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Irnbru your bitterness towards MCT knows no bounds. You had your day - move on. Just to add I am not a member of MCT. I responded to the shareholder AGM e-mail, was sent a link and had no problem joining the meeting. My two boys also got send the e-mail but were not able to participate. The issue with some stakeholders missing out however requires to be urgently addressed. Gordon Ritchie appears to be the point of contact and I would hound him to get it resolved. As for the AGM, I am sure when one of the volunteers has a moment they will provide a proper summary. In the meantime my take on it as follows: - The loss in 2021/22 was concerning/alarming but has to a great extent been addressed after MCT took over. The feeling was historically costs were not as closely monitored when people assumed there was always a sugar daddy down the line to bail the club out. - This years accounts, when they are published (after the year-end in May) will show a healthy profit largely due to the cup game with Celtic bringing in over £200k. Even without this 'windfall' the Board are confident the club would break even. - Recent sponsorship deals are crucial to the financial balancing act. If I picked it up correctly, the main sponsor Dalrada provided a 12 month package with the option for a further 5 years. Dalrada require the club to share in their ambition for GMFC to succeed and the Board are optimistic/positive Dalrada will take up the option to exercise the option to extend sponsorship at the end of this season. - The majority of the new sponsorship monies has all gone to the manager to improve the squad hence the additions, contract extensions and loanees in January. - All players contracts have been reviewed updating from a template someone found on the internet to a more bespoke arrangement reflecting the modern world of football. - The Board are aware with success other clubs could come in for the manager and players. The Board have tried their best to protect the Club but accept if the money is right they will not stand in the way of an individual looking to better themselves. It is a difficult balancing act protecting the 'assets' without handing out lengthy and onerous contracts to players who maybe do not ultimately fulfil their potential (my words not the Board). - For the first time I heard people explicitly stating the ambition is not just survival in the league but promotion. Realistically recent results have made a title win more difficult but we should be targeting a play-off place. - Average gates are slowly increasing. - The ongoing ticket and entry farce at Cappielow was fully acknowledged. No quick solution this season but the proposed arrangements in the future should hopefully resolve the issue. - Proposals in hand to improve the fan experience and tidy up Cappielow. The Board are looking at the options for the parcel of land they acquired to do something similar to what Ayr provide in their car park. I believe it is a mix of something for the fans on the ground floor and offices above. - Importantly the proposals to replaces the 'Articles' were passed with only one minor amendment requiring (not optional) the Board to hold an AGM. - The three Board members, in attendance, highlighted they would encourage any fan to come forward for election to the Board if they believe they have something to offer. The Club is now 'ours' and it is up to us to ensure it not just survives but moves forward. I am sure there are aspects of the AGM I have omitted but hopefully the above is an accurate recollection of the main points I recollect.

Although not linked to the football on the park I thought some fans might like to hear about a good news story linked to Morton. A number of years ago, my kids donated all their old Morton strips to a charity in Rwanda. The charity was set up by people we know and has a focus on the benefit of sport to kids as they grow up. Back then there was quite a bit of media coverage and a number of photos used in the promotional material included youngsters playing football in Rwanda bedecked in Morton kit. A fellow Morton supporter picked up on the story, loved Morton being seen as a force for good and decided to donate a sum of money to the charity. Sadly, our fellow fan passed away last year but in a last act of largesse remembered the charity in his will. It was a generous and unexpected donation which the charity confirmed will assist them greatly in trying to improve the lives of children through education and sport. The only reason I am sharing this story is to flag up how our club Morton, without realising it, are not just helping people in the local community.

They send out monthly updates. I just pulled up the last one from the 16th. Here's a brief summary: Over 1,000 active members for the first time. Clear indication that they want to keep growing. Only a few cancellations even though we're in tough financial times. Statement of gratitude for all members old and new. Brian Bonar and Dalrada noted the large membership when deciding to come on board. Review of the last Volunteer Day with lewis McGrattan. Soliciting more volunteers for the future. Setting up an event for potential volunteers to learn more. Club has sold over 1,000 season tickets. Call to action to get an ST through Fanbase. Call to action for Viaplay Cup tickets and the upcoming hospitality offer for the Edinburgh game. This is the MCT newsletter, remember: MCT owns the club but does not formally direct or manage it, rather they (or rather we) nominate candidates who may then join the board of Greenock Morton FC Ltd. So what have Morton FC themselves been up to? Let's look at their latest communication - bear in mind this is weekly, rather than monthly: Ticket info for the game at County Ticket and hospitality info for the Edinburgh game Interview with Jack Bearne Call to action to get Fanbase to buy tickets Now, admittedly this is a bit thin, but again, it's weekly. Notice that one of the four items was an interview with a new signing, something the knicker-wetters think we'll never see again since we're apparently broke and the manager's chucked it. Meanwhile on the official site there's hospitality packages on sale for the league openers, a new announcement on subsidized season tickets for Morton in the Community (including an anonymous donation of over 3 grand - very nice, whoever did that). I'm not saying this is as good as it's ever going to be or there aren't little marginal improvements to be made, but people who think the club needs to stop the current plan and momentum to address a supposed recruitment crisis are hugely overreacting. We're in better financial shape than we've been in many a year, no debt hanging over us, we have almost a full squad in late July with at least one more reinforcement to come... what am I missing here? What's the lack of planning? What's the lack of updates? From what I can see both MCT and Morton are doing a good job of fulfilling their respective remits, and telling people about it.

