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Squad for next Season


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It’s a slow news day. Nothing doing about Celtic in the news with the World Cup going on so a story’s been concocted with a tenuous link to them in order to get clicks from their stupid fans.

If they’d drawn Arbroath or Raith Rovers last night the story would’ve been copied and pasted with one of their names instead of Morton.

File it where it belongs.

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Just as long as they are aware that most of the support don't consider Griffiths entirely suitable for a community club like ours.  That's before considering that if he failed at Falkirk, he should be nowhere near Cappielow.

"Any nation given the opportunity to regain its national sovereignty and which then rejects it is so far beneath contempt that it is hard to put words to it."

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2 hours ago, The Bewilderedbeast said:

No thanks

Why not?

23 minutes ago, Alibi said:

Just as long as they are aware that most of the support don't consider Griffiths entirely suitable for a community club like ours.  That's before considering that if he failed at Falkirk, he should be nowhere near Cappielow.

Shite players round about him pay as you play I would not have a problem with that. Why is he not suitable?

Edited by Brian Skelton
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Big B

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I think this would be a risk too far given the experience 0f Dundee and Falkirk. Given that our playing budget is pretty meagre and the squad is a injury or two away from threadbare i'm not sure this would be the wisest move.

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2 minutes ago, TaunTon said:

I think this would be a risk too far given the experience 0f Dundee and Falkirk. Given that our playing budget is pretty meagre and the squad is a injury or two away from threadbare i'm not sure this would be the wisest move.

Flip the coin he could also be the piece of the jigsaw that could get us promoted but at the moment I don't think there is any truth in the story.

Big B

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45 minutes ago, Toby said:

I’d have thought it’s fairly obvious why not.

Don’t really want to go down the route of discussing his texting of wee lassies and tying it in with Lithgow’s previous misdemeanours, but on so many levels, it’s a no from me.

This is a guy who’s been punted from Celtic, Dundee and Falkirk in the last year, booted a lit pyro back into the St. Johnstone crowd at Dens Park, contributed nothing to Falkirk’s promotion challenge (lol) last season and has had to face up to constant scrutiny about his fitness, private life and off-field antics.

I very much doubt Dougie’s interested anyway, especially on hearing him discuss Efe Ambrose’s professionalism on signing him a month ago. But why on Earth would a club with such a harmonious dressing room, and a collection of guys who are all working so hard for each other want to risk upsetting the apple cart like this?

I could understand a signing such as O’Connor, made in desperation 9 years ago as we were circling the drain, but this makes absolutely no sense.

To be honest, I think that even asking The Bewilderbeast to explain why he wouldn’t want to see Griffiths at Cappielow is an insult to his intelligence.

I think this sums it up perfectly.  Particularly the references to Imrie, Ambrose and desperation of the O'Connor signing. We're no longer in that space and bringing in someone who could upset the current equilibrium is not a great use of our limited budgets.  

Plus, he's failing downwards at the moment.  The only person who'd benefit from this is Griffith's agent.

"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."

 

George Bernard Shaw

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59 minutes ago, Toby said:

I’d have thought it’s fairly obvious why not.

Don’t really want to go down the route of discussing his texting of wee lassies and tying it in with Lithgow’s previous misdemeanours, but on so many levels, it’s a no from me.

This is a guy who’s been punted from Celtic, Dundee and Falkirk in the last year, booted a lit pyro back into the St. Johnstone crowd at Dens Park, contributed nothing to Falkirk’s promotion challenge (lol) last season and has had to face up to constant scrutiny about his fitness, private life and off-field antics.

I very much doubt Dougie’s interested anyway, especially on hearing him discuss Efe Ambrose’s professionalism on signing him a month ago. But why on Earth would a club with such a harmonious dressing room, and a collection of guys who are all working so hard for each other want to risk upsetting the apple cart like this?

I could understand a signing such as O’Connor, made in desperation 9 years ago as we were circling the drain, but this makes absolutely no sense.

To be honest, I think that even asking The Bewilderbeast to explain why he wouldn’t want to see Griffiths at Cappielow is an insult to his intelligence.

And any concept that he might have screwed the nut are wide of the mark.

He only played a couple of games in Australia and still made the headlines for trying to fight a fan.

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1 hour ago, Toby said:

I’d have thought it’s fairly obvious why not.

