dunning1874

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.

That's enough to move me from Davies can't be the next manager to Davies can't remain at the club when we appoint one. If he thinks he's somehow above the Morton job when he's evidently not good enough for it, he can find another club to give him a wage for whatever undefined job he's doing.

Airdrie's record over the last 6 league games is almost identical to ours with 3 wins, 1 draw and 2 defeats, and all the same scorelines other than their defeat to St Johnstone being 3-0 rather than 4. That's also the 6 games Taylor-Sinclair has been in charge for. However when you then bring cup games and the timing of Imrie leaving into it, it's hard not to feel that they're a team who've turned the corner while we're looking poorer for being managerless. Win this and we should be able to stop worrying about the bottom two, but we'll need to turn up for 90 minutes rather than only being any good in the second half.

Rajamaki from my first game as a five year old. When I was a wee bit older, Warren Hawke. Sadly ruined now.

I think the argument with Murdoch is different from Corr & Hart, because there was actually something to learn about Murdoch. Where Corr & Hart should be moved on in January and everyone already knew this, it's good to know that Murdoch needs a loan to get some experience at a decent level rather than being ready to be second choice and step in if Storer's unavailable. It's why I was happy going into the League Cup with him as first choice (though that was also based on expecting the obviously not good enough Woods to still be here as well), find out if he's good enough to maintain the solid performances he had last season when there was time to sign an upgrade. That was answered quickly enough with the Peterhead game followed by Storer then being an excellent signing. Personally I'd rather have had the strongest team possible on the park anyway, but I can at least see the argument that's there's a benefit to both the club and Murdoch himself in playing him, where one doesn't exist for Corr or Hart.

For the millionth time, that's what we already knew. No one is expecting us to have a further two centre backs of equal standard to the starting two sitting on the bench every week, but we already knew that there was a massive drop off to Corr that means he is not dependable cover and should be moved on for an alternative in January. We didn't need last night to come to that conclusion.