I do. There’s a precedent being set here- Queen’s Park have serious ambitions about playing Premiership football and taking advantage of the rewards that entails, as do Morton. Morton have a capacity of around 11,500, which would probably be reduced to around 9,000 for a televised game, whilst Queen’s Park’s ground (if it is ever completed) will stand to have a capacity of around 2,000. By setting the precedent of allowing them to use a neighbouring ground that doesn’t belong to them, a whole new set of revenue streams is opening up to Queen’s Park that isn’t available to clubs such as Morton, Ayr United or Raith Rovers. We’re past the stage of blaming COVID for any delays in the opening of Lesser Hampden now- it’s been a shit show from start to finish and it’s down to Queen’s Park to deal with it, not for the SFA/SPFL to reward them with the opportunity to bring in massive crowds when clubs like ourselves are a restricted to what we’ve got. When Queen’s Park last played Rangers in league fixtures at Hampden, the attendances were 30,117 and 11,492 for Third Division games. That would be something like eleven times what they could bring in if they used the capacity they’d built for. This would be rewarding the folly of the Queen’s Park board for failing to get their house in order, and indirectly punishing their peers. Fuck them- they’ve made their bed, they should lie in it.

Since 2012, Rangers have put the names of every single person who put their hand in their pocket to save their club on every kit.

This is starting to get on my tits. Some fucking random make a stupid statement and all of a sudden it's fact. Fuck off. If Imrie leaves to go to Hamilton then so be it but until such times as he, or the club confirm it, can we please treat it as the pish it is. I see on Twitter the Morton fan's page demanding clarification on the rumours. Get fucked. If we're now insisting that every piece of shit rumour is addressed by the club we're going to need a full time shite shoveller. No rumours ever emerged that Gus McPherson was going to take over at Tinpot FC or Arse Biscuit United because he was a complete fucking charlatan. Dougie has done a good job but we finished below Hamilton so why on earth would they pay their manager 2 years compensation plus whatever Morton were entitled to?

The board really have to take a lot of credit. I can’t help but admire how they quietly get on with things behind the scenes when rumours are flying around to the contrary. There were a lot of folk convinced Grimshaw was away whilst they kept their counsel, and if we’re all being brutally honest, we’d have been delighted with just the one contract extension, never mind three. After all the rumours about Ambrose being suspended and seeing how well the club handled that, I had a suspicion they would be working away to get things sorted without reacting to press and social media gossip. There will be times that we lose out on guys who are out of contract, but it won’t be for the lack of trying to get them tied down and doing it without spending money they don’t have. It was only two years ago we made no signings in January, then brought in Justin Johnson, Kaziah Sterling and Jamie Butler after the window closed as we were battling relegation. The turnaround in the club in that time is absolutely wild.

The other spin off is that it allows the fans to identify a bit more with the players. The only positive impression I had about any of them was from a couple of pals that are also mates with Lewis Strapp. Other than that my impression a couple of months ago came from Lithgow and Muirhead cupping their ears to us. It’s not terribly important to a miserable old bastard like myself, but I think it can only be a good thing if it’s allowing younger fans to identify with their personalities and to see them having a laugh. I’ve never actually seen him name checked on the progress in terms of social media interaction, so it’s about time the lad Gareth got a well deserved pat on the back for his hard work. Also really pleasing to see Open Goal turning up at Cappielow today- again, not my favourites, but they’ve got a bloody big following, so a bit of nationwide exposure can only be a good thing.

I've tidied the thread up, with the main perpetrator now restricted to only posting in General Nonsense to avoid every match thread descending into the same bin fire.