Don’t really want to go down the route of discussing his texting of wee lassies and tying it in with Lithgow’s previous misdemeanours, but on so many levels, it’s a no from me.

This is a guy who’s been punted from Celtic, Dundee and Falkirk in the last year, booted a lit pyro back into the St. Johnstone crowd at Dens Park, contributed nothing to Falkirk’s promotion challenge (lol) last season and has had to face up to constant scrutiny about his fitness, private life and off-field antics.

I very much doubt Dougie’s interested anyway, especially on hearing him discuss Efe Ambrose’s professionalism on signing him a month ago. But why on Earth would a club with such a harmonious dressing room, and a collection of guys who are all working so hard for each other want to risk upsetting the apple cart like this?

I could understand a signing such as O’Connor, made in desperation 9 years ago as we were circling the drain, but this makes absolutely no sense.

To be honest, I think that even asking The Bewilderbeast to explain why he wouldn’t want to see Griffiths at Cappielow is an insult to his intelligence.

I did not think it was proved but I am big enough to stand corrected.

Big B

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Griffiths is to all intents and purposes an ex-footballer. I’d be stunned if a team with its sights on the title and which is so massively built upon the group rather than individuals would go near him when nobody else has after so long.

There’s some players who reach the end of their careers and can plod along doing a job on the strength of their natural talent alone, but I just don’t see Griffiths as one of them even if you were to get past everything else.

Gary O’Connor, for example, was a pretty extreme case of a player being out of shape, but even at that he still showed some moments of sublime quality and hypothetically could still have been useful to somebody if he was even a wee bit lighter due to the inherent talent he possessed; there’s probably a number of other examples who’ve proven useful on that basis, but he’s an obvious one in our context. I guess you could apply this to Peter Weatherson to an extent, although in a different way. 

Griffiths, though, is not somebody I could really see having that bit of class to fall back on, that ability to still produce something special in a key moment. That kind of thing won’t just disappear, and if he had that capacity his last few years likely wouldn’t have been quite so awful.

He dug his own grave long ago and it’d be very surprising indeed if we were to go near him. There’s got to be better options for a team in our position.

Edited by EanieMeany

AWMSC

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1 hour ago, Brian Skelton said:

I did not think it was proved but I am big enough to stand corrected.

This isn’t a court of law- we’re not trying to prove innocence or guilt. What we are trying to do is to establish if a prospective signing for a forward thinking football club that has aspirations of moving up a level would be a welcome addition to the squad.

With all the things I’ve listed (I hadn’t even mentioned his conviction for racism), I think it’s fair to say you’re in a minority of one, here.

There have been many a prospective signing I’ve turned my nose up at in the time I’ve supported Morton, but none with quite so many red flags as Griffiths.

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1 hour ago, Toby said:

I’d have thought it’s fairly obvious why not.

Don’t really want to go down the route of discussing his texting of wee lassies and tying it in with Lithgow’s previous misdemeanours, but on so many levels, it’s a no from me.

This is a guy who’s been punted from Celtic, Dundee and Falkirk in the last year, booted a lit pyro back into the St. Johnstone crowd at Dens Park, contributed nothing to Falkirk’s promotion challenge (lol) last season and has had to face up to constant scrutiny about his fitness, private life and off-field antics.

I very much doubt Dougie’s interested anyway, especially on hearing him discuss Efe Ambrose’s professionalism on signing him a month ago. But why on Earth would a club with such a harmonious dressing room, and a collection of guys who are all working so hard for each other want to risk upsetting the apple cart like this?

I could understand a signing such as O’Connor, made in desperation 9 years ago as we were circling the drain, but this makes absolutely no sense.

To be honest, I think that even asking The Bewilderbeast to explain why he wouldn’t want to see Griffiths at Cappielow is an insult to his intelligence.

This pretty well sums up the reasons I wouldn’t want us signing Griffiths.

I do however completely trust Imrie to do the right thing, and am sure that he would only bring Griffiths in if he was confident that it wouldn’t disrupt the squad and that he had also got himself back to the required level of fitness.

This of course only addresses part of the issue.  His history of being a wee creep would definitely not sit well with a lot of the support (myself included), and isn’t the sort of thing I want associated with our club.  I do however think a lot of the problem people took with the Lithgow signing (apart from what he had actually done himself) was that the club didn’t seem to be willing to acknowledge it or address questions about it. If we were going to take a punt on Griffiths then I would expect some sort of presser or joint statement from the club & the player where he acknowledges and takes ownership of his “mistakes” etc and states his commitment to prove himself etc.  Of course that in itself doesn’t make his history go away but would at least be better than what happened (or didn’t happen) when Lithgow came in.

