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[Chicken_Soup]

1 hour ago, dunning1874 said:

It was Pryde-MacDonald who chose to pipe up about how the club wouldn't be signing injury prone players because they didn't have "the minerals required to be a Greenock Morton FC player", and it would be "irresponsible" of him personally to allow such players to be offered contracts, but that wouldn't happen because he'd do his "due diligence" to avoid seeing the club "hand out strong financial contracts to players who are unable to meet the demands of playing for the Greenock Morton badge." He chose to come out with this rant which was obviously a thinly veiled dig at a departed player when he could have kept quiet and not made a rod for his own back, but instead he decided to go off on one about how "we can’t have players floating about the building for the sake of it.”

This was already a risky road for him to go down when we had Iain Wilson and Ryan Mullen under contract and had offered new contracts to Grant Gillespie and George Oakley. It's even riskier when you then sign a 19 year old - on a two year deal - who has already had a broken metatarsal and dislocated the same shoulder twice in one season of first team football. When that player then dislocates the same shoulder another two times before the end of July and now needs surgery before the league season even starts which will see him miss "a large part of the season", it makes Pryde-MacDonald look like an idiot who was babbling utter nonsense.

Injuries happen and can't always be legislated for, but you wouldn't file that in the unpredictable category. If he had said nothing about injury prone players earlier in the summer everyone would be feeling that the situation with Corr is unfortunate, and obviously everyome should still have nothing but sympathy for Corr.

Instead though he had that rant above in response to the story about Strapp leaving saying that players who get injured don't have the minerals, can't be floating around the club for the sake of it and it would be irresponsible of him to let that happen, and now that's painted a massive target on his own back and regrettably on Imrie's too whenever someone gets a long term injury. As General Manager of the club he couldn't help having a massive tantrum in response to criticism and now, entirely predictably, that criticism is going to be even worse when an injury prone player gets injured. He's created this backlash himself.

The reaction to the Corr signing was overwhelmingly positive at the time, so the retrospective criticism doesn’t hold much value for me. 

It’s clear that other people have been riled by his comments regarding injury prone players, and his use of the term “minerals”, and are now holding that against him. But I am surprised that it goes beyond DOT style posters infuriated that we didn’t break the bank for “good local lad” Lewis Strapp.

There are far more important issues, as have been listed in this thread, that we should be holding the GM to account on. Apparently though, this seems to be the issue which garners the greatest strength of feeling.

[Alan_Partridge_Ton]

I think Dale should take a lot of Pryde in what he has achieved so far.

[vikingTON]

https://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/24479017.morton-chief-rallying-cry-amid-bid-create-fortress-cappielow/

"Probably this season more than any other in recent history, the presence of fans in the stadium is going to play a massive part.

“Of course, everybody will talk about the financial importance of season tickets but for me it’s about trying to bridge that gap to when the club was getting an average attendance of 5,000-plus, maybe 20 years ago. 

"It's important for us to look at trying to get back to that, as well as driving the important revenue stream."

• GMFC have not had an average attendance of 5,000 plus since 1980/81. The club was in the top flight of Scottish football at that time.

• GMFC have recorded one season with a higher than 3,000 average attendance (95/96) since the 1980s.

For a GM to be peddling such nonsense suggests a lack of seriousness and attention to detail about the business, which of course worked so well for us under the Raes too. 

[Mr.Blue]

Have we heard how many ST's we've sold?

[RealTonKid]

It’s pie in the sky to think we could get an average attendance of 5,000 fans, given the decline of both the club and the area since the early 1980s. 20 years ago, we had an average attendance of under 3,000. I doubt we will be able to achieve that anytime soon.

[LargsTON]

8 hours ago, RealTonKid said:

It’s pie in the sky to think we could get an average attendance of 5,000 fans, given the decline of both the club and the area since the early 1980s. 20 years ago, we had an average attendance of under 3,000. I doubt we will be able to achieve that anytime soon.

Sadly we'll never know in the near future anyway.  I can only see a downward trajectory now, sadly after initial optimism.  