It's a bit more difficult to put the finger on than with Falkirk- there are specific incidents and behaviours I can point to with that horrible lot, but with Partick it's not quite as obvious, although they really are an odious club. I hate to use current custodians of a club when describing my feelings towards that club as in most instances they're merely passing through, be it for 10 months or 10 years, but Ian McCall really is the prick's prick. Their behaviour after their completely justified relegation in 2020 was despicable, and he continued his snide underhand digs at Murdo McLennan and the SPFL when he appeared on Off the Ball the other week. I couldn't possibly have statistics to hand, but Partick seem to have their viewpoint represented in the media (particularly BBC Scotland) more than any other club out with the big five clubs. Had we been shite enough to be in tenth place when the season was called, I can't imagine for a second we'd have received anything like the sympathy they got. The whining about "only" getting a £150,000 grant when Championship teams got half a million was another belter. If they weren't crap, they wouldn't have gone down, deal with it. And banning the SPFL from attending their poxy little title presentation on a weekday morning last summer so they could have their own wee party and play the victim right to the end was Rangerseque behaviour if ever I'd seen it. Cunts. Speaking of Rangers, this is a club who, at a time they marketed themselves as the "One Team In Glasgow" complained that the SPFL "only" gave them one pre-split home game each against Rangers and Celtic in 2016-17. If they're the "One Team In Glasgow", why would an extra fixture against one of those two clubs be so important to them? The reality is, that the whole reason for their existence is not that they are Partick Thistle, it's that they're not Rangers or Celtic. They don't really represent a community, they're merely there for weird eccentrics, and to oppose everything Rangers and Celtic stand for. What a shite reason for being. Which brings me nicely onto my next point. The one thing they're there to do, they do it dreadfully. "Hullo, Hullo; how do you do? We hate the boys in royal blue; We hate the boys in white and green; So fuck the pope and fuck the queen." We've been over this many times in the past on here, but I've made my opinion on this little ditty perfectly clear every time. Hypocrisy at it's finest, and passed off as humour by a fanbase that get's away with it as they brand themselves as "Glasgow's Great Alternative". Nah, they're fucking scum, just like the other two. I absolute despise their fanbase with a passion, and a few of the Twitter freaks in particular. That lad trying to compare them to the "Arbroath fairytale" last season stank of a toddler crying for the attention of a parent who's trying to deal with the newborn baby brother or sister. Grow up. That guy from Greenock that always seems to try to engage with Morton fans on Twitter is another tosser, and I can think of two others who I won't dignify by alluding to their nonsense. Remember partickthistlelad on here a few years ago that used to come on and try to be pals and preach respect at us? Do one. Stupid gimmicks like that with the strip, and that Kingsley character obviously work well for them and I suppose and you can't begrudge a club doing something that maximises their revenue, but it really is grating. There was a time about 10-12 years ago I was quite annoyed with a lot of Morton fans for taking up their hospitality off for a Friday night game between the clubs (we took a 0-5 doing that night), with Partick coining in a good few quid from our fans when they could've quite easily gone to Morton's hospitality on another day. A few folk weren't happy with my pointing that out, but I'd like to think most of our fans see through their minging lot nowadays, or at least the ones who I speak to. They get my gate money and that's it. No pies, not programmes, nothing. Bare minimum, and I'd urge everyone else to do the same. The only two clubs I apply that rule for are them and Falkirk. Firhill- First of all, it's an absolute shitehole, We know Cappielow, and particularly the stand, isn't great, and away fans often complain about it. But every club provides away fans with some form of seating. They get no worse than our home fans get in the stand, but with 8,000ish seats between the Jackie Husband and the stand behind the goal, deliberately choose to put all away fans in the shitiest part of the ground, in spite of the available alternatives. And let's talk about that stand- is it possible to even take a shite in there? What happens if there's a fire? How on Earth do you get onto the pitch? The place is bogging, and even worse than our main stand in my opinion. How it gets a safety certificate is beyond me. And that bloody pitch. They managed to use that as an excuse for not lasting the pace in the title race last season, having coined in money from Queen's Park, and having had their fingers burnt by letting it out to Glasgow Warriors a decade previous. And why did Morton and Hamilton Accies, for example, two teams who managed to HOUND them on that bog in the second half of last season, cope with that tattie field? Was it perhaps that Partick weren't actually very good, rather than the pitch taking them down to their opponents' level? There have of course been other thoroughly odious individuals associated with their rotten club- most recently Richard Foster got on my tits, but guys such as Derek Johnstone, Bertie Auld, Adam Strachan, Chic Charnley and Gerry Collins spring immediately to mind. Arseholes to a man. Did anyone find McCall's "dugmeat" comment funny last season? If Billy Brown or Gary Naismith said something like that, there's no way they'd get that sort of reaction from the media. It wasn't funny at all. I saw a Dundee United fan on P&B today describing them as try hards- nail firmly on the head. They're a bogging wee club, get them in the bin.

An utterly appalling afternoon in just about every way. I'm sick of being told how great Alan Power is when he's giving away soft goals like that first one and Brian Graham's at Firhill the other week. Same applies to Broadfoot- we've really got to look at lowering the average age of the squad in the summer- relying on guys who simply don't have any pace has been our Achilles heel all season. The downgrade that Waters is on Strapp has also been stark. He's like a 12 year old playing in an under 18's game. Three touches to control the ball and by that point the best pressing team in the division are all over him like a rash. I'll not even start on French on the other side. Ross's post above says more than any diatribe from me could. Quitongo was good- but we're too far down the road now to be giving him a new contract so he can sit on the treatment table all next season, that ship's sailed. Even the shite nature of our goal summed up how crap an afternoon it was. And last, but most certainly not least- absolutely disgusting to hear some racist fuckwit screaming not once, but twice, when Todorov was announced as man of the match over the tannoy that he was a "fucking refugee". I suppose I'm at fault like everyone else for not challenging him at the time, but having done that all the way back in 2006 when some wanker gave Marvin Andrews some of the same and having my ankles clipped walking out of grounds for a year or two afterwards I vowed I never would again, and don't blame anyone else for not wanting the hassle. But it can't go without comment. Hope the insufferable prick is proud of himself- or more to the point, I hope he's absolutely shiting himself if the club take a look at this forum and investigate. Dickhead.

That was absolutely immense. Dunfermline were abysmal and McPake is an appalling manager, but so much of how poor they were was down to us making them look bad. The pressing killed them with Wilson, Crawford and Oakley utterly dominating the game, but every single player in a Morton shirt was excellent today. The second half in particular was just ridiculously good, Blues had a spell where he turned into Iniesta and created a tremendous chance every single time he touched the ball. If that had been 7 or 8 it would have been a fair reflection of the game. We are firmly in the driving seat for the playoffs now. We will inevitably lose a game at some point and we'll see how the team respond when it happens, but the way they're playing there's really no reason to doubt their ability to respond to a setback. I will be stunned if I ever see a better Morton manager than Dougie Imrie. The job he's doing is fucking ridiculous.

Previous, gutless, loser managers - see Gus 'slaphead' McPherson, James Grady, Jonatan Johansson or Raymond 'Ray' McKinnon - would be looking for a lap of honour and an end of the ground named after them for achieving such a margin of result with pishy wee Morton in second tier Scottish football. In stark contrast, an ambitious and highly competent manager calls out performance levels, when he knows that the underlying confidence level in the squad is strong enough to respond effectively. While on the longest unbeaten streak at this level since the 1980s. The contrast between a real fucking manager with goals and standards to the parade of imposters we have had previously couldn't be more stark right now. Long may it continue. That said, the club needs to take note of the key attributes that took Imrie over the top in the selection process, for when the inevitable happens and Sir Douglas moves to a (potentially much) higher level. If he had the player CV of 'Scott Brown, football manager - 'ambitious' club' then he'd already be the Hibs or Aberdeen manager.