I know this is most likely made up paper talk, and that there’s not much point speculating on “what if” scenarios, but I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway.  If Griffiths did come in and fired in 20-odd goals on the way to us winning the championship, then I do wonder how many of the people who are concerned about his past would be willing to forgive & forget.  I would like to think that I would have the courage of my convictions no matter what happens on the field, but us going up would be such a momentous event that I would be lying if I said that there’s no way his performances could potentially change my views on the signing.

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2 hours ago, TaunTon said:

I think this would be a risk too far given the experience 0f Dundee and Falkirk. Given that our playing budget is pretty meagre and the squad is a injury or two away from threadbare i'm not sure this would be the wisest move.

I would add further justification for your position as follows:  "I think this would be a risk too far given the experience of Dundee and Falkirk together with Thumb currently being a wee fat unfit follicly challenged degenerate."

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4 hours ago, Brian Skelton said:

Why not?

 

As I said the last time his name came up as a potential signing.....

Setting aside his well documented misdemeanors, he is a player I took an instant dislike to from the very first time I clapped eyes on him while breaking through at Livingston.

Most players will be wind up merchants at some point, McPhee wound us up during his Airdrie and Hamilton days, but did so with a bit of humour. I'd loved to have seen him in a Morton strip.

Griffiths, on the other hand, did it with, what I'd describe as evil intent.

When playing for Dundee he made allegations that a Ton fan had tried to punch him while celebrating a goal at the Sinclair St end.

The photos in the Sunday papers showed Griffiths clearly on the grass verge at the side of the goal, with 6/7 ft of red blaise between him and the perimeter wall.

The "alleged puncher" would have to have been Stretch Armstrong to have reached him.

So I repeat No Thanks.

I'd rather have Terry Griffiths.

 

If there is a shred of truth to this, I suspect the story will have been written prior to last night's cup draw, and now that we are guaranteed a bit of a pay day, we can do much better than him.

 

Edited by The Bewilderedbeast
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Imrie has a track record in turning underperforming players around, but he's not a miracle worker and there is simply nothing to suggest Leigh Griffiths is good enough for the Scottish Championship in 2023. Even discounting the baggage to look solely at football reasons (which many people will understandably be unwilling to do) the way he stunk the place out at Falkirk and his humiliating attempts to win himself a contract in Australia mean the questions to be asked about him are not remotely comparable to whether Imrie can improve Robbie Muirhead, or whether he could get a Championship player out of Jai Quitongo. He's at a far lower ebb with far fewer signs of being a good footballer than either of those two at their lowest points. The Leigh Griffiths of 2017 and earlier is never coming back.

It's natural to see this and think of Garry O'Connor as a comparison, with the common features of a player who was once a terrific centre forward to the point they were the best or among the best strikers in Scotland with international caps and big transfer fees throughout their career, suddenly finding themselves absolutely done in their early 30s when their natural talent should have had them still playing at a very good level. I think Derek Riordan is a better comparison to Griffiths though.

For all that O'Connor was dreadful for us and it was too late to salvage his career, he at least had the attitude to accept responsibility for where he'd ended up and why. It was too late to do anything about the deterioration of his body, but he at least accepted his choices were the reason he was in that position and made an effort to change it, he just couldn't physically ever get fit again.

Compare that with Riordan who had a similar fall from grace at the same time and took no responsibility whatsoever. None of his actions contributed to where he ended up, it was all down to Gordon Strachan not giving him a fair chance at Celtic five years earlier. As none of it was his fault he saw no reason to do anything differently, he still went on getting pished and not turning up for training all the time. He didn't turn up having arranged a trial at Morton that season, the last shot at a full-time football at this level he would ever get, but no, it was always someone else's fault that poor wee Derek wasn't the best player in the world and getting the offers he merited on that basis.

Griffiths is the same as Riordan. Nothing is his fault, he still believes football owes him and he doesn't need to take any responsibility for his inability to find a contract. He will never improve or change.

Avoid like the plague.

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Brian Wake my Lord, Brian Wake

Brian Wake my Lord, Brian Wake

Brian Wake my Lord, Brian Wake

Oh Lord, Brian Wake

 

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