[Ferguson]

8 hours ago, RealTonKid said:

It’s pie in the sky to think we could get an average attendance of 5,000 fans, given the decline of both the club and the area since the early 1980s. 20 years ago, we had an average attendance of under 3,000. I doubt we will be able to achieve that anytime soon.

Hopefully it's more a case of aiming for the stars in the hope of landing on the moon rather than sheer delusion, even if Morton played in the top flight we'd likely not reach an average gate of 5k these days.

Goes without saying that the club have to be trying to maximise the numbers through the gate but going public with targets that we're just not going to meet is setting everyone up for failure, as with the proposals for the land behind the cowshed, only signing non-injury prone players etc. etc.

[Cet Homme Charmant]

12 hours ago, RealTonKid said:

It’s pie in the sky to think we could get an average attendance of 5,000 fans, given the decline of both the club and the area since the early 1980s. 20 years ago, we had an average attendance of under 3,000. I doubt we will be able to achieve that anytime soon.

Indeed, he's living in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks we could get anywhere near 5000 average in the Championship.

Even in the one season in recent history when we were genuine title contenders we didn't get anywhere close to that, with the possible one-off exception of the second home gave against Partick who were our main championship contenders and eventual title winners. Unfortunately that was pre-payoffs when 2nd place got you fuck all.

[Hej]

5 hours ago, LargsTON said:

Sadly we'll never know in the near future anyway.  I can only see a downward trajectory now, sadly after initial optimism.  

You've been saying that since the very start of fan ownership. 3 years on and still no downward trajectory.

[capitanus]

Morton sold their soul to the devil when we signed Alan Lithgow.  

 

You reap what you sow.

[LargsTON]

3 hours ago, Hej said:

You've been saying that since the very start of fan ownership. 3 years on and still no downward trajectory.

Incorrect.  Only last season my intention was to invest in MCT when my own financial circumstances improved but since then it's been a string of broken promises and mixed messages coming out the club along with our promising team being ripped apart.  I've never thought fan ownership was the answer for us but was happy to be proved wrong....maybe I still will be but I doubt it.  We sadly seem to be reverting to being a rudderless shop once again.

Edited July 29 by LargsTON

[TopCat]

MCT still generates some really weird, overly negative reactions.

3 years of fan ownership has delivered 3 years of championship football and a huge financial turnaround. That already counts as success for a provincial club at this level, no matter what happens next. No ownership model will make us immune to losing players or getting relegated.

It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than it was under the Raes. Its also a lot better than the alternative (which was, and still is, nothing). 

[Hej]

43 minutes ago, LargsTON said:

Incorrect.  Only last season my intention was to invest in MCT when my own financial circumstances improved but since then it's been a string of broken promises and mixed messages coming out the club along with our promising team being ripped apart.  I've never thought fan ownership was the answer for us but was happy to be proved wrong....maybe I still will be but I doubt it.  We sadly seem to be reverting to being a rudderless shop once again.

You did say a very similar thing 3 years ago. 

 

 

I think its fair to say fan ownership has done a solid job for us thus far. I certainly feel we are a lot more stable as a club and we're clearly in a much more healthy position financially. Its not been a downward trajectory. Feel there is a bit of an overreaction going on from Morton fans all in all off the back of a poor start to the season. Don't think there's any need for people to be at panic stations now.

[LargsTON]

 

1 hour ago, Hej said:

You did say a very similar thing 3 years ago. 

 

 

I think its fair to say fan ownership has done a solid job for us thus far. I certainly feel we are a lot more stable as a club and we're clearly in a much more healthy position financially. Its not been a downward trajectory. Feel there is a bit of an overreaction going on from Morton fans all in all off the back of a poor start to the season. Don't think there's any need for people to be at panic stations now.

I didn't deny saying it.  However I'm not going to pretend I'm even remotely enamoured with the way the club is headed.  I was happy to bite the bullet and perhaps sacrifice progress on the pitch if improvements were made off it but that appears to have hit the buffers too.  I really don't know what the medium to long term goal is here.  As I say I fear we've hit a tipping point.  

