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Match Preview/Thread - Morton vs Arbroath (17th September)


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1 hour ago, TRVMP said:

Midfield missing, Jai so isolated. Absolutely shan so far. 

 

50 minutes ago, TRVMP said:

Have to join the pile-on here about Grimshaw. I hope to fuck he's just a bit rusty because that 'pass' followed by the clobbering for the yellow card is Lowland League stuff. 

I think the two are linked. There wasn't an option to play it out to right back at any point in the game so players are dropping back and filling in the gap. 

Means we can't press high or harass teams like we are normally decent at (caveat here that I've missed the last couple of games!) 

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That was horrific from back to front that was toothless no fight no desire they were first to every ball major wake up call for the whole team who just assumed they would turn up and win. 

We huffed and puffed in the second half but created hardly anything and our midfield was posting missing, I thought the ref was pretty shite but then again they always are. Really stupid penalty to give away from Gillespie even if the boy goes down like he has been shot and again Quitongo diving in and getting sent off for 2 needless fouls mind you at least he actually put in some effort unlike some other imposters but that's twice he has been sent off already and it's hard enough as it let alone with 10 men. 

Muirhead needs benched he offers absolutely nothing looks severely unfit and doesn't even try, when he wants to he can be a player but to often he is posting missing, Kabia thinks he is a world beater but puts in 0% effort compared to his ability again get him benched and give the young ones like McGrattan and McGregor a go.

Grimshaw looked a mile off the pace he has only been here a few days and barely trained and you put him in ahead of Carlo who I think he has been excellent so far wrong decision for me. King is going to be a good player but he just lets the ball come in for the first goal and is nowhere near him centre halfs also sleeping, Strapp should be re called for me and King pushed further forward. 

Not been impressed by any team I have seen so far but that today was nowhere good enough something needs to change and fast. 

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Regardless of Grimshaw's performance, dropping Pignatiello is an absolutely baffling decision. Despite a poor performance v Ayr he's been one of our best players this season, then gets bombed out for one below par performance while the likes of Kabia, Muirhead and most of all Blues, the latter not having contributed a good 5 minutes all season never mind 90, are undroppable. At least in Kabia and Muirhead's case you can argue about the lack of alternatives, but Blues continuing to get a game while Strapp and Pignatiello sit on the bench with better midfielders than him at full back is completely unjustifiable. Lyon deserved going out on loan for his performances, but the golden boy Blues has been considerably worse than him all season. He should be bottom of the pecking order of the six central midfield options currently available.

With the swap of Ayr in the top four and Arbroath having a poor season, you're seeing the likely relegation battlers start to form with the predictable inclusions of us, Hamilton and Cove joining Arbroath. We all know how badly a striker is needed, but Imrie's not getting the best of the players he currently has and needs to stop playing favourites to get us clear of that pack. Get the best defence on the park - it contains Strapp and Pignatiello - and get as many of three impostors named above as possible out of the starting XI. With Quitongo suspended Muirhead is going to have to keep his place, but we can still put out an XI with neither Kabia or Blues.

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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Embarrassing from start to finish. The invisible man Blues getting 89 minutes to be replaced by a guy who touched the ball more and scored in about 4 minutes he was on the pitch. Get him benched. 

Muirhead shite. King's worst game of the season. Gillespie was rubbish. Baird was shite. Grimshaw was shite although I'll let him off this time as seems he's not kicked a ball in months. 

Imrie's got a lot of work to do and he's not short of criticism either. Wrong team selection in the first place, his love for Blues, his baffling decision to let Lyon and Garrity go on loan when you can't even fill a bench. He's got his retained players all wrong giving 2 year deals to Blues and Muirhead, he's signed some guff and he has been unable to get a half decent centre forward in the door for the last 4 months. 

Next week I'd genuinely get Lithgow up top. Wins every header and at least causes some bother. Better than anything else we've got.

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Didn't see the game today, but as a general point I have at least a wee bit of sympathy with Muirhead as he just isn't a lone striker and it's absurd that Imrie seems to have went into the season thinking he is. Whilst it'd be hard to argue he's doing all he can, it's very much a case of a square peg in a round hole imo. As for Quitongo, in all honesty a player that doesn't actually do anything isn't really that much use to anybody, defenders will be fairly happy to have somebody being a nuisance all day if they know they're not going to seriously threaten their goal. There's a good reason he's spent the last few years warming third and fourth tier benches and he'll most likely be doing the same again soon enough.

I mentioned this before, but if we get a proper striker (and it's just wild that we don't have one, for all that even 10/15 goal a season forwards are hard to come by, it's inexcusable to not have a single player in your squad for whom that central role is their natural position - even if they don't score, surely to god there's a reasonable number of players out there who can perform the general functions well enough to give structure to the team) I'd still be inclined to have a go with Muirhead on the right of the attack instead of Quitongo, with King on the left. Most of his good work last season came from coming in off the right and he produced some moments of real quality fairly regularly from there, something Quitongo most assuredly does not and ultimately isn't really capable of doing*. If we don't get a proper striker, it's hard to see how we stay in this league.

