Ayr v The Famous: Scottish Cup

[The Bewilderedbeast]

Baws

[CBTON]

Good 1st 20/25 mins then pathetic the rest. Don’t think we even got out our own half in the 2nd half, shocking

[SpoonTon]

As insipid an hour of football as you can imagine from us. Looked a mile off this level of football. 

[RealTonKid]

Out the cup and it’s still November.

[HamCam]

Ayr scoring again is just window dressing. Once we go behind you have no belief we can respond. We remain a spineless collective. No doubt it will be the usual platitudes of we were magic, the world is against us, the opposition got lucky... Aside from a relegation scrap the season is over before December.

[Pedrodelawasp]

Extended cup run: denied.

Baws.

[Ashman]

Another game where we never looked like scoring. We can only hope there’s a plan in place for January because we can’t keep going on like this. Dunfermline are more likely to turn their season around than us 

[Alibi]

What a dreadful game. Two mediocre teams. Don’t think we’ve had an effort on target. Absolutely toothless. Can’t pass, can’t tackle, can’t shoot, can’t cross the ball.  Davies runs about but does nothing. Samuels is utterly hopeless. Shaw shows some promise and good to see Ballantyne back. Too many duds in the squad. Destined for 8th and no cup income this season. Utterly depressing.

[AyrshireTon]

Stayed in the game before the break, creating the best chance of the half and surviving a stramash, but that second half was horrific. The 1st goal was coming and then we had to endure Mullen spending 15 minutes trying to set up a second before Ayr did the job themselves. The substitutions looked very much like desperation.

Six months now, of hoping we stay less honking than Dunfermline and Airdrie.

[vikingTON]

22 minutes ago, HamCam said:

Ayr scoring again is just window dressing. Once we go behind you have no belief we can respond. We remain a spineless collective. No doubt it will be the usual platitudes of we were magic, the world is against us, the opposition got lucky... Aside from a relegation scrap the season is over before December.

I see you anticipated Gillespie's dummy throwing behaviour towards the end of the game.

We have three league wins and are out of everything else with a whimper before the Advent calendars are opened. Yet down Sinclair Street they seem to think it's the fans' job to happy-clap and be grateful that their employees are producing utter garbage like the last hour of that game today. 

The inquest into our 'minerals' based squad policy and shan, Airdrie tribute act 'philosophy of football' must begin right now. And whether we stay in the league or not, there should be a major reset in May. 

[Scott]

Ayr spent about 15 minutes during the warm up practicing that move for the second goal. We are so easy to play through at times, and seem happy to invite pressure with this passing it out from the back every time patter. Only positive from today is Shaw looked decent in the first half and should be a good player for us if he stays fit. Another game of Lyall and Moffat disappearing, I’d be dropping the pair of them next weekend. 

[SassenachTon]

Depressing the the extreme.

I'm sure I'm not the only Morton supporter who endlessly wonders why Dougie chose to abandon everything which made us such difficult fuckers to play against. Our relentless high press, our aggression, our everything. It wasn't pretty a lot of the time, but who cares? It worked - and it made us that team of 'cloggers, thugs and hoofballers who play a certain way' which we largely were - but a team of 'thugs' who achieved the longest unbeaten run in our history (or so I believe). Teams used to hate coming to Cappielow - now, they just look at the footage of recent games, they instantly spot our glaring weaknesses, they adjust and capitalise accordingly, and look upon it as a walk in the park against the predictable, pish-poor opposition we've become. The current squad has theoretically been assembled around this new focus on playing 'pure' football - but unless you can spend megabucks acquiring skilful players who've been brought up on a diet of that = you're dead in the water. Out of the cup at the first hurdle. No wonder the FD's predicting a loss this year. And no wonder he's bailing out. 

It concerns me that key players like Stuparevic get 'injured in training' rendering themselves unavailable for actual games. So change the training. It concerns me that Dougie's chosen to sign chancers like Lamar Reynolds. I understand he's got outside issues and I sympathise with whatever they are - but he's been contracted to do a job, and at our level, no-one deserves the luxury of being carried around in a sympathy chair whilst delivering fuck all out on the grass. Same goes for Jordan Davies. I can't quite believe that Dougie's been swayed by a mega-goalscoring record in some God-forsaken hole in Wales, but who has then translated that into guaranteed success at an altogether higher level. I watch young lads play really well on my local park on Sunday mornings and score some stellar goals - but does that mean they'd cut it in the Premiership, Serie A or the Bundesliga? Nope. But Cammy Ballantyne has been the shining exception for me. Solid, skilled, and utterly dependable. A perfect candidate  for the 'Morton of old'. The Emmanuel-Thomas debacle needs no comment.

I stay down in Derbyshire and I don't get up as often as I'd like. But my youngest daughter stays in Ayr and the 'two birds, one stone' opportunity was too good to miss. We had a lovely morning and then I took her to the game - her first-ever fitba experience. I'd bought her a Morton shirt to wear = the one which has my name on it as an MCT member.

As we walked out of the ground, she said "Dad, I know nothing about football, but your team were really, really shit".

