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Match Preview/Thread - QOTS vs Morton (23rd October)


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5 hours ago, TheGoon said:

I do feel somewhat for MCT in that it’s going to be completely impossible to generate any sort of positivity/momentum whilst the core product is as bad as this…but they gave him the contract (or whoever the actual decision makers are did) 

It is not going to get any better. If you have a manager that thinks this run of form is in any way acceptable, it will never improve. 

I feel fuck all for them, the two year deal was completely idiotic. They wanted blazers, now they've got blazers. Time to admit the mistake, get slaphead and Igor out, and be realistic about our standing in the game. 

A two-year deal for a guy whose crowning achievement since broadband was introduced is beating a knackered Airdrie team full of part-timers with 36-inch waists. 

I wasn't against us getting Gus in to steady the ship, but rewarding his mediocrity with a long-term deal was inexplicable at the time and is now just darkly comedic. 

Two league wins in eighteen, two goals in seven matches (against the cast of When The Boat Comes In). If there's no positive momentum the blameues squarely with the blazers who were so enchanted by the aura of this elder statesman of the game they gave him a fat contract. They need to admit their mistake and make them right. Anything other than him and Millen getting booted on Monday is prolonging this mistake, and hell mend them if that's the route they take. 

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There needs to be an explanation for why a two year deal was handed out. I can understand why MCT/the rump board would give a year's contract to the gubbins caretaker*, but doubling down on that commitment is an unforced error. Regardless of if/when he goes, those who signed off on that decision need to publicly own it. Those who backed it on the MCT board need to front up, so that the members can decide whether that counts against them in future votes. If you trust your decision then you have nothing to fear from transparency. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* See the 'Why Relegation Now is Actually Better than Floundering Survival' series of posts from April 2021. All of which are being vindicated by this torturous mess on the pitch, predictably derailing the otherwise good news story of actually having a debt-free, fan-owned football club. 

 

The site is supposed to be a place for the extended 'family' of Morton supporters - having an affinity with people that you don't know, because you share a love of your local football club. It's not supposed to be about point scoring and showing how 'clever' or 'funny' you are, or just being downright rude and offensive to people you don't know, because you can get away with it. Unfortunately, it seems the classic case of people who have little standing/presence in real life, use this forum as a way of making themselves feel as if they are something. It's sad, and I've said that before..

 

So, having been on Morton forums for about 15 years I guess, I've had enough... well done t*ssers, another Morton supporter driven away. You can all feel happy at how 'clever' you are

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In a parallel universe with a slightly different timeline, I wouldn't have been up in arms if MCT gave a long-term deal to Hopkin after he left Bradford City. It'd be defensible - he's a relatively young manager with a very recent track record of getting a team out of the Championship via the roof and not the basement. It would still be a gamble, but an understandable one. Of course, it would probably have worked out just as it did in real life - "Hoppy" without Martindale is Ridgeley without Michael*. But you could sit down with someone and they'd walk you through the decision to get him tied down on a long-term deal and you'd see the sense in it. 

I can't see a single reason for the same in Gus' case except "he wanted two years." It's not like we'd be competing for his signature against other clubs from towns that appear with capital letters on the map. He's not been in serious demand for years. So what gives? 

If, God forbid, we made such an offer unprompted, that's so much worse yet. And we need to square up to the fact that the BoD made and seems to stand by a decision that, pound for pound, looks as bad as the employment of Paul Sheerin and worse than that of Stephen Glass, and we have the least room for maneuver here. 

The club needs to act and then make clear its managerial strategy. We can't afford long-term deals without getting it right. The odds are good we don't get it right. Therefore, short-term, possibly rolling deals to get a decent young manager in. What's the worst that can happen? Either he does well, then walks for no compensation in May, in which case it's disappointing but cost us nothing and gave us a decent league placing. Or, he's shite and we can bump him for a low sum.

This is where we operate. Not giving dinosaurs like Gus two years of wages to fanny about and gurn about how poor wee Morton can't be expected to compete. 

And the less said about Millen the better. In any other industry he'd be in front of the "beaks" first thing on Monday. 

*not homophobic 

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The 2 year deal has all the hallmarks of panic and relief and I'm prepared to accept the consequences as long as the board acts now.