*Although all that said, McGregor should be getting a shot ahead of both of them (had forgotten about him when I was writing that tbh).

AWMSC

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Honeymoon is over for me - two near-identical home defeats on the trot (only this week we contrived to play much, much worse than last week) with us resorting to hoofball again to try to sort it.

Jai is a liability although nobody got pass marks today. Some of our passing and decision-making was horrific and at times was reminding me of our dreadful play under Gus.

And to cap it, we have the league leaders away next. 

McGhee needs some support, there's no-one backing him up.
Hayes playing it forward, Bell being forced to do it all alone, now forward from Marr, here's Ritchie, still Andy Ritchie, look at the control...

That is a marvellous goal from Andy Ritchie. Twenty minutes on the clock and Morton's supporters come alive. A goal which epitomises the control, the arrogance, the cheek of Andy Ritchie.

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Blues has to come out the team after the past two performances. Strapp and Pignatiello have been dropped for much less. Right now he knows he can perform however poorly he wants and he will keep his place in the team, and that's not good for the team or the player. 

There doesn't seem to be much logic behind the guys Imrie has a problem with and the ones he relies on to start every week as they're all much of a muchness. He's obviously seen problems with Pignatiello and O'connor (who would have likely been dropped even if available today) but you saw today how much we missed both of them. Both were a constant part of the best defence in the league so far and then without them we looked all over the place. 

Grimshaw obviously needs time to find his feet but the team can't legislate for many more performances that bad from him. If Hynes had put in that performance today we'd be saying that he's nowhere near good enough for this level. 

Good people will do good things, bad people will do bad things, but only with religion do good people do bad things!

 

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29 minutes ago, EanieMeany said:

Didn't see the game today, but as a general point I have at least a wee bit of sympathy with Muirhead as he just isn't a lone striker and it's absurd that Imrie seems to have went into the season thinking he is. Whilst it'd be hard to argue he's doing all he can, it's very much a case of a square peg in a round hole imo. 

Lol wut

He was actually playing right side of the world's most shan attacking trident, as usual. Which is supposedly his most effective position. At no point has he been played as a lone forward this season. And he was a garbage waste of a jersey as usual.

I am sick to fucking death of all these pathetic excuses being pulled out for players who are simply not good enough for this level. Muirhead is a no. 9 who has scored 4 Championship goals in four fucking seasons. Giving him a new contract in the summer- and all the justifications for doing so - is precisely why we can't have a proper football team right now.  Blues should also have been binned. We deserve everything we get for not being ruthless when it was required. 

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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27 minutes ago, AyrshireTon said:

 

Jai is a liability although nobody got pass marks today.  

I'm not president of the Jai Quitongo fan club, but it clearly wasn't his decisions that cost us today. If he was part of a genuine set of forwards rather than the jokers we fielded today then we'd do well from his contribution.

The degree to which we're relying on him to do something in order to create chances is alarming. But that's a Kabia and Muirhead problem - and a petulant red card doesn't change that. 

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:

I'm not president of the Jai Quitongo fan club, but it clearly wasn't his decisions that cost us today. If he was part of a genuine set of forwards rather than the jokers we fielded today then we'd do well from his contribution.

The degree to which we're relying on him to do something in order to create chances is alarming. But that's a Kabia and Muirhead problem - and a petulant red card doesn't change that. 

I agree with what you're saying and he is definitely being given too much to do, but his 1st half booking was very similar to the one he was sent off for against Falkirk and to let Gaston get to him when he was on a booking was really stupid. He's our most carded player this season so far.

McGhee needs some support, there's no-one backing him up.
Hayes playing it forward, Bell being forced to do it all alone, now forward from Marr, here's Ritchie, still Andy Ritchie, look at the control...

That is a marvellous goal from Andy Ritchie. Twenty minutes on the clock and Morton's supporters come alive. A goal which epitomises the control, the arrogance, the cheek of Andy Ritchie.

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3 minutes ago, vikingTON said:

 

I am sick to fucking death of all these pathetic excuses being pulled out for players who are simply not good enough for this level. Muirhead is a no. 9 who has scored 4 Championship goals in four fucking seasons. Giving him a new contract in the summer- and all the justifications for doing so - is precisely why we can't have a proper football team right now.  Blues should also have been binned. We deserve everything we get for not being ruthless when it was required. 

Muirheads total lack of goal scoring ability was well known and the fact that he is not playing in the junior league is down to us having no gumption, and believing that there's a player in there. There isn't and hasn't been since his academy days. Jai is Jai and will never learn to be something better than mediocre because he thinks he's a footballer. Like Muirhead his record was well known and all this guff about him unsettling defenders is meaningless without an end product.

We really need to start setting some minimum standards and then expecting that retention is based on them. If we had we wouldn't have Capplelow  clogged up with shit like Kabbia and Blues.

