Toby

Makes the Chris Dodds voice note sound like a nursery rhyme.

To be honest, I think moving Inverness at the end of the month to a Friday night is infinitely worse. The Partick fans complained recently that their trip up there was moved to the Friday night for TV- unfortunately for them, if you sign a contract with a broadcaster and want the fruits of it you’ve got to make these sacrifices to accommodate them. This game however, has been moved to avoid clashing with Slovenia v Scotland, a 2pm kick off in Ljubljana. I could understand if it was a game at Hampden, but nobody’s making both games. If they really must have re-scheduled that game, call it 5.30pm on the Saturday and the Morton fans can get the last train down the road. A bit tight for getting back to Greenock from Glasgow but nowhere near the inconvenience that a Friday night game is, and for no real benefit to Morton. As I was still involved with MCT when the fixtures were released I asked if Morton had been consulted and was told that nobody from the SPFL had bothered even consulting them on it. I know Inverness have been difficult with arranging women’s fixtures, typically requesting lunchtime kick offs in order to inconvenience their opponents as much as possible. The cynic in me would suggest they quite enjoy doing things like this where possible. Will be using it as an opportunity to tick Huntly of my list on the Saturday though, so not all bad.

Fair enough, I don’t think you’re wrong in expecting that. Maybe I’m being too sympathetic and we should be all over it from the start, but it is still early days. We’re a week on from the meeting and have had regular updates on what’s coming in. The collapse of the Estrella deal, which looked like it was a shoo-in has been sprung on everyone to an extent and I would imagine that at this stage Plan B is still very much in it’s infancy.

Small point, but I’d hope that if there are any further incomings they are unveiled wearing the away shirt. I’d much rather see the brand of a paying sponsor displayed where possible than Them.

Not really sure what you expect? We’re aware that the money’s likely to run out around October/November without the fighting fund. The fund’s designed to keep the lights on until a solution can be found, honour existing contracts and pay the bills. I could understand folk asking for evidence of what contributions to Cappielow150 are going to if they don’t see anything changing around the ground after a few months, but the fighting fund is what it is, it’s there to get us by and very little, or nothing else.

I did actually hear from someone at the club about it since posting. The job was done over the summer and at very little cost to the club. The timing of the post was unfortunate, but you can’t blame a supplier for showing off their work if it benefits them. And to be fair, it’s not the club boasting about their fancy new cushions at all, if it comes from the supplier. I get that I’ve got more trust in the word of those inside the club than you and many others will, but I don’t think they’ve been out splashing the cash on little luxuries at all, and believe the room itself was in desperate need of a refurb.

I’ve got very little social media now and can’t see it on Twitter, but isn’t that a case of giving a bit of publicity to a company that have done the club a turn, rather than the club splashing out?

It’s an Annual General Meeting. I won’t pretend to be an expert on the law, but I suspect that if it were to be postponed MCT would have to give 14 days notice of the new date. It couldn’t just be “pushed back a few days”. Even if the majority were to be fine with that happening, I can guarantee that at least one member would see MCT hauled over the coals for such a breach. And with so much going on, what would happen if the goalposts moved again in those “few days”? Does it get moved back again? And again? And again? Allowing the valuation of the shares to drop further and further as the club’s situation becomes increasingly perilous? Perhaps they could have sent out a holding email. However, perhaps an over-stretched MCT board with only three contributing members are working flat out to reach an agreement and communicate it in full with the members are so busy that they barely have a minute to put out extra comms that don’t actually tell you anything.

And you ignore the point about the transfer window and recruitment. The board are caught between a rock and a hard place, and nothing they can do will please the members. Either they give false information that you won’t be happy with, they give you accurate information with a short window to review that you won’t be happy with or they delay the meeting, impacting recruitment and almost certainly condemning us to relegation, that you appear to be happy with. I prefer option two, personally.

As outlined by Dunning above, the information, if released soon as I believe it will be. And of course, delaying the AGM until after the transfer window is closed, as would be the case given the need for a notice period, would work out brilliantly for all parties.

Yeah, you’re right. They should just send out anything, regardless of how accurate it is. It’s not as if the members need to know the terms before selling off their 35% stake in the club. Giving inaccurate information is of course far preferable to giving a short window to review watertight information.

Or perhaps given the events of the last few weeks there have been a number of moving plates that have prevented them from throwing out communications that don’t give the members an accurate picture?

To clarify, I don’t have an issue with fan power, and it should have an influence on how a club is run. Your examples are all relevant and to take things further, the club would have gone 25 years ago were it not for fan power, or renting Cappielow from a disinterested landlord were it not for the fans putting the foot down five years ago. What I do object to is the assertion that the board should be pandering to the whims of an over-grown man child who has thrown his toys out the pram and spending money that isn’t there to bin a manager with no regard for the financial consequences, as if this is a game of Football Manager.

Yes, they do. The club doesn’t have a pot to piss in and can barely keep the lights on. Nobody’s saying Murray’s doing a good job, but we just won’t find the thousands it would take to pay him off down the back of the sofa, never mind whatever else it takes to pay off his staff, especially with members’ contributions being cancelled when folk decide they’re not happy with MCT. You may disagree with the board’s stance, but “fan power” as you put it shouldn’t and won’t make them pay off a manager that they simply can’t afford to pay off. Since MCT came in, the club has never operated that way. It’s all well and good saying the consequences of not paying him off are more brutal- that’s not the case, we’re going down anyway. And having seen the pool of potential appointments when Murray got the job, I wouldn’t get too excited at who’d likely replace him. Your best hope is that Murray throws the towel in himself, but stamping your feet and demanding the club spends money sacking him only to bring in someone of a similar ilk is a pointless and costly exercise that will likely garner no real positive outcome.

Words fail me.