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All the plaudits to young Sam Murdoch in goal today. Young kid has a had great season on loan at Port Juniors, probably a contender for their PotY. I know 4th division junior level and Championship level football is worlds apart but clean sheet and an assist and by all accounts an excellent save in the dying embers of the game. Well done young man!

FTFY Can't say I have a shred of sympathy for anyone caught up in this tale. Terrible, wee-est of shames all round.

Don’t know where you heard the story about the capacity being reduced in the away end of the stand, but I don’t doubt you’re right, tbh. Can’t remember the last time I saw anyone occupy the section directly beside hospitality, it was even left empty for the Hearts game last season. Your point about reducing their allocation to 500 fans- I’d go down a different route. Morton took corrective action after the game at Firhill in February, after pressure from the police, Partick, that wee boy’s maw and the media. Now, after welcoming these people to our home, we’ve been treated with contempt by them, and at considerable cost to us as a club. Partick aren’t now in the position of saying “we’ve got a big support, you should be grateful we’re lining your pockets”. Given the outlay on security on Saturday, Morton probably do better out of a game against Ayr or Airdrie. And what return was there on that outlay? There was clearly unlawful behaviour from the Partick fans, but I’ve heard nothing about any arrests. Should Morton be paying for the police’s services without seeing something tangible? If you restrict the amount of tickets, I don’t see the problem being resolved. In all likelihood, their neds will gobble these up and leave those who behaved without tickets, which is unfair on the well behaved Partick fans. I’m certainly not in the camp of the “Cowshed Youth” in demanding we stick up for our own, rather than punishing them. But I do think we’re in the position that we can ask questions of other parties. We’ve tried to do our bit to prevent or minimise trouble at our end, what is everyone else doing? Did the police make any arrests? If not, why not? Will Partick be taking action against any of their fans? If not, why not? If Morton don’t get satisfactory answers, having taken action against our own neds, it’s about time we did likewise against Partick’s. The guy in the photo above is clearly identifiable given his prominent social media presence. Both he and his brother are seen in the video breaking the ground regulations. He was previously ejected from Cappielow for having a half bottle of Buckie and denied entry on his next visit, both in their relegation year. If Morton have lost patience with their own fans, I see no reason they should extend any further invitations to him to come back to Cappielow, and they should let Partick pass on the good news to him. As for their young team, let them turn up at Cappielow and deny entry to people with black hoodies and/or balaclavas at the away end. If they don’t like it then tough. They can email the club and ask for refunds, and get them if their tickets are unscanned. I wouldn’t let anyone into a football ground with a balaclava on anyway, there’s no reason to wear one if you have nothing to hide. I get that I’m looking at it through blue and white tinted glasses, but since the February game, it strikes me that Morton have been portrayed as the bad guys despite trying to do the right thing (and credit where it’s due to Dale for that). It’s time the narrative is changed and we start taking action and making demands of others.

I think on balance if you were judging Adeloye solely on his performances in a Morton top so far rather than prior reputation you'd lean against giving him a contract, but even with how frustrating he's been to watch at times he still has 3 goals in 6 starts and 2 sub appearances. He signed at the end of February having not had a club since the summer and spent a further month out injured after coming in, it's reasonable to look at that record and wonder what goal return he could deliver with a pre-season behind him. Even in games where he has generally been poor and the crowd have been audibly frustrated with Keay not being on in his place much earlier like the Livingston game, both freekicks Crawford had where he scored one and forced a great save from the other came from Adeloye drawing the foul. He's clearly got something and with the struggle to find a competent centre forward we had last summer, I'd rather stick with him than end up waiting until late September for a credible option there again.

Think some are getting a bit carried away here, the gulf between U18s and the Championship is massive. While reaching the play-offs is almost certainly beyond us now, it's still imperative we still finish as high up in the table as possible for the prize money. Keep playing the strongest team possible for the rest of the season.

And guides them to lose out on the Highland League title to Brora on the last day of the season by goal difference. You love to see it.

