with than many competitors and done a perfectly acceptable job.

I'd have preferred a sterner line to be taken on the fact that no evidence whatsoever has been presented of any abuse, but it's a tough balancing act when the MCT board need to maintain a relationship with the rest of the GMFC board. Especially when it now has national media attention they can't be seen to be downplaying the importance of abuse, which is how it could easily be spun if they challenged more strongly. Even though the Morton support and MCT membership at large can fairly guess the most likely explanation of the abuse line is that it's been fabricated or heavily exaggerated to deflect from the incompetent mismanagement of the club, which is the real reason Laird's position was untenable, they can't explicitly make that accusation. If it then turned out there is actually some truth in it then that would look terrible and be used to attack them in turn.

The personal abuse line really is straight out of the Hugh Scott playbook. Interesting that he's never wanted to go into specifics about his 40 year association with the club and whether he was involved at all from 1997-2001.

If John Laird wants to talk about respect and decency, he should maybe reflect on how much of that he's given others in his time at the club. We could start with the way Graham McLennan was unceremoniously removed as a honorary director in the summer?

That statement sums John Laird up really. No acknowledgement of the gross incompetence that made his position untenable several months ago, never mind an apology for the complete mismanagement of the club, utter contempt for the support oozing out of every sentence, completely fabricated lies about personal abuse he's faced which simply did not happen. Good fucking riddance.

Coming round to the idea that all these rumours are being planted by the board to make Tidser seem an appealing option. Obviously I don't want him, but if the choice was him or James McPake...

Ultimately both those things can't be true: if we'd only just offered it to and been turned down by Rankin, Arfield leaving Falkirk can't be anything to do with us because it would surely have taken a while for him to negotiate his departure from Falkirk. Going somewhere else as a player is the most likely explanation for him. Of course the Rankin rumour could also be guff.

If - that's the massive caveat on every word to follow - we're genuinely in the place where we've sunk as low as offering the job to John Rankin in the first place then that's a bigger crisis than him turning it down because he's only been offered a six month contract. Someone with his managerial record should be crawling over broken glass to get six days from any Championship club. If that's the calibre of applicant we're dealing with then it suggests something at the club is utterly toxic and putting people off, a worry which would be heightened by someone like that who shouldn't be able to dream of getting a Championship job turning it down. A low budget alone is not going to put people off wanting a full-time Championship job because dozens of managers go in for every job no matter how desperate the situation seems. Either the structure in relation to how they're expected to work with Davies is the issue - it's as unclear to prospective managers as it is to us, or it's clear to them that they're to be his assistant behind closed doors while carrying the can in public and they're not willing to do it - or the Morton board's reputation is in the mud across Scottish football as a whole rather than just with the Morton support and no manager is willing to go near working with this board.

It's another game down without getting any closer to 9th or 10th, so there's the positive. It was considerably less inept than expected considering the form we're in, but it's just such an uninspiring team. We were actually alright at reaching the final third today, but the decision making when we get there is all over the place and means we consistently waste promising positions.

It was a fucking amazing clearance tbf.

That could be back to the 4-3-1-2 shape that had clicked before Imrie left, but we know we're likely stuck with 4-3-3.

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.