Where to begin with that utter horseshite? The most obvious fail: 1) The Celtic game. This was already accounted for in last season's budget - including the addition of new players at that time, and the club recording a profit for the second time this century. You don't get to count that revenue again this season - that's not how finance works. Ditto the Dalrada investment - only ongoing funding and sponsorship contribute to this season's budget. 2) You point to improvements on the revenue side without even once considering the other side of the coin: an inflationary environment where costs have risen by 10% across the board - and likely much higher for utilities. Simply retaining existing squad players increases costs for the club: they will quite rightly want an increase in their wages based on performance as well as their own bills to pay. The club's balance of income to outgoings is a constantly moving target - the costs do not magically stay the same from one season to the next, least of all right now. 3) 'Back the manager or lose him'. Utter nonsense - the reality is that the club will lose the manager regardless because he is a young, ambitious and clearly effective coach. Imrie is under contract for the foreseeable future though and signed up under conditions that were far more difficult than right now. While Imrie has every right to fight for the needs of the first team squad, we need to ensure that there will be a club years and decades after the current or any other manager has gone - that's the primary goal that GMFC has to ensure, every single year. Which leads us to the logical black hole in your foot-stomping tantrum: what is your causal explanation for the current budget stand-off? Do you believe that the GMFC board are squirrelling money away in illicit offshore accounts? Are they asset strippers looking to run the club into the ground? Why else are they withholding funds that you and others insist are definitely just sitting around waiting to be used on wunderkinds like 'Frankie Deane'?

Great, isn’t it? I couldn’t have imagined when walking out of the ground that glorious day in April 2019 just how things would have gone from bad to so much worse for them to the extent that they’re realistically looking at a fourth year in that division, with another monied club coming up from League Two and ready to storm past them towards next year’s title. Even when you consider how much of a shit show we’ve been for most of those intervening years, the Falkirk soap opera’s been fantastic viewing to soften the blow. There’s always someone worse off than yourself, and I for one couldn’t have cherry picked a bigger shower of bastards for that fate to befall. Get it up them.

Tedious dirge, but fair play to Dunning for not being bored into submission.

In case you missed it, Hearts are third in the Premiership, beat the champions last weekend, have in their possession the country's top goalscorer (whom we managed very well), and while we did indeed have a positive spell at the start of the second period, that was game management on their part, knowing they had reinforcements for the closing stages when we would - without any bench options - inevitably tire. Their goal was a counterattack and if you go all-out after that there's only going to be one ending: they throw people forward to catch the out-balls and you're screwed. It's just nasty to say Imrie doesn't trust the guys he's signed or whom he chooses to put on the bench. Again, this is the third-best team in the country. He's set our guys - who are a mix of good Championship players, former top flight players at the end of their careers, and youths - out with a plan, and throwing warm bodies at a plan for the sake of doing so is bad for all concerned. With no forwards on the bench, whom would you have put on with five minutes to go to hold the ball up against Sibbick and whoever the other one was at center-back? Was it: Jack Bearne, a winger Lewis McGrattan, a winger and midfielder Michael Garrity, a midfielder (and a diminutive one at that) or Sam Murdoch, a goalkeeper? Remember, everyone was saying Broadfoot was done since he was playing at LL level, and Imrie has - with some admitted road bumps along the way - got both him and Power playing well. Shankland was left in no doubt whom he was up against tonight and said as much in his post-match interview. Will Broadfoot get any recognition for that - again, Shankland is the best striker in the country right now, and will probably go to the Euros? Or will he just get slated for not scoring a last-minute equalizer? In a game where we'd been on the back foot for the majority, except early in the second half, Broadfoot did an admirable job keeping them to relatively few open chances. He deserves credit for this - and so does Imrie for signing and playing him! Long story short: if Imrie didn't trust Bearne he wouldn't be here, and if he didn't trust McGrattan and Garrity they wouldn't be getting minutes at all. Instead Bearne was signed and the latter two have played plenty, considering their ages. McGrattan has appeared in the vast majority of games this season, and Garrity (two years younger) is being carefully bedded in. They're getting an appropriate amount of football for the time in their careers and this is particularly true when you're up against, again, the third-best team in the country and a legendary Scottish goalkeeper who despite his age deserves to go to the Euros this summer. Leaving aside certain attention-seeking fuds (I do not count you as one of these) there really does seem to be this idea that Imrie's somehow throwing away wins by refusing to "trust" young players. It's absolutely idiotic. What Imrie knows, as a guy who came relatively late to the senior game, is that sometimes experience is what's needed. Just look at Queen's Park: they thought they could play a bunch of youngsters and have them play it out from the back, and that ended up with relegation form. Now they have a couple of old heads and they look fine, and the young players they have will be better for the experience. It's just not the case that you can go up against Hearts and throw the kids at them and come away with a better outcome than we had tonight, and people need to stop acting as though Imrie's sandbagging us by refusing to make Logan O'Boy captain. tl;dr: Scottish fans' fetish for putting the kids on is stupid. It's not borne out by the stats or simply by facing the right way at games. Imrie did nothing wrong. We held out own against a team that will send at the very least two players to the Euros in summer and will play in Europe next year, and we did it without our most vital player. There is absolutely zero scope to criticize Imrie for this game and everyone who does so should be hanged in real life.

It’s such a tiny thing but was really pleased to see this pop up on my phone when I got home from Kelty - we really have got our act together now. Working with Fanbase has been a great decision from the club and has made it much easier to get tickets home and away.

Imrie having a go at Lyon in the tele for his comments about leaving through the back door last week. Says although the information wasn't released, Lyon actually left the club in January and got a good payoff to pursue another career and went to Annan again because he could only play for us or them this season. Also says multiple managers gave him a chance and if he looks himself in the mirror and asks himself if he did enough to play for Greenock Morton then deep down he will know the answer. You come at the king then you better not miss

Never thought I'd be saying this but as soon as I clear some personal debts I'll be signing up. I had little faith in the fan ownership model but MCT are proving me wrong after an indifferent start. Well done to all involved.