There's an old saying that you should never reinforce failure and there is a real danger that not addressing the abject failure of the management team will be far more damaging to Morton than accepting the cost and embarrassment of admitting we made a mistake.

Now is not the time to get precious about individuals roles in this as the board must demonstrate clearly that the current situation is totally unacceptable and must be swiftly resolved.

Do what is right now and maybe we can salvage something.

 

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9 hours ago, vikingTON said:

 

* See the 'Why Relegation Now is Actually Better than Floundering Survival' series of posts from April 2021. All of which are being vindicated by this torturous mess on the pitch, predictably derailing the otherwise good news story of actually having a debt-free, fan-owned football club. 

 

They can never really be vindicated because we will never know what would have happened had we went down. It would have been the same people who appointed Gus that would have been in charge of our League 1 journey so there is absolutely no way you can say, sincerely, that you would be confident they wouldn't have made a mess of that too and had us staring at the wrong end of that table too.

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Gus was the type of appointment that made sense for a club in transition with a lack of experience at the top. He's an experienced manager who has also worked as a technical director. He's very much got a mixed record as a manager, and there are real doubts over whether he was the right pick as the first team coach, but I can very much see the logic in the profile of manager that they went for. He knows how clubs operate and I can see why they would want that experience. 

The logic in the actual choice diminished significantly after our end to last season, but in many senses he criticised the right things - a terribly unbalanced squad (bloated with mediocrity in some areas), the decision to train on the pitch at Cappielow, etc. The actual performances on the pitch were anything but encouraging, yet he did have a vision in how to improve things.  

There is a type of fan who we've seen on here and other areas of social media who are very, very keen optimists - there's one who used to post on here who is now a director at the club (whose early impressions of our 13/14 midfield, I seem to remember, was that they'd be better than our 12/13 midfield). It's the type of attitude where every new signing is going to be better than what we had, every good result is a sign of good things to come, and so on. 

I think if there's that type of optimistic attitude towards things and it gets added to a confidence in the logic of bringing in an experienced manager, then I think you can see how we ended up giving Gus a two year deal. I do wonder if he took advantage of the optimism after the playoffs to get himself - offering them a vision that went along with their optimism, convincing them that we needed stability, etc, etc.

I'm a bit more of a cynic than that, although probably not the most cynical here. While I could understand giving Gus the new deal in the summer, it's not what I wanted. I did want to be optimistic, I didn't want to be negative, but I didn't want him to stay on. 2 years just seemed naive, and I do feel like there's a good chance that it was driven by that type of unwarranted optimism that's pretty common among certain fans. But, surely, even the most optimistic fan, or Gus himself, can see his position as tenable if we don't at least have a second league win of the season by this time next week - and that's at the very extreme end of optimism. 

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Tuesday night has all the makings of a real shame game for gus. 

Patrick thistle turned us over up at Firhill and I feel that they may well do the same on Tuesday night. 

This is a really big week for the club we have 2 home games which are massive we really need to picking up more than just a point here or there. 

The board really need to take a serious look at themselves if they think that this current regime are going to do anything other than get us relegated. We are not a long ball team yet gus continues to play this way when we aren't suited for it. In terms of a football perspective I see absolutely no reasons why gus should still be in a job.

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Gus was brought in to babysit the job, likely without interview and was effectively auditioning to get the job full time. He was fully aware of that 

He should have been interviewed ahead of any new contract in a process that also included seeing who else was out there.

His interview should have been like a 3 month performance review, and getting him to spell out his vision for the season ahead, recruitment and retention included.

I can't say there wasn't a process, but it was woefully ineffective if it resulted in him getting a new deal at all never mind a 2 year deal.

Especially if his vision was to retain most of the current crop of losers then wait for months, hoping not to be cut adrift, before signing some kids from down south who may be good enough but could just as easily be the guaranteed Falkirk route to League 1.

Let's not forget though, that it hasn't all gone to plan for Gus with his recruitment this season.

We would actually be in an EVEN worse position than we currently are had it all gone his way if the likes of Sean Fucking McGinty had actually signed the very good offer Gus dished out.

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5 hours ago, so72 said:

They can never really be vindicated because we will never know what would have happened had we went down. It would have been the same people who appointed Gus that would have been in charge of our League 1 journey so there is absolutely no way you can say, sincerely, that you would be confident they wouldn't have made a mess of that too and had us staring at the wrong end of that table too.