Think it should be taken in context, and he did mention the fact he was speaking in the heat of the moment. It did however come across that he feels he’s hitting his head against a brick wall and no matter how hard he tries, the limitations he’s working with make it impossible to progress Morton any further than he has. His interview on Friday will probably be markedly different, but at present, there are two significantly bigger Championship clubs who will likely be looking to appoint a new manager in the summer in the shape of Partick and Dunfermline, and one who have been willing to throw money around in Queen's Park. I think it’s clear he’s not getting a job higher up the food chain, probably because Morton are an unfashionable club, and because he’ll struggle to shake of the reputation about his style of play, so bigger or richer Championship clubs are his best option. I spotted that hideous Transfers Scotland tweet that misquoted him to give the impression he’ll be shipping out his failing players- he said nothing of the sort. I would say the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, particularly with Queen’s Park, who I see significantly downsizing, but Partick and Dunfermline will tempt him, assuming both remain in the Championship. Looking at the new ownership and spending policy at Dunfermline, it looks like a complete bin fire, that will lead to administration, while Partick also keep losing money. But in the short to medium term, both are probably more attractive to a manager than us just plodding along breaking even. Moderate success could get him a Ross County, St. Johnstone, Dundee or Kilmarnock. Until Partick make their appointment and Lennon’s future is confirmed, I’d be gravely concerned. He’s entering the last year of his contract, and if Morton are struggling to cash in on players, now might just be the time to pocket a few quid on a relatively successful manager. Sadly, I don’t expect to see him in the dugout in July.

Would like to highlight that today's game demonstrated yet again that the current stewarding company are not fit for purpose, given that all their ludicrously inflated resources present today were used to, err, turn a blind eye to an away fanbase breaching their designated sections yet again and hoping for the polis to give them hauners. Get shot of them ASAP.

Let's have some perspective here. Being safe with 6 games to go is a positive. Mullen seems to be turning into a target for some. Once again I'm not having it. He's been fantastic since he joined us and deserves to be cut some slack. Adeloye while not his most effective today has some decent touches and is still our best option in that role. He's also just returned from injury and getting up to speed. Yes again we are close to the playoffs and don't push on but overall we've had a good season with the players and Dougie doing a really good job. Yes we could look back at the ifs and buts as every team can but let's dare to be realistic!

File this under pish . I was the one that took the boys into Cappielow for a quick photo before we headed to Blackpool Cup and the only person we saw was DPM who I gave a thumbs up for letting us in quickly to grab a photo. Glover was on the bus. Suspect one of his mates at the wind up.

Making unfounded accusations and/or speculation (claiming to know) about the ethnicity of those accused is unhinged. Accusations (again, claimed knowledge) of police and/or political complicity are equally unhinged. Brass Eye was supposed to be satire when aired 30 years ago - now it would be viewed as a documentary.

Nothing at all but that's not what happened, the comment section had pages and pages of bigoted and conspiratorial declarations, yet the police had stated that there was no crime committed. In the tele yesterday there was a report on a white Greenockian who had carried out a campaign of sexual assaults on two girls under the age of thirteen. The comment section for this story had only five comments, and one of them was pointing out the same hypocrisy that I am.

If it comes from your definitely legit 'within the family' then why did you state that it was a rumour in the first place?

Lynn, some of these people have come from League Two.

Said as if this is a disgrace with a crap budget and having been gunning it out with Airdrie over the first third of the campaign. A 5th/6th finish is clear overperformance, bring on five meaningless games and give Keay the run out instead. It is the cups where we should have done better, although missing out on a Challenge Cup final this weekend was mostly down to getting a crap draw. Boyes' header in the second half was essentially unchallenged at point blank range - he tries to glance it hut doesn't get enough on it, when just planting the fucking thing would be a 90% chance of scoring. After that, we ran out of ideas while also becoming more exposed to the break. Mullen tried an equally stupid punch in the first half and got away with it (while wrongly whinging to the linesman) - that was the warning which he failed to heed.