 

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1 hour ago, dunning1874 said:

Regardless of Grimshaw's performance, dropping Pignatiello is an absolutely baffling decision. Despite a poor performance v Ayr he's been one of our best players this season, then gets bombed out for one below par performance while the likes of Kabia, Muirhead and most of all Blues, the latter not having contributed a good 5 minutes all season never mind 90, are undroppable. At least in Kabia and Muirhead's case you can argue about the lack of alternatives, but Blues continuing to get a game while Strapp and Pignatiello sit on the bench with better midfielders than him at full back is completely unjustifiable. Lyon deserved going out on loan for his performances, but the golden boy Blues has been considerably worse than him all season. He should be bottom of the pecking order of the six central midfield options currently available.

As I've said before, I can't help feeling that the different standards applied to Blues from everybody else is something that' could potentially be a bit of an issue within the squad if things stay as they are. Imrie is always on about mistakes (repeated mistakes in particular), Lyon was ostracised last season after being our key player in the initial run under Imrie, he's been farmed out on loan this season with seemingly little patience or tolerance shown to him, McGrattan has shown more than enough to merit a start but struggles to get on the pitch, Pignatiello gets dropped for a guy who's barely kicked a ball this year, Strapp has been benched for a while now...all of this whilst a player who'd lucky to be a regular in a League 2 side plays almost every single minute of every game regardless of what he does (or doesn't) do, and along the way there's been a few pointed comments at unnamed players. How do you keep demanding high standards from everyone when you're evidently applying different ones to different players? I'm not suggesting this is an issue now, but if results are going against you and the team isn't performing well then there's got to be a danger that players start getting a bit pissed off about it if they're not getting a fair crack of the whip.

Same goes up front too, even with limited options we do have King and McGregor to take two of the three positions so there's options to change things and it's obvious changes are needed - if you keep playing players who aren't performing whilst dropping others who are nowhere near as bad at the drop of a hat, you're surely risking making problems for yourself for no reason on top of not getting results.

AWMSC

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For what it's worth I thought Jai's first yellow was very harsh, particularly since it was his first card. But as much as he was slightly wasteful today, he wasn't the problem. Gillespie in particular was shockingly bad for a player of his pedigree.

What worries me is that even after the half time formation switch we barely looked dangerous. Putting two up top and (theoretically) having attacks down the wing is all well and good but only if you can actually do it. 

EOho8Pw.png

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54 minutes ago, TaunTon said:

Muirheads total lack of goal scoring ability was well known and the fact that he is not playing in the junior league is down to us having no gumption, and believing that there's a player in there. There isn't and hasn't been since his academy days. Jai is Jai and will never learn to be something better than mediocre because he thinks he's a footballer. Like Muirhead his record was well known and all this guff about him unsettling defenders is meaningless without an end product.

We really need to start setting some minimum standards and then expecting that retention is based on them. If we had we wouldn't have Capplelow  clogged up with shit like Kabbia and Blues.

 

I disagree about Quitongo because he does actually offer a direct threat that we would struggle to replicate at our level. He fits well into Imrie's system too. 

The problem is that we lack any focal point centre forward to play off him. Kabia is utterly dreadful but that comes with a loan signing. The permanent players that we kept on over the summer are the real problem. 

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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That was a fucking shambles and possibly our worst performance under Dougie. If he wants to turn Cappielow into a fortress then there's some amount of work to do.

Can't understand why he dropped pignatello for Grimshaw. If Grimshaw was going to start then he had to go onto midfield in place of blues. Only player I'd give pass marks to would be Crawford who didn't stop and tried to at least make things happen. It's clear to see but we need some sort of attacking reinforcements as we cannot depend on Quitongo's workrate and daft decisions.  Kabia and Muirhead have done nothing to merit a place in that starting 11. It's now up to Dougie to sort this shit out.

 

There's a storm on the horizon

And for that I can't see the sun

For I'll keep a waiting on the pavement

For the ice cream van to come

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4 hours ago, EanieMeany said:

As I've said before, I can't help feeling that the different standards applied to Blues from everybody else is something that' could potentially be a bit of an issue within the squad if things stay as they are. Imrie is always on about mistakes (repeated mistakes in particular), Lyon was ostracised last season after being our key player in the initial run under Imrie, he's been farmed out on loan this season with seemingly little patience or tolerance shown to him, McGrattan has shown more than enough to merit a start but struggles to get on the pitch, Pignatiello gets dropped for a guy who's barely kicked a ball this year, Strapp has been benched for a while now...all of this whilst a player who'd lucky to be a regular in a League 2 side plays almost every single minute of every game regardless of what he does (or doesn't) do, and along the way there's been a few pointed comments at unnamed players. How do you keep demanding high standards from everyone when you're evidently applying different ones to different players? I'm not suggesting this is an issue now, but if results are going against you and the team isn't performing well then there's got to be a danger that players start getting a bit pissed off about it if they're not getting a fair crack of the whip.

Same goes up front too, even with limited options we do have King and McGregor to take two of the three positions so there's options to change things and it's obvious changes are needed - if you keep playing players who aren't performing whilst dropping others who are nowhere near as bad at the drop of a hat, you're surely risking making problems for yourself for no reason on top of not getting results.

But you were white knighting Robbie fucking Muirhead based on a game that you didn't actually see, so all of the above can be safely filed in the bin where it belongs. 

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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