We would have had a different manager, rather than giving a two year deal to one who picked up fewer points per game than a fitness coach. And one who treated a must-win game on the final day of the season with the same gutless negativity that he approached yesterday and the Ayr game as well. 

We would have different players having largely emptied last season's crop for their unmitigated failure, rather than handing out new deals all round to duds at this level like Muirhead and Blues.

We wouldn't be going into every single game on a Saturday with the tragic, fucking loser approach that if only we can shitfest long enough, we might just get a draw for our plucky outfit. We wouldn't have scored a pathetic seven goals in ten league matches and wouldn't be winless in over two months. 

These are the issues that are undermining what should be a new and positive start for the football club. All of them were inevitable consequences of us 'winning' a play-off, rather than embracing the chance to clear the decks at a lowel level. Stop giving 'full time deals' (in name only) to crap, future Herbalife salesmen. Promote youth players and actually play to win games every week.

We would not have had a 100 point walkover season, but we wouldn't have this absolute nick of an effort either. Which looks to have merely delayed that inevitable punishment for sporting failure and put the blame firmly on MCT when it occurs. 

The site is supposed to be a place for the extended 'family' of Morton supporters - having an affinity with people that you don't know, because you share a love of your local football club. It's not supposed to be about point scoring and showing how 'clever' or 'funny' you are, or just being downright rude and offensive to people you don't know, because you can get away with it. Unfortunately, it seems the classic case of people who have little standing/presence in real life, use this forum as a way of making themselves feel as if they are something. It's sad, and I've said that before..

 

So, having been on Morton forums for about 15 years I guess, I've had enough... well done t*ssers, another Morton supporter driven away. You can all feel happy at how 'clever' you are

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11 minutes ago, vikingTON said:

We would have had a different manager, rather than giving a two year deal to one who picked up fewer points per game than a fitness coach. And one who treated a must-win game on the final day of the season with the same gutless negativity that he approached yesterday and the Ayr game as well. 

We would have different players having largely emptied last season's crop for their unmitigated failure, rather than handing out new deals all round to duds at this level like Muirhead and Blues.

We wouldn't be going into every single game on a Saturday with the tragic, fucking loser approach that if only we can shitfest long enough, we might just get a draw for our plucky outfit. We wouldn't have scored a pathetic seven goals in ten league matches and wouldn't be winless in over two months. 

These are the issues that are undermining what should be a new and positive start for the football club. All of them were inevitable consequences of us 'winning' a play-off, rather than embracing the chance to clear the decks at a lowel level. Stop giving 'full time deals' (in name only) to crap, future Herbalife salesmen. Promote youth players and actually play to win games every week.

We would not have had a 100 point walkover season, but we wouldn't have this absolute nick of an effort either. Which looks to have merely delayed that inevitable punishment for sporting failure and put the blame firmly on MCT when it occurs. 

I'm not doubting that what you are describing is what should have happened if we went down. But the situation we arw in right now is not what should have happened either.

 

I am probably being pessimistic but I haven't seen anything to suggest we wouldn't have been a shambles in League 1 as well.

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6 minutes ago, so72 said:

I'm not doubting that what you are describing is what should have happened if we went down. But the situation we arw in right now is not what should have happened either.

 

I am probably being pessimistic but I haven't seen anything to suggest we wouldn't have been a shambles in League 1 as well.

There was no other realistic outcome if Gus 'won' the play-off with last year's squad. The board weren't going to rock the boat unnecessarily while the takeover was ongoing so would give the caretaker the job - despite having failed in his actual caretaking task to not finish in the playoff spot in the first place. The manager would roll out new deals all round and then make excuses about how hard it is to sign players for plucky wee Morton and how he needs time for his 'team to gel'. And we would spend another brutal season circling the drain only with no Alloa to prop us up this time round. 

This summer should have been the beginning of a restructure of the first team to break with the dung, late-Rae era from the beginning. There would certainly have been bumps along the way even at a lower level, but we would at least be doing something to make the club better equipped for the future. Just kicking that can down the road in order to have twelve months of this was the worst of all outcomes. 

