Arbroath v Morton

[EanieMeany]

After yet another round of drivel from Hopkin and Grant in the Tele, I'm left thinking that a blanket ban in interviews would have been much better than the mini-strop the club threw about them at the start of the season. Grant in particular talks some amount of shite for a guy who can't kick a football properly.

 

Just to go back to this point about the manager approving interviews, Reece Lyon is in the Tele today saying we need to stay unbeaten at home which should be enough to  "stay in the league", yet we occasionally hear other players on about challenging for the play-offs. Assuming the latter group mean the promotion play-offs, it makes you wonder what exactly is going on in the dressing room when nobody seems to agree on what the aim is. Surely if the manager is approving media requests, he should be ensuring that there's a consistent, positive line?

 

It's not really acceptable for a club that's charging £300 for a season ticket and asking supporters for more money on top of that to "improve the squad" to be hitting out with the "avoid relegation" patter at this stage of the season, whether that's the aim or not. 

 

Also, the idea of having to keep getting points at home to stay up very much implies that away games have been written off.

[vikingTON]

I haven't seen talk of a play-off push for a while: since the Inverness double header the club line has been consistently awful in its 'we're just a plucky wee team, scraping it out with village social club outfits to avoid relegation here' shtick.

 

For someone whose supposedly deep, inside knowledge of the club was being paraded as a great advantage when he was in contention for the role, it is clear that either the manager doesn't know or doesn't care about the actual circumstances that he is dealing with. This is not some stupid wee plastic franchise outfit like Livingston - you are dealing with a fanbase who are not going tolerate dung today in the hope of jam tomorrow, given there has been fully three decades of underachievement and failure on the books already. And as this is merely the sixteenth manager employed by the club since 2000, nobody is going to defer to the infallible judgment of the latest genius in the dugout either: because if the fans had been that gormless over recent years then we'd be fighting it out with Berwick Rangers in the Lowland League right now. 

[dunning1874]

This is nearly as bogus a claim as the time Douglas Rae declared that we had signed 'an English Premiership footballer' and unveiled, erm, Kieran McAnespie instead. A handful of ten minute cameos in the top flight doesn't stand up to the consistently dung performances of Tumilty in a Morton jersey, which forms the comfortable majority of his playing time in senior football.

 

Quite, I’ve not said he’s ever been a Premiership regular, obviously Tumilty would still fall into the relatively inexperienced category and I’m not making any statement about his ability there.

 

The fact is though that Hopkin is claiming the lack of experience in the squad is an excuse for our performances. In one of only two positions where it’s actually true that we don’t have an experienced option, Hopkin got rid of a player with 18 months of regular Championship football and replaced him with a player with no experience of first team football at any level, who also can’t play that position anyway.

 

Even if we were to accept Hopkin’s premise that a lack of experience is an insurmountable issue and valid excuse for the performances his side are serving up, as if it’s 2001 and we’ve got a team full of Sean Curran and Gavin Redmond figures thrown right into first team football while still in school, as opposed to the reality which is that we have an experienced Championship spine, it’s an issue that he’s exacerbated in that position.

[Jamie_M]

https://youtu.be/Koxa5GwEvqk

[Ton in Shawlands]

Currently we are so rank to watch that I've gone from ever present home & away by public transport though I've lived outside Greenock since the eighties to "do I have to go?" even though I've renewed my season ticket. No enthusiasm whatsoever, looking for excuses not to go.

[TheGoon]

Do we bring Rodgers back in for this?

[EanieMeany]

I haven't seen talk of a play-off push for a while: since the Inverness double header the club line has been consistently awful in its 'we're just a plucky wee team, scraping it out with village social club outfits to avoid relegation here' shtick.

 

 

Aye, it's certainly faded away a bit but I'm sure Peter Grant, who increasingly resembles naive South Park simpleton Butters, was on about it recently. Either way, it's not a good look although it's not exactly a new development. It'll be interesting to see how it goes after another couple of bad results, at times some of the comments could be construed as hinting at a lack of confidence in the manager.

 

Do we bring Rodgers back in for this?

 

This constant rotation really can't be helping anybody, least not the defence. On one hand we have Rodgers who's shown a penchant for charging off his line like at Easter Road, on the other we have Ramsbottom who's like a Subbuteo 'keeper: for all the issues with the defenders themselves, having a different type of goalkeeper behind them every game is always going to make their life harder. We really need to pick one and stick with them, and it has to be Rodgers.

[Scott]

Rodgers has to play. Not been as good as hoped but he’s a lot better than Ramsbottom who regularly ships goals.