Match Preview/Thread - Morton vs Queens Park (30th March)

[The Bewilderedbeast]

16 hours ago, TopCat said:

Completely agree with the rest of this but, in his defence, I'm led to believe Muirhead has perfectly valid reasons for avoiding interviews.

Was about to post something similar.

Having worked with a guy with a guy in a similar position I can understand why.

[RossMcC1874]

13 hours ago, Deego said:

It’s a decent wee listen actually.

 

That is a decent listen. No idea he did suffer from a stammer and that's fair enough if he doesn't do many interviews because of this. 

Will be interesting to see what does happen in the summer with him. 

[CM48]

Muirhead and Blues always seem to be the ones that get a hard time when things aren’t going well but I’d miss them both if they were to leave. As has been said many times, there’s a reason they’re at Morton and not in the Premiership so will often come up short performance wise of what we’d like to see standing in the cowshed. But looking at the top scorers in the league Muirhead is giving a decent return. All the players above him could get a game for a bottom 6 club in the league above I reckon (except maybe for the thug at the top who might not be able to get away with elbowing defenders out the way with better refs and VAR on his case).

Or maybe I’m still just glad anytime I see him on the park not playing left back!

[LargsTON]

45 minutes ago, CM48 said:

Muirhead and Blues always seem to be the ones that get a hard time when things aren’t going well but I’d miss them both if they were to leave. As has been said many times, there’s a reason they’re at Morton and not in the Premiership so will often come up short performance wise of what we’d like to see standing in the cowshed. But looking at the top scorers in the league Muirhead is giving a decent return. All the players above him could get a game for a bottom 6 club in the league above I reckon (except maybe for the thug at the top who might not be able to get away with elbowing defenders out the way with better refs and VAR on his case).

Or maybe I’m still just glad anytime I see him on the park not playing left back!

I've never had an issue with Blues, you always get a shift out him.  People are making excuses for Muirhead.  

[TAFKAC]

1 hour ago, LargsTON said:

I've never had an issue with Blues, you always get a shift out him.  People are making excuses for Muirhead.  

I struggle with this argument against Muirhead; it's also the same argument people use to have a pop at Blues.  He's scored 16 goals, works hard off the ball and kept us in the hunt when Oakley had his first injury lay off.  He's not the quickest in the world and doesn't do the meaningless chasing balls he doesn't need to.  And, yet, people want to get rid of him because he had a pop at some bellends who were abusing him from the safety of the cowshed.  

Where do you think those 16 goals are coming from next season, if we get rid of him?

[LargsTON]

8 minutes ago, TAFKAC said:

I struggle with this argument against Muirhead; it's also the same argument people use to have a pop at Blues.  He's scored 16 goals, works hard off the ball and kept us in the hunt when Oakley had his first injury lay off.  He's not the quickest in the world and doesn't do the meaningless chasing balls he doesn't need to.  And, yet, people want to get rid of him because he had a pop at some bellends who were abusing him from the safety of the cowshed.  

Where do you think those 16 goals are coming from next season, if we get rid of him?

He doesn't work hard off the ball and has a questionable attitude which is why he's had so many clubs.  It's also ridiculous to say anyone wants rid of him for merely having a pop at the support.

Edited April 1 by LargsTON

[TAFKAC]

55 minutes ago, LargsTON said:

He doesn't work hard off the ball and has a questionable attitude which is why he's had so many clubs.  It's also ridiculous to say anyone wants rid of him for merely having a pop at the support.

Read through the thread.  The basic premise is that he's lazy and had a pop at the support when he scored.  He cupped his ears, it's hardly a hanging offence.  I don't think he's lazy.  He's just slow and slightly cumbersome and doesn't do the fan pleasing unnecessary runs against lost causes.  I watched the Motherwell goals again, one for him and the other coming as a result of him closing down McGinn and winning the ball.

More to the point, where do you see the 16 goals coming from?  He's 5th top league scorer with 11. He's not a natural no. 9 despite the shirt number. 

[Chicken_Soup]

1 hour ago, LargsTON said:

He doesn't work hard off the ball and has a questionable attitude which is why he's had so many clubs.  It's also ridiculous to say anyone wants rid of him for merely having a pop at the support.

What are you basing this on? Muirhead works incredibly hard off the ball. He was hitting both bylines on Saturday and executed a great saving slide tackle in his own box to cover Waters. 
 