Not too hard to spot the subtext of "Billy Dodds is a bellend" there.

Tough draw for Annan

Their capitulation as a club is nothing short of magnificent. Truly magnificent. Horrible, horrible bastards.

I’m surprised to see no mention of the decision not to appoint a chairman to the board, but to take turns in who has the deciding vote at boardroom level- what an absolute farce. I’ve made it clear in the last few months that I’m concerned about the lack of accountability in the running of the club, and this policy goes no way in easing those concerns. A display of leadership and a preparation to be held individually accountable when things go to shit would go some way to easing those concerns, but am I surprised by the musical chairs policy? Nope, not in the slightest. This strikes me as the board operating a protection racket to look after themselves. The younger guys have something nice for a CV and the old guard can tell their acquaintances up the golf club/bowling club/lodge that they’re the director of a football club to impress them, whilst not actually having to face up to the rank and file- unless of course the questions are collated and vetted by the SLO, and the tricky ones filed away in the nearest bin. It is of course no surprise that the person I believe to be the main organ grinder; Mr. Ritchie, was nowhere to be seen on the video- the cynic in me would suggest a Warren Hawke-style holiday or sickie from him when the club’s AGM comes around. We’re more likely to see Lord Lucan crossing into the box for Maddie McCann to head in the winner at Hampden in May than we are to get answers off of him. There’s been a lot of hilarity about the farcical events at Falkirk’s Q&A the other week, but let’s not kid ourselves, Morton’s current board simply would not put themselves in the position to be lambasted by their support the way the Falkirk lot did. Yes, they came out of it looking foolish, but at the moment, our own board are coming across as self-serving cowards who aren’t prepared to take the rough with the smooth. I’m not sure what’s worse.

To answer Piehutt’s point about my labelling of Gordon Ritchie as arrogant, I’m not going to kid on I’m not privy to the odd wee titbit of information from mates, but it’s up to them to share it with the wider public if they feel the need to. That said, I’ve already alluded on this thread to what I believe to be his quite appalling treatment of Christopher Dodds at Montrose in May, when he apparently threatened to withdraw all his media privileges as a result of Christopher’s criticisms of Captain Calamity Sean McGinty the previous week. On a number of levels, this is just wrong. There’s been a big story about Rangers charging the media £25,000 a season for access and how this is their way of controlling negative output. I fail to see a difference here, other than scale. Do we really want to see the Tele being forced into avoiding criticism for fear of being banned? I’m sorry, but unlike the Rangers support, who seem to see criticism as a personal slight, rather than necessary on occasion, I want to see my club taken to task when things go wrong. It also begs the question as to whether Roger Graham or Jonathan Mitchell, two experienced journalists who had built up a bit of currency in their roles would have been treated in such a way. If not, I’d suggest this behaviour is tantamount to the bullying of a young boy at the early stages of his career, and is quite frankly shameful. I didn’t like a lot of things that the Raes did in their twenty years at the helm, and made my opinions known at the time. But ultimately, it was their club and if I wasn’t happy, nobody was forcing me to support the club. A fan owned club though, should in my opinion hold itself to higher standards as they are responsible to every one of their members and supporters- the people whose money has put them in the position they occupy. I was a bit late to the party when joining MCT as I initially had my misgivings, but I certainly don’t recall being asked to vote for Gordon Ritchie. Others may have been, before I joined up, but in the spirit of democracy, I’d urge everyone to ensure he’s not given another spell in office at either MCT or Morton themselves.

Cadden scores hat-trick for Forest Green but best of all Bombscare McGintys' og fucks up Hopkins weekend.

0-5. One more goal from us and they'll be able to count them on one hand

I’ve just pulled five examples from this thread that contradict what you’re saying, and haven’t looked across any other social media platforms, where I’m pretty sure I’d find a few more. At which point are you going to accept that your interpretation of what happened yesterday appears fanciful at best? Your point about fans being realistic and turning up so close to kick off doesn’t cut it when we’re talking about fans turning up a full 15-20 minutes before the game starts. At £22 a skull, or as part of a £300-odd season ticket which about a third of that crowd committed to months ago, and with the third-lowest average crowds in the division, Morton aren’t in the position to be telling folk to take an extra half hour out of their leisure time to make things easier for the club, and they’re certainly not in the position to come onto social media after the match and blame the folk who so generously put their hands in their pockets to support them. I entered the ground at 2.30 yesterday- quite deliberately as I anticipated a shit show at the turnstiles and it still took me five minutes to get in, but with so many accounts from different folk differing from yours, the only conclusion that an objective observer can come to is that you’re talking shite. I don’t understand whether you see this as playing devil’s advocate, or are sticking up for your old pal Hawke (who doesn’t, and never did give a shiny shite about anything you had to say at any point in the past, never mind now), but given that this has happened every time we’ve had a relatively big game since 2017, there has to be a point that even you will concede that drastic action needs to be taken, here. For a club that is so dependant on folk turning up at the gates, this simply can’t go on, and your stance on this isn’t just unhelpful, it is in fact damaging to the club to take onboard such stances if they wish to find a resolution to this.

You really need to dry your eyes on this. Retro shirts are rarely, if ever, exact replicas of the originals. Mine haven’t arrived yet, but having seen Dean’s on Saturday, if you’re going to complain about the poor printed quality, the badge is the same quality as the one I had in the nineties. What do you want? Quality or accuracy? You can’t have both. Maybe you feel you’ve got neither but the quality is definitely consistent with the shirts of the time. Stamping your feet and demanding a refund over tiny little inaccuracies is pathetic.