Partick*

That was a doing and a half for the little people. You love to see it.

No sympathy whatsoever. Keeping up to scratch with stadium requirements and employment tax is the absolute bare minimum and I'd expect Morton to be hammered if it were us in this position. They also topped up an already bloated squad with an expensive January window to keep out of a relegation fight, paid for with even more debt. Get them down.

I'm not sure where you're getting the half million extra cash - at the very least - that would make a "serious promotion push" in any way a realistic benchmark. The reason why we have too many 'projects' is because our budget is simply not high enough to both keep hold of and sign proven performers at the same time. We can reduce the squad by a few next season but it stull won't deliver guaranteed quality signings and will leave us exposed to the same issues we faced last season with players missing. This season's policy has not been too convincing in my view - though it has at least got the job done after a woeful start - but there's no clearly better alternative being overlooked.

Aye, get him signed.

It's total nonsense to say that we have a habit of downing tools at this time of the season. Under Imrie so far: 21/22 - in December we'd been a relegation bound rabble who were clear favourites for 10th. Even though we inevitably tailed off from the title winning form of Imrie's new manager bounce, two wins, three draws and four defeats in the final quarter didn't remotely constitute chucking it, it was a solid set of ground out results that got us to safety in 7th with games to spare when everyone would have bitten your hand off for scraping into 8th on goal difference months earlier. 22/23 - we won four and drew one of our last five while only losing once in the whole final quarter, it was an excellent run-in that took us to our highest points total in this division in a decade. 23/24 - we went off a cliff in the whole final third of season because all of Oakley, Wilson, Strapp and Mullen were injured at various points of it and we were a much poorer team if you took any one of them out, never mind two or three at once. That run was disappointing but nothing to do with mentality and everything to do with our lack of depth. It was a regression to the form of the first third of the season when we had the same issues with personnel, the good December to February when all four of them were fit was the blip rather than the other way round. This season we're somewhat less prone to a total collapse in the event of players missing, see the fact we found a way to string a run of three wins together (all in March, when we've supposedly downed tools) despite missing Wilson again. We're clearly a poorer team without him when you look at how performances have dipped since he's been injured, but we managed to string some results together all the same and it's a good thing we've found a way to win without him despite some dire performances, like somehow finding a way to win at Hamilton. Going three games without a win after that isn't because the players have given up. Falkirk are miles ahead of us and Imrie hasn't found a way to deal with them, Partick basically did to us what we'd done to Hamilton and Ayr in staying in the game through a period where we should have buried them and then taking advantage when the momentum swung their way. There was no difference in mentality from those wins to the Partick game, we just weren't clinical and were punished for it. Far from chucking the Raith game, we came back from 2-0 down to lead 3-2; if anyone was giving up that comeback wouldn't have happened. The three of them are also considerably better teams than the Queen's Park and Hamilton rabbles we saw off. The decline in form here didn't start with the Raith game, it started with the draw v Airdrie at home in February - no prizes for guessing who missed that game and hasn't played since. Even taking it back pre-Imrie with 20/21, that was a team that had already gone 10 without a win up to the end of February. There was no collapse from March to May, they were just a shite team who had an even worse manager appointed in March. The last time there was actually any sort of pattern to this happening which couldn't be put down to an obvious non-mental issue was when it happened under Duffy two seasons running, and that deservedly got him sacked.

I can't speak to any specific recent incidents, but the tele's article comments are consistently full of conspiracy theories and xenophobia, and have been for some time. Rumours about Wilson aside, Imrie is being quoted saying that some of the players are "making his job easier for the summer". Sounds like the clearout might be starting already.

I think Imrie's done a fantastic job with us, and finishing 6th is solid (especially considering the players we lost last summer). Overall there's no complaints, and as a club we're certainly limited in many ways, but I think he has to look at the games against Falkirk and reflect that he's got something to learn there. No other team has been as abject against them as we have - we've given them more than a third of their goal difference. If he wants to progress as a manager then he has to figure out what's gone wrong there.