Edited July 29 by LargsTON

[Greacen2000]

16 hours ago, LargsTON said:

 

I didn't deny saying it.  However I'm not going to pretend I'm even remotely enamoured with the way the club is headed.  I was happy to bite the bullet and perhaps sacrifice progress on the pitch if improvements were made off it but that appears to have hit the buffers too.  I really don't know what the medium to long term goal is here.  As I say I fear we've hit a tipping point.  

The goals have been published by the club in a document that’s been discussed at length both on here and in several of Dales updates.

The main 2 of which are financial sustainability and establishing ourselves as regular top 4 playoff contenders.  

Yes the 5,000 average gate thing was demonstrably incorrect, but I don’t get why people are queuing up to pounce on the guy over this.  A lot of progress has been made to the running of the club but Dale is the first guy to admit that more must be done and that he himself too has room for improvement and a lot to learn.

Edited July 30 by Greacen2000

[Rossco1874]

15 hours ago, TopCat said:

MCT still generates some really weird, overly negative reactions.

3 years of fan ownership has delivered 3 years of championship football and a huge financial turnaround. That already counts as success for a provincial club at this level, no matter what happens next. No ownership model will make us immune to losing players or getting relegated.

It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than it was under the Raes. Its also a lot better than the alternative (which was, and still is, nothing). 

Most of the negativity seems to come from those not investing in MCT then moaning about their being no money in the budget. 

Fan ownership is a simple model the more the fans invest the more get out of it. 

[dunning1874]

The briefest of glances at events in Inverness tells you where unsustainable private ownership leads for Scottish clubs: that is undoubtedly the fate we were facing without fan ownership. It hasn't sent on us a downward trajectory, it's the only thing which saved us from the decades of decline the Raes presided over turning into a death spiral.

That even Motherwell, with their stature as a club about to start their 40th consecutive season in the top flight who frequently bring in seven figure sums annually in transfer fees, could only find a total Walter Mitty figure willing to 'invest' when their club board were trying to undermine and ultimately destroy fan ownership by placing shares back in the hands of a private individual tells you the likelihood of Morton finding anything better.

None of this means there aren't things that both the club and MCT could be doing better but the answer to that is to improve and strengthen MCT to get them moving in the direction you want, not to abandon the tremendous achievement of fan ownership.

[TONofmemories]

There's an element of just having to put up the cash monthly and trusting the process (if you're in a position to do so). On the whole, it's been extremely successful thus far.

The folk that sit and wait to criticise at every turn, but don't actively invest in fan ownership are dangerous to our chances of every being long term sustainable. Seems to me we've a fair few of them within our support who just can't wait to say "i told you so" 

[Ferguson]

Aye, you really don't have to look far to see where we would've ended up had it not been for community ownership. It's easy to forget that only 3-4 years ago we had David Hopkin saying that he was paying for first team lunches and player bonuses before resigning and leaving a fitness coach in charge of the first team for months, all before Gus McPherson claimed in a post-match interview that the club didn't have the funds for a team bus to a challenge cup game at Queen of the South.

Things are far from perfect in the boardroom but the Inverness situation is a stark reminder of the alternative.

[vikingTON]

4 hours ago, Greacen2000 said:

The goals have been published by the club in a document that’s been discussed at length both on here and in several of Dales updates.

The main 2 of which are financial sustainability and establishing ourselves as regular top 4 playoff contenders.  

Yes the 5,000 average gate thing was demonstrably incorrect, but I don’t get why people are queuing up to pounce on the guy over this.  A lot of progress has been made to the running of the club but Dale is the first guy to that more must be done and that he himself too has room for improvement and a lot to learn.

Call me picky, but I'd have thought a general manager operating a business would have an accurate understanding of that business's market and customer base. And if you don't demonstrate that then you shouldn't progress from an interview process. 

It's absolutely basic, public domain information that should be part of any credible pre-job preparation to find out, never mind something to be 'learned' several months later on the job.