It's still crazy to me that we're a couple of years into fan ownership, the club has proved itself sustainable (via not making an annual loss) for just the second or third time post-Hugh Scott, we had a good run in the league with a small squad, the club owners have got the fans back onside and have secured vital sponsorship at a time when a lot of firms are tightening their belts... and it's once again panic stations in July. edit: and they took a gamble on Imrie, which paid off due to Imrie's hard work and demands for excellence, and each repaid their faith in the other with a contract extension that keeps an excellent young coach with us for the forseeable future! But apparently We Need A Statement because Imrie, well-known for being such a shrinking violet who wouldn't harm a fly to get his point across, is itching to improve the squad.

They’re fucking insufferable anyway.

I'd like to petition the moderators to add this as an emoji:

I know MCT have spoken about their links with other fan organisations before and how the sharing of expertise can be beneficial, FOH being one of them. I don't doubt that building and maintaining relationships like these can be useful, especially so when MCT were first starting out and advice from organisations who'd already successfully handled a fan takeover would have been invaluable, but I hope that generally they're discerning about who they should build links with and remember that ultimately these organisations are also running competitors to the club. I note that Falkirk have also got a fan subscription scheme up and running, Falkirk Supporters' Society, planning to build up to a 26% stake, and have had over 200 fans sign up. I also noted that in an online discussion around increasing membership one of their appointed spokesmen stated that "fucking Morton" have managed to have over 850 members. I'd hope that, even aside from the obvious that it's Falkirk, that kind of condescension would ensure MCT wouldn't give such an organisation the steam off their pish if they were to come looking for a working relationship.

Will MCT be tolerating discussion of a club employee whose clownshoes decision-making will get us relegated the season anytime soon? I'd like full disclosure on how the decision to offer a two year deal was arrived at, so that I know who to blacklist for all future MCT elections to the board. And we should also turn our attention to those on the GMFC board, whose track record in decision-making that affects the first team has been utterly disastrous. If fan ownership is to mean anything, it means accountability for the decisions made by representatives.

I don't think this really addresses the problems most people have (which the update seems to partially attempt to do). MCT is the conduit to the club for its members. The people running things at the club need to be visible and accountable to these members as they wouldn't be there without them. It doesn't really matter if they are on both boards or not so I don't think there's any confusion as the update suggests. The fact there is a crossover actually makes it a bit worse for me though. Most members haven't heard a word from the people who've been on both boards (apart from a few snippets from Graham Barr) so there should 100% be more transparency here as there is (or was) a direct link from MCT member to these MCT board members through the MCT channels. The obvious example is that Gordon seems to be the main decision maker and is running things at the club (which is a privilege he only has because of the members) but has been totally anonymous and the impression most have (rightly or wrongly) is he doesn't take on any accountability. This is a direct result of a lack of transparency and might not actually be the case. Like it or not, the main thing for members is how the club is run and not how MCT itself is. The relationship between the two separate bodies and how fans get involved and updated needs to be the focus, not who's on the MCT board doing marketing, etc. Even if over time it is the case that the club is more at arms length from MCT, when the mood amongst the fans isn't good there's no excuse for MCT not being proactive in addressing concerns with the club and relaying these back to fans asap. There's clearly some unrest now with significant concerns being raised over a few months (using here and Twitter as a guage). An SLO led Q&A wouldn't have been needed as much if MCT were proactively updating on what's happening at the club and there was more transparency across the board. As it stands, the impression most people have is that the board members have free reign with no accountability and there's no acknowledgement that they're in that position because of the MCT membership. Edit to add - the updates are appreciated and the last paragraph might be a frustration the MCT board share so are essentially caught in the crossfire and taking the flak (I obviously wouldn't expect an answer on that from an individual!).

Ordered an Uber today and my driver was none other than Andy McLaren. Good to see him looking happy and healthy.

It's the fixed starting point because it's when Muirhead lost form and the whole discussion is about his contribution from the point he lost his form. Including his unquestionable positive contribution before that date would therefore be irrelevant, because no one is questioning that he was very good earlier in the season. Moving the start date forward would make no sense because it is still when his ongoing spell of poor form started. You know this. I would avoid criticising someone for causing a tedious back and forth through a stubborn refusal to admit they're wrong with the incorrect use of statistics if the various claims I'd made in a thread included: 21 year old Michael Garrity is about to turn 24, a fact you didn't address when your error was pointed out Muirhead never plays on the right when he'd played on the right three days prior to you making that claim, a fact you responded to by moving the goalposts to claim Muirhead only starting on the right once all season is irrelvant, an argument you then dropped and failed to address when the fact of his other starts on the right was pointed out at your request None of the fringe players have shown they can make as many contributions to goals as Muirhead, then when it was demonstrated that one of the fringe players competing for a place had in fact been involved in as many goals since Muirhead's form deteriorated despite less time on the park, you pivoted to: Claiming Muirhead's 10 starts in that time period prior to Friday's game was the same thing as Garrity's 3 starts and 7 sub appearances when Muirhead had more than double the amount of time on the park, and finally now with every actual footballing argument expended you're reduced to semantics about what constitutes recent form. People get things wrong all the time, which certainly includes me being too harsh on Muirhead recently enough. You can quietly accept that you were objectively factually incorrect on any or all of these points and stop digging at any time.

No, not the one where he sworded Celtic in their own midden, the other one where he made his triumphant return to Cappielow to help make Gus McFuckingPherson a distant memory. It's been some 2 years. Wild that he's the 8th longest serving manager in the SPFL at present. No bad for your first gig. Things haven't gone as smoothly this year but we seem to have turned the corner and can hopefully kick on. Here's to the next 2.