They knew that they would be housed in the stand or the wide open WDE on a typical pishing it down day in Greenock. Absolutely zero sympathy for these idiots, entitled beyond belief. They will be requesting oat milk lattes and vegan sausage rolls for the pie stall on their next visit.

I work in the construction industry. I’d ballpark somewhere between £175k and £200k materials and labour cost as an absolute minimum to put even the most basic roof structure above the WDE - way more if the footings for the frontal vertical support steels needed deep piling (you can’t just bolt a few hundred tons to an old concrete WDE step). Using aluminium lattice or box beams would be much lighter than steels, but they cost 5x the price. Then - factor in stuff like architects and structural engineers fees, planning applications and the associated hoops, along with stuff like Trakway covering for the half of the pitch so the excavators and other machines don’t rip it up. Oh - and you’ll need somewhere to park a 100-ton Liebherr crane for a couple of weeks to lift everything into place. By the time that’s all included, you’re in £300-350k territory. So anything but a 'simple solution' for a club running on a shoestring.

My take on this is that Dougie's now in fitba management only because he interviewed well enough to convince our board to take a punt on a complete managerial unknown with zero track record. That decision has been vindicated time after time, with him somehow guiding us to 'almost-there' for three seasons running, operating with what's obviously a very restricted budget. But his interview demeanour after the Partick defeat told me that what Toby said in his post above is likely to be quite correct. He's young, he's ambitious, and he's doing everything he possibly can to carve out a top-flight career. All of the classes and trips to Geneva aren't being done just for shits and giggles. My youngest daughter's an accountant, who was apprenticed by a tiny local firm for whom she worked for eight years. But she was ambitious too - so when an opportunity came up with the globally-massive Deloitte, she turned her back on those who'd launched her career as a kid - and she took it. In the space of just three years, she's already in a management role and she's earning twenty times what she was. That's how careers work. Dougie's been fantastic for Morton, but he'll move onto bigger and better things. Personally speaking - he'll go with my profound respect, admiration, and gratitude at what he did for us.

If I was earning ten quid an hour the last thing I'd be doing is being proactive if there was a chance I got stabbed. We're paying the police a lot for high-profile games and I'm glad they arrested and charged the guy with the knife. And the pyro one, too, in fairness.

Former goalkeeper, Jim Herriot, has passed away aged 85yrs. Jim only played a handful of games for us in the mid 1970's He inspired the author of the All Creatures Great and Small books (later to become a TV series) to name the main Vet character after him.

Ah, I didn't realise we could just discount half the Airdrie, Queen's Park, Hamilton and Dunfermline squads on the grounds that all of them have made several pish signings. Do we discount Niall McGinn as having been a first team player for us just because he was absolute mince? Did Jack Bearne and Ally Roy in previous seasons and Lamar Reynolds in this one not count because they found themselves largely bombed out for not being good enough? Regardless of how poor they turned out to be or how little they played they were all signed as first team players, as with several signings for all the squads above. It's true that in Airdrie's case they were forced to scramble for more bodies due to an injury crisis, but it doesn't change the fact they signed them. Whether you discount or include youth players across the board for consistency - if you wouldn't count Keay and Murdoch for us you wouldn't count any similar Queen's Park or Airdrie youngsters - all of these clubs still have more first team players than us. This is an entirely simple and irrefutable matter of fact. As for the rest of it, as you said yourself the issue we had this season was signing too many sand-dancers. I'm not expecting defensive cover the standard of Wilson and Ballantyne (the Grimshaw remark above was flippant), I'm just expecting to have some defensive cover. Rather than needing to put Blues, Gillespie or King at right back whenever Ballantyne's missing, if we could have had an actual back up full back the defence and midfield might not have suffered so much in the event of injuries. We could have taken the wages spent on McGinn and one of Reynolds/Davies, still had no shortage of bodies on the wing and given ourselves better depth in defence and midfield with one signing for those two wages. That wouldn't have limited us any more in the quality we could add to the starting XI, is an eminently sensible thing to do when you know injuries are inevitable, and may have been enough to see us not having such major downturns in form when they happened. This season has been less drastic for it than last, but ultimately two seasons running you can directly trace poor runs of form to a spell without a key player. Having less severe swings of form whenever someone gets injured rather than going straight from promotion challenging form to relegation form could well be the difference between a mid-40s and low to mid-50s points total needed to make a credible playoff challenge that we just couldn't manage this season: we couldn't manage because of poor runs of form prior to signing a credible striker, then without Mullen & Ballantyne, then without Wilson. The approach of putting more of the budget into the starting XI would be the recipe for injuries to relegate us.