The site is supposed to be a place for the extended 'family' of Morton supporters - having an affinity with people that you don't know, because you share a love of your local football club. It's not supposed to be about point scoring and showing how 'clever' or 'funny' you are, or just being downright rude and offensive to people you don't know, because you can get away with it. Unfortunately, it seems the classic case of people who have little standing/presence in real life, use this forum as a way of making themselves feel as if they are something. It's sad, and I've said that before..

 

So, having been on Morton forums for about 15 years I guess, I've had enough... well done t*ssers, another Morton supporter driven away. You can all feel happy at how 'clever' you are

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12 minutes ago, 9 Strathblane Crescent said:

The only way Gus is leaving is if he resigns. There is no way MCT/GMFC can afford to buy him out his contract.

Managers almost never get 'bought out' of their contracts at this level. When it's TTG, the board and the manager negotiate the package to send him on his way. 

Given how rattled Millen was about getting pelters yesterday, I can see them chucking it sooner than many think. If they bail out after the Hamilton game next week, they can likely blame the big, bad fanbase, the takeover delay and point to their play-off 'triumph' to argue that they were hard done to. The longer that they stay, the less convincing those excuses become.  

The site is supposed to be a place for the extended 'family' of Morton supporters - having an affinity with people that you don't know, because you share a love of your local football club. It's not supposed to be about point scoring and showing how 'clever' or 'funny' you are, or just being downright rude and offensive to people you don't know, because you can get away with it. Unfortunately, it seems the classic case of people who have little standing/presence in real life, use this forum as a way of making themselves feel as if they are something. It's sad, and I've said that before..

 

So, having been on Morton forums for about 15 years I guess, I've had enough... well done t*ssers, another Morton supporter driven away. You can all feel happy at how 'clever' you are

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These should be questions 1 and 2 at the Q&A session. Is there literally nothing left, nothing at all, in our budget to account for a change of manager (or any other emergency), and if so, how was that allowed to happen? 

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46 minutes ago, vikingTON said:

I can see them chucking it sooner than many think.

Given Gus and Millen are only 4 months into 2 year deals, I think that's extremely wishful thinking. It's their job and they have bills to pay like the rest of us. I can't see them walking unless they get substantial chunks of their remaining contracts as a pay-off, and we simply can't afford to do that given that MCT have publicly stated they won't take the club into debt. I honestly don't think Gus or Millen will give a flying fuck about getting dog's abuse week in, week out, as long as the pay cheques keep coming in. 

Might have been a different story if their stock was high and they could get another full-time gig pretty quickly, but that's obviously not going to be the case.

I think we have expect them to be here for the foreseeable future, at least until the remaining contracts are short enough to make a pay-off settlement possible. Goes without saying I hope I'm wrong and you're right, but I don't share your optimism. 

I don't blame them at all for signing a 2 year contract, they probably couldn't sign it quick enough. Whoever offered it and sanctioned it, however, should never be let anywhere near a player or contract negotiation ever again.

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I think some very good points been made.

Think VT wasn't far off mark by suggesting a DOF role would have been more suitable and infact had that conversation privately with a poster above before the baffling 2 year deal was signed.

What baffles me more given the current situation is we appear to have been so naive as to not have put anything performance related into his contract to let's say "focus the mind".

I get that MCT may have been looking for stability but as has been pointed out the lack of experience in giving out such a contract with no fail safe to protect the club looks like proving quite a cross to bare

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5 hours ago, TRVMP said:

These should be questions 1 and 2 at the Q&A session. Is there literally nothing left, nothing at all, in our budget to account for a change of manager (or any other emergency), and if so, how was that allowed to happen? 

Has there been anything actually put out there to suggest that is in fact the case or is it just an assumption? 'We're fan owned noo, we huvnae got the money'.

Much like the assumption that sacking = paying off the contract right there and then.

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1 hour ago, Jamie_M said:

Has there been anything actually put out there to suggest that is in fact the case or is it just an assumption? 'We're fan owned noo, we huvnae got the money'.

Much like the assumption that sacking = paying off the contract right there and then.

Fair. It's speculation. And I wouldn't expect the club to comment on it publicity since it undermines the manager. But given how much the importance of a sustainable budget was emphasized, I'd like to think we have contingencies in place. 

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If we don't have the money to sack Gus outright (ie he is not ameanable to a fair negotiation or payment in installments) then there are options such as gardening leave. We need him out of the club, the price of keeping him is far higher than the price of canning him. 

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