All Activity

Stay strong, VT.

There wouldn't be a club like Morton left if it weren't for those 1000 fans, after a second encounter with a 'successful businessman' ended up running said club into the ground again.

In terms of the specifics of today's performance, by some distance the biggest obstacle to our use of the ball was Baird. He regularly had the ball under little pressure but refused to progress even 5 yards forward before playing a simple sideways pass to Boyes. He might not be comfortable as a passing defender but was hardly being asked to play a Guardiola system today - regardless of our tactics, we really should expect centre backs to progress the ball to the halfway line under no real pressure. I haven't focused on this issue regularly to conclude if that's the wider pattern too, but 90% of the egregious pass backs for no reason today rested with Baird.

Delighted to see Blues score today, hopefully get a few more out him for the rest of the season as he was capable of a couple of seasons ago. Also delighted for Davies, especially if he did get away with what looked to me like a pretty obvious hand ball? Longing for a time where Wilson can stay on the park for a full 90 as I’m really trying not to be negative but McGinn came on, straight away gave up the ball when we were heading into good position. Then got booked, gave away a foul they scored from and then they had all the momentum for the closing stages. I presume King is injured as he is surely a way better option as a replacement?

1000 fans owning a club like Morton is pure magic. The only way is up.

According to Imrie in his post-match interview, he said he couldn’t fault anyone in the first half and thought “to a man” we were outstanding. I wasn’t there today. Can anyone confirm this was the case?

We are shite and a draw against a team who are utter dug shite missing about 5-6 first team players is nowhere near good enough. Imrie comes out with the same pish ever week and it's predictable and shite, injuries all over the club a crap style of football which in reality gets us nowhere and several signings who are nowhere good enough. We need to change in January if we don't then we are going to finish 9th and Imrie must acknowledge this rather than keep sticking his head in the sand with, "I thought we played well we could have been a few up but we don't take our chances" If he doesn't accept this then the only way we are going is the seaside leagues.

Suspect not, given we know that we budgeted for 8th and are now out of all cups with no prospect of a payday. It'll be damage limitation now.

If we can offload three (a big if) and if we can somehow bring on one or two better players in (an even bigger if) then that would be about the best January scenario we could hope for. Again, don’t expect we’ll see much beyond a few moving out, but will keep my fingers crossed for the unexpected in the hope our form can be turned around.

His wife is about to give birth. I think he's taken his Dundee Utd payout and is happy to wait until next season for his next club

Muirhead was not a key player for our style based on his attributes though, he was made an effective player only by effective development between the coaching staff and himself, not least to get his finger out and press at least half of the time. I see no inherent reason why GMFC couldn't either: a) recruit effective pressing players at a lower cost than marquee signing sand dancers like Moffat and Lyall (Blues for example has proven more reliable than either player, and almost certainly commanded lower average wages) or b) Bench all the current tippy-tappy sand dancers unit for a change and dig out some results with back to basics tactics. Our back five + Wilson is actually balanced both defensively and having both full backs offering width. The midfield could be reinforced with Gillespie, Blues and King while nothing of value is lost, and put any of our rotating cast of no.10s off the Serb hitman up front (Garrity would be my current preference). This squad could and should be playing more effectively if we weren't wedded to some shan philosophy that is getting its original Poundland proponent relegated ten points beneath us right now.

Oh I agree there's not going to be a sacking, and it would also be mental for the club to do so anytime in the near future. The criticism is however fully warranted, not least because we changed approach to an unnecessary extreme during the summer, regardless of any losses of key players. At 2-1 up in that dogfight match today (above all other matches), a Dougie Imrie Morton team should be defending from the front, pressing as a unit and being generally fucking annoying to play against. None of those traits require high wage show ponies. This variant of an Imrie Morton side proved soft as shite and waved in attacks by a League One standard opponent. That failure needs to be recognised first in order to be corrected. One of the key problems right now is that the first team operation seems utterly detached from reality and thinks that there is any semblance of progress taking place here.

Last I'd heard he wanted to much money

Because Imrie's ego got hurt by the constant labelling of his side as hammer throwers and hatchet men.

What's happening with Grimshaw? Is he injured, or asking for too much money, from any team?

Our biggest failing this year has been a wasteful recruitment process resulting in a disjointed squad with no leaders and a distinct lack of character. The squad was assembled to deliver the new style of complete football. On every level we have failed. This season is already a write off where the only hope is we avoid relegation. I understand Imrie digging in and backing his players but the Groundhog Day narrative after yet another dreadful performance does him no favours.

A dreadful game. Two well taken goals by Blues & Davis but our central defence is a shambles. As for playing out from the back all the time, why? We’ee not Barcelona. All we do is pass the ball left to right to left to right to left and then back to the keeper. Why don’t we try to play our way forward? The tactics are appalling. We can’t tackle. We rarely win the ball and we can’t hold on to it. The football is absolutely fucking awful. As for McGinn, he cost us that second goal IIRC. Slow, can no longer play football at this level, and should be nowhere near the squad. I’m wondering how bad Dunfermline must be to be below us.

The problems are deeper than that. We relied largely on Oakley playing well last season, and while Imrie's attempts to change the style (perhaps to navigate around that overreliance) have been a failure, we can't say that the last style worked well without the key players that allowed that to happen. I think we failed to build on the likes of Oakley, Muirhead, and Crawford last season (with the likes of Bearne and Boyd being failures) and then we even lost them. Recruitment in attacking positions this season has again been as much of an issue. We're struggling to recruit good enough players, especially in attacking positions. The change in style is an easy target, but that neglects just how bad we were at times last season. Recruitment is as big an issue - and it's not a short term issue now.

Our issues here are more than just a few players being offloaded. The team is mostly the same every week so its not like the guys mentioned above leaving changes much of the starting 11. The facts are, we moved away from a style of play that got us some relative success because Imrie got upset about the media labeling us hatchet men.

We might see Reynolds’ contract being cancelled by mutual consent and McGinn’s loan ended. Samuel’s deal will expire too, unlikely to be extended. Besides that I wouldn’t expect too much to change in the squad. If Grimshaw was willing to come back I’d be all over that.

I was speaking factually. Morton managers don't tend to get hounded out* for less. With the likes of McInally, MacPherson, and Moore it took much more. We're not at that level at this point. I agree with your criticism above. I think it's pretty balanced. *Taking that literally as the manager actually leaving.

The only thing we should be doing in the January transfer window is shipping out as much of the excess dross in this squad as possible, and saving whatever token amounts from the budget to cover this season's loss. We don’t need new players - we need a purge.

Our league performance is as could be expected after our 'minerals' based strategy blew up immediately by July, so I would agree with that if it were the only factor. But it's not. We effectively exited the League Cup after the first kick of the ball this season despite having a very favourable draw to progress and limped out of all other cups too. Our second half performance today was dreadful from start to finish and a genuine disgrace after the substitutions were made. We were extremely fortunate not to lose that game today. There is no scope for anything other than criticism based on this campaign - it is dire. And while a draw today in isolation is not the end of the world, fans who are paying their hard earned cash to watch these jobbers have a right to question when (if) they're likely to see another away win.

I saw some of the Scottish masters football a few weeks ago, and my thought was that that was where McGinn should have been playing his football. In some of his touches and movement you can see the quality he's had, but it's difficult to make the case that he should still be playing at this level.

McGinn with the single handedly most inept substitute performance of all time. A complete has been. Another dreadful performance from a team of extremely average footballers.