 

 

 

 

 

[vikingTON]

21 minutes ago, SassenachTon said:

It concerns me that key players like Stuparevic get 'injured in training' rendering themselves unavailable for actual games. So change the training. It concerns me that Dougie's chosen to sign chancers like Lamar Reynolds. I understand he's got outside issues and I sympathise with whatever they are - but he's been contracted to do a job, and at our level, no-one deserves the luxury of being carried around in a sympathy chair whilst delivering fuck all out on the grass. Same goes for Jordan Davies. I can't quite believe that Dougie's been swayed by a mega-goalscoring record in some God-forsaken hole in Wales, but who has then translated that into guaranteed success at an altogether higher level. I watch young lads play really well on my local park on Sunday mornings and score some stellar goals - but does that mean they'd cut it in the Premiership, Serie A or the Bundesliga? Nope. But Cammy Ballantyne has been the shining exception for me. Solid, skilled, and utterly dependable. A perfect candidate  for the 'Morton of old'. The Emmanuel-Thomas debacle needs no comment.

Davies did better today than Moffat or Lyall though - who claim to have a pedigree at this level but in reality would be jobbing around at East Kilbride already if they didn't have 'Old Firm youth product' on their fraudulent CV. 

The issue is that we've failed to get a reasonable rate of return either on gambles outside Scotland and within our effective catchment area. If it weren't for hoovering up at least some of Inverness' sinking ship, it could have been even worse as well.

Our strategy going forward needs to invest in serious scouting rather than any birthday caird pish about youth development. 

[Mr.Blue]

Decent first 30 mins. After that absolutely terrible. If Davies decides to hit a shot rather than hold onto the ball when through on goal it's a different game.

We are reasonably solid at the back and the midfield 2 will compete well but it's up top that we have no impact at all. Prime example is Owen Moffat. His end product either passing or finishing is awful. Garrity, McGinn, Reynolds in a similar vein. We need to improve in the final third. Lyall is tidy on the ball but again has no end product for being an attacking midfielder. We need to clear some of the deadwood in January and hopefully bring in one or two gems. Easier said than done i know

 

[irnbru]

23 minutes ago, Mr.Blue said:

Decent first 30 mins. After that absolutely terrible. If Davies decides to hit a shot rather than hold onto the ball when through on goal it's a different game.

We are reasonably solid at the back and the midfield 2 will compete well but it's up top that we have no impact at all. Prime example is Owen Moffat. His end product either passing or finishing is awful. Garrity, McGinn, Reynolds in a similar vein. We need to improve in the final third. Lyall is tidy on the ball but again has no end product for being an attacking midfielder. We need to clear some of the deadwood in January and hopefully bring in one or two gems. Easier said than done i know

 

Don't think Grimshaw has a team yet. Not sure he's the answer to the lack of creativity but we'd definitely not be as easy to beat if we got him. 

As others have said, Moffat and Lyall are decent on the ball but no end product at all. The rest of the attacking players don't really look like scoring either so I don't really see where we can go from here apart from damage limitation and make sure we're at least 8th.

[standman]

The manager needs to stop swearing at fans too , especially when what was shouted wasn’t totally unreasonable at that particular moment.

After Ballantyne played a terrible ball to Wilson who lost it ( through no fault of his own ) and they nearly scored, someone shouted “just f*****g launch it”

It didn’t warrant Dougie swearing up at him

Edited November 30 by standman

[Scott]

8 minutes ago, standman said:

The manager needs to stop swearing at fans too , especially when what was shouted wasn’t totally unreasonable at that particular moment.

After Ballantyne played a terrible ball to Wilson who lost it ( through no fault of his own ) and they nearly scored, someone shouted “just f*****g launch it”

It didn’t warrant Dougie swearing up at him

I’m nowhere near the Imrie out camp but he seems incapable of taking/hearing criticism at times. How he can expect fans to be ok with that this afternoon is beyond me, and getting involved with fans only does more damage in my eyes. Same for Gillespie (no idea what was said) but that was embarrassing from him this afternoon. 

[vikingTON]

23 minutes ago, irnbru said:

Don't think Grimshaw has a team yet. Not sure he's the answer to the lack of creativity but we'd definitely not be as easy to beat if we got him. 

As others have said, Moffat and Lyall are decent on the ball but no end product at all. The rest of the attacking players don't really look like scoring either so I don't really see where we can go from here apart from damage limitation and make sure we're at least 8th.

Moffat is not decent on the ball. His second touch today was a tackle that he failed to win half of the time. 

Whereas if someone could actually identify when Lyall was on the ball today, that would be a good starting point for discussion. 

18 minutes ago, standman said:

The manager needs to stop swearing at fans too , especially when what was shouted wasn’t totally unreasonable at that particular moment.

After Ballantyne played a terrible ball to Wilson who lost it ( through no fault of his own ) and they nearly scored, someone shouted “just f*****g launch it”

It didn’t warrant Dougie swearing up at him

If someone swears at the team then you can hardly clutch your pearls if someone from the team swears back at them. 

The team's response to criticism is ludicrous, but the language is really not the issue here.

[standman]

Nobody is clutching at pearls.

It’s not appropriate for the manager to be swearing at fans.

[TRVMP]

That's now seven games without a clean sheet, in addition to only seeming to score against Raith.

I thought Moffat looked the part at the start of the campaign but I'm frankly sick of the sight of him now. Dictionary definition of flatters to deceive.