Blues plays whatever position he's asked to the best of his ability and rarely if ever let's the team down. Every squad needs a player like him that the manager knows he can rely on and will follow his tactical instructions. I do think there have been a couple of times over the years when he's been off his form that a week or two out the team would help him but I can always see why Imrie keeps him in the team. I'm a massive fan and become a bigger fan every year he's been at Morton.

I've tidied this thread up a bit. If you want to continue the erm...riveting...conversation this thread descended into, you can find it in General Nonsense.

The absolute thundercunt that is Brian Graham scores an own goal to put hearts 1 up against the student bastards lol

Thankfully, as well as announcing the signing for us, Hamilton have also been getting him up to speed by letting him train there for months and playing him in bounce games, to no reward of their own. The biggest example of a Nigerian taking advantage of Hamilton since the one that phoned them and emptied their bank account.

This is the thing though, talking about radical change and reform of MCT is reasonable and arguably an urgent necessity. Someone saying that MCT isn't working in its current form and they need to change is a different thing from saying that the entire concept of fan ownership is doomed to fail no matter what, as if there is absolutely nothing MCT or any organisation could possibly do to make things viable under any circumstances. Which is really the same thing as saying Morton can't be viable under any circumstances, and is nonsense. It is utterly tedious that every single piece of negative news that has come from the club since the takeover has been met immediately with "this is why fan ownership can't possibly work! Sell to the first Angelo Massone figure promising to make us the third force who comes along!" as if private ownership is a magic bullet which will make all our problems vanish and somehow not drive us back into the same debt spiral Golden Casket led us to. That's not what many people are doing on here, you included, but it happens among the wider support. After a statement like that today we absolutely should be having conversations about MCT's model, what can be changed, what the long overdue rewriting of the articles should entail, who within the organisation is doing what, how transparency and accountability of both the GMFC & MCT boards works in practice, and what model we want for the club as well as for MCT as an organisation. Having little or no confidence in MCT in that context is entirely reasonable, and if a serious alternative proposal about future sustainable ownership comes along then look at it, but anyone offering "just sell it as it is literally impossible for a Scottish Championship club to be fan owned and not die" as a contribution to that discussion shouldn't be taken seriously, because they're completely detached from reality.

Proof if needed why fan owned isn't fan run. If you want Morton to make money off their facilties then you can't have a caveat that it's only fine as long as it's not people you don't like. The club aren't going to run a survey before every booking. People are actively generating bad publicity for the club to pursue personal agendas.

I just want to buy the fucking hat!

Noticed that earlier, it's not even on the fixture page. Nor, for that matter, is the result of the original fixture from six days ago in Inverness. Is there one guy at all at the club, just one, who actually knows what Morton is? A professional football club, which plays football matches that people like to watch because they like football and the Morton football team that plays it?

The Easdales who are our major sponsors and the former chairman who allowed the transfer to fan ownership being guests at a game really shouldn't be major news. If the board start having to publically comment on nonsense like that then we might as well shut the club down. So many more pressing matters of concern than that.