 In our system those three players between midfield and attack have to cover more ground than anybody else. There’s a reason Imrie trusts him in that role, a manager who has publicly criticised and dropped players from that position for not running, pressing and/or tracking. He even cited it as a reason for Lyon’s failure to succeed at the club. Muirhead also tends to play 90 minutes despite his opposite winger being substituted and with other wide options on the bench. This just wouldn’t be the case if what you’re saying was true. 

[TopCat]

34 minutes ago, TAFKAC said:

Read through the thread.  The basic premise is that he's lazy and had a pop at the support when he scored.  He cupped his ears, it's hardly a hanging offence.  I don't think he's lazy.  He's just slow and slightly cumbersome and doesn't do the fan pleasing unnecessary runs against lost causes.  I watched the Motherwell goals again, one for him and the other coming as a result of him closing down McGinn and winning the ball.

More to the point, where do you see the 16 goals coming from?  He's 5th top league scorer with 11. He's not a natural no. 9 despite the shirt number. 

I think the general point is that he had broadly sorted out his attitude issues but let some of them creep back in recently. I'm not personally offended by the bite back at the fans (Longridge and the Ref's antics added to the entertainment for me on Saturday) but i think it's a reasonable point for folk to make.

For Crawford and Blues, I suspect the number of minutes in the legs are the biggest factor in their wee dip (that applies to Muirhead as well). Blues also doesn't really look comfortable with the utility player responsibility that Imrie has given him either and Crawford is nudging on for 30 now.

Muirhead's goal tally is unlikely to be replicated by any Morton player next season. We should be looking at upgrades on the Garrity/Bearne/King/Boyd/McGrattan/Quitongo pool to deal with that. We're probably about 20 goals short of a genuine promotion tilt. 

[SpoonTon]

Of course Muirhead has weaknesses in his game, that's why he's with Morton. Just like if Jai had a better end product he'd be playing at a higher level, if Robbie was a bit quicker/sharper he'd be playing at a higher level. There's no way Imrie would let Muirhead go without a fight, and rightly so. He's contributed well since Imrie came to the club and is an important player for us. He's not had the best run of form, but the idea that he's not been important overall this season or that he doesn't work hard is just wrong imo. 

On players being sensitive to fan criticism, there are guys in the Cowshed who seen to shout at the same players every week. I always remember one particular fan who seemed to hate Michael Tidser with such passion that you'd assume it had to be personal. I tend to think it's the better players annoy some fans because they think they're overrated and they can't stand it (I'm not at all suggesting I'm immune to that one). Chris Millar was another one who, bizarrely, was always heavily criticised by a small number of fans. Players like Muirhead should probably understand that they're actually generally well liked by the support, and they're unlikely to please everyone - and probably not to take it too personally when fans don't rate them. 

 

[Cet Homme Charmant]

I'm also struggling to understand why Muirhead gets so much stick on here (and going by the comments, also from some in the shed). Without his 11 league goals so far this season we'd be deep in a relegation battle right now, rather than pushing for a play-off place. 

 

[HamCam]

I don't think most people are doubting Muirhead is one of the most talented players at this level and/or his goals have been key to our points tally this season but it is not unreasonable to comment that he has been dreadful for the best part of two months. 

[Admin]

[dunning1874]

As someone who was more than willing to criticise Muirhead as recently as last Saturday, I don't have an issue with the ear cupping celebration. Give it out, take it.

Posting soberly, which I wasn't last week, obviously his goals have been critically important this season and he'll absolutely be getting a contract offer in the summer. I would say though that while accusing a player of laziness is itself more often than not a lazy criticism as players fall out of games or lose form for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with effort or attitude, it doesn't mean it's never true. Looking at him in the last 10 minutes last week after missing the penalty he was absolutely bursting a gut, dropping to show for the ball, competing for things in the air, putting everything into pressing. Those were things he just hadn't been doing for the prior 80 minutes and several games before that. It was frustrating to see that he had that gear to go up when he simply hadn't been doing those things for weeks when we really needed him to in Oakley's absence, then decided it was worth his while to do them again after he'd missed a penalty.

Still, that's two goals in three games and if he's going to respond to criticism by getting back into goalscoring form again, with his goalscoring contribution overall justifying carrying him through bad spells, I couldn't give a fuck how he celebrates them.