This portrays as if you did him in last time for spreading a rumour haha. Or did you?

While I could easily see Imrie at a club like big-spending Partick I think anyone who's in and around football would know not to go blabbing about a manager's future job at the fucking stadium of his current employers. What kind of idiot would loudly broadcast his future job like that without checking that it was public knowledge first? This doesn't pass the sniff test for me.

Hope it's not a bad injury to Ballantyne

Shug on. The sweetie wife saying he was refusing to play must feel like a right fanny now. Maybe start a rumour about Mullen next.

Can we take a moment to recognise the stellar contribution of the customs officer who sussed JET? Without their work, we'd probably be relegated.

Having any sort of links with that mob is cause for a ban.

On reflection it's probably better in the grand scheme of things for denizens of Greenock to be peddling relatively harmless pish like this; as opposed to the absolutely unhinged, xenophobic/ peado conspiracies that are currently flooding social media - see any Greenock Telegraph story with comments turned on. I'd give us a 50-50 chance of seeing serious violent unrest (like last summer in England) in the near future, sparked by this worryingly large subsection of the local population. 'Is toon's getting wurse etc.

What a load of nonsense I work with his mate he loves playing for Morton.

Just back from that shitshow. Falkirk are a very good side and have had our number this season but fuck me Morton can we at least do the basics? Track men, defend as a unit, communicate, take responsibility. How Shaw stayed on the pitch for so long is beyond me and Adeloye playing a full 90 is a travesty. Not entirely sure id give pass marks to many players today except for Lyall, Ballantyne and Crawford who worked hard and tried to make things happen.

I should course add that for balance, Morton should be conducting an investigation into their own failings re: stewarding. Given the limitations Cappielow has in terms of facilities, there’s little that could have been done to accommodate the away fans without creating a flashpoint in the Cowshed, but it would be wrong to assume the stewards acted correctly, especially given that we’ve all got complaints about their conduct towards ourselves. Although I’d argue that it shouldn’t take the Partick fans complaining about their treatment before our security partner is held to account- there have been problems on that front for years now.

The away fans in the Cowshed ended the last time when Ayr fans were trying to climb over the banner to try to get to the Morton fans on the other side. There used to be about 800 capacity for away fans in the main stand, which has been reduced because we have to now have to have a section between home and away fans. Even on that side, they have to have more segregation than before. In terms of segregating fans, I'm not really sure how the club could go about putting away fans in the Cowshed again. The reality is that Partick falls ended up in this position because a section of their support didn't behave themselves the last time they were here. And they didn't behave themselves again. I wouldn't blame the club if they only offered their fans the section of the main stand the next time they come.

The funny bit to all this is that by half time, the worst of the weather had subsided. It wasn't raining when they decided to storm the shed so their excuse for shelter is bollocks. They were seated in the stand to begin with then decided to move to WDE so they can GIRFUT

Big fan of those. I just got a shrewd 200k in my FM save for some regen I fobbed off on Oxford United, they pawned him off on Bristol City. That'll pay most of Cody Gakpo's wages, for this week.

If indeed there is interest in our young striker we need to maximise the money