I wouldn't say there haven't been concerns before now over various issues, but that Q&A has certainly left me more worried than I've ever been about the direction the club is going in. Essay incoming. I've said all along since MCT was founded that I don't see fan ownership as necessarily condemning us to becoming Airdrie, Clyde or worse. In fact I see it as the only way we could realistically avoid that fate as circling the drain under the Raes with a giant debt mountain shows that a sugar daddy was going to end that way anyway. However it's absolutely essential that for fan ownership to work, fan owned does not mean fan run. They've been running the club for months and are now officially confirmed as owners, but the whole operation still reeks of well meaning amateurism held up by volunteers rather than any kind of professional competence: pretty much every single answer there made that feeling worse. You have to acknowledge they've inherited a binfire of a football club with a legacy of literal decades of incompetence hanging over it: there's not much that can be fixed overnight and turning us into a slick operation with the professional reputation of a club like Motherwell is something that would take several years. Also, while there have been many issues where I've thought they've done the wrong thing, in most of those cases I could at least see the logic in their thinking. However, none of these caveats justify some of illogical stuff they're coming out with here. So to take one of the issues I disagreed on and was covered in the Q&A, I would never have kept Gus MacPherson on as manager for this season; he failed and failed miserably at the job he was brought in to do last season, which was to keep us out of the bottom two. However you can see the logic of keeping him on; experienced manager at a time of upheaval off the park etc. What there is no logic to justify and sets alarm bells off is trotting out the completely ridiculous justifications for a two year deal given in this video, which suggest that no one on the board has the slightest clue what they're doing. Paraphrasing, but 'we gave him two years because we need stability.' Handing someone a two year deal that (the subtext suggests) you can't afford to end isn't creating stability, it's creating absolutely needless instability. We should aspire to have a managerial team in place for several years whenever we make an appointment and hope the continuity as a result brings success - going through 17 managers in 21 years is clowncar stuff - but the fact is it's very possible that a manager's performance will make it necessary to replace them. You have to consider that possibility and plan for it. You can't just say "we want to keep a manager in place for a while, so we're going to keep this one in place to the end of his contract no matter how he performs in the job and therefore we don't need to consider any contingency for needing to remove him." That's utterly reckless nonsense which creates massive instability, and is especially naive when the manager we're talking about finished bottom of the league in his last job at this level 10 years ago and was factually the worst performer of the three managers we had last season, one of whom was a fitness coach. If you're saddled with a manager who has you hurtling towards relegation and you're powerless to remove him from his job, then you are in a far less stable position than if you have the power to make a change which could avert that relegation. We have much the same problem with the financial answer regarding the two year deal question. Paraphrasing again: 'We have to remember we don't have a big money backer to rely on.' Well yes, not being reliant on the whims of one individual was literally the whole point of the exercise of fan ownership. That's not an excuse for any inaction by the board; if you've failed to take this into account in your financial planning for the season then it can only be described as negligence and you clearly aren't fit to have any role in financial planning at a football club. Sacking a manager is an entirely foreseeable expense for literally every professional football club on the planet. If - and it remains just an if but the tone is hugely concerning - it has somehow become a financial impossibility to do so there are really three scenarios here. 1. It is because of the two year deal and you signed off on a two year deal anyway: your position is untenable and you must resign. 2. The two year deal isn't the deciding factor and it would be the same whatever the contract length, but regardless you have signed off on a budget which leaves absolutely no contingency for this entirely foreseeable expense: your position is untenable and you must resign. 3. The model of ownership which MCT have advocated, talked up to the support and got over 800 fans to sign up to somehow makes this a financial impossibility under any circumstance: then the position of literally everyone who was in a leadership role pre-takeover is untenable and they must resign. There are no reasons for fans to give anyone leeway there, if there's any truth in it is a massive indictment on every single person involved in decision making that leaves each and every one of them with no credibility. I'll go into less detail from here as the post is long enough already, but there are similar concerns with other answers. I felt strongly that they needed someone with football expertise involved from the start - it might have avoided the above clusterfuck they've created over the manager - but you could just about accept the logic of only looking to address this once the takeover was complete. Now, the line is basically, 'Yeah if someone comes up who'd be willing to give us their time for free at any time over the next few years we'll consider it, but it's not a priority.' Sorry, that's simply unacceptable to the point of negligence. The absolute catastrophe of a season we're having is enough evidence of how damaging this oversight is: learn from your mistakes, avoid making them again and make fixing this with a proper football decision making process the top priority. As an aside I do think it's worth pointing out that no one involved here is any less qualified than Douglas or Crawford Rae were to make such decisions, but again, the whole point of this exercise is supposed to be improving things, not continuing to blunder on with the shambolic amateurism of the last 20 years. Same problem again with the commercial answers. There's at least acknowledgement there that they need to do better, but why are we still only at the point of "we're looking at developing a strategy?" We're months past the point where a strategy should have begun to be implemented, they shouldn't just be thinking about what it is. It's also worth saying here that not only has nothing improved yet in this area, it's actually gotten worse. Even look at the website - again you could perhaps see the logic in saying there are better uses of people's time than typing up match previews and reports, but having stopped doing those there is absolutely fuck all on it other than 'please play the lottery and please buy up hospitality places'. How are these entirely worthwhile attempts to generate revenue actually going to be seen by anyone if there is never any football content on the website to get fans looking at it in the first place? It's been taking them weeks to even update the fixtures page with results. That's no reflection on the employees of the club who had no issues doing this in a timely fashion under previous regimes, but it's another thing that's extremely easy to fix and should be immediately.

At this point the fan backlash against MCT is wholly self-inflicted. As discussed after the Tele story with Crawford Rae, their communication with both their own members and the support continues to be reactive and only happens after people start asking questions of them, rather than appearing to have any kind of strategy to either keep people updated or more cynically to control the story. As we said then, it's entirely feasible that delays to the takeover are entirely outwith their control and can't be helped at their end. Considering that we're now less than two weeks from the league season starting and approaching two months overdue that would still set alarm bells ringing regardless, but what can be helped is communicating about it properly. They're not even attempting to do this. I saw on twitter that Graham Barr has a newborn baby (congratulations to him!) so understandably he's probably stepped away for at least a few days and no one could question not devoting much time to MCT as a result, but surely this is why you have a whole leadership team and a group of directors, so others can take over the communications side of things for however long he's away. At this point with such a massive delay and the impending start of the league season, we should be getting an absolute minimum of two updates a week on the takeover. If there are no new developments then fine, tell us there are no new developments. That might lead to negative comments and concern every time an update goes out, but it's better than having total silence until you're forced into saying something by a story in the Tele or so many fans complaining about being left in the dark, with resentment and cynicism building up in the vacuum of being told nothing. Tell us what you are doing aside from the ownership situation, because the continuous silence only creates an impression that absolutely nothing is going on or being done. I'm sure that's not the case and they are all working hard on various matters, but if none of us are told what's going on then thinking nothing is happening or that the silence is the product of arrogance or disinterest isn't only going to be widespread, it becomes the only rational conclusion with the information we have available. The silence until pressured to speak doesn't only apply to the takeover, answers about season tickets and direct debits only came after people kicking up a fuss on twitter as well. Perhaps these issues could have been addressed if they'd had someone ready to step into the General Manager role immediately from June 1st to manage things properly, but that level of planning just wasn't there. I said before that even if you want to give the benefit of doubt they're making it extremely difficult. I really do want to give them the benefit of the doubt; I don't want to naturally feel cynical about everything Morton's owners do having been forced into that attitude by 20 years of Golden Casket's mismanagement, I want this to be a great success, I've been a member and put my money in ever since the debt cancellation was announced because I do believe this simply has to succeed. However there's just nothing to cling to to give the benefit of the doubt. They're not running a primary school tuck shop where we can say they'll learn as they go and it doesn't matter if they spill the juice all over the floor at first because they'll get better at it, it's a professional football club and volunteers or not we need some sign of competence. There aren't any. It's simply not good enough and every single day of silence drains their credibility further in the weeks where MCT as an organisation can least afford to get things wrong. It's hard to imagine how this summer could possibly have been more shambolic or done more damage to confidence in their ability to run the club short of announcing that the takeover is cancelled. The first impression created this summer is critical to their success and getting more people on board, but there's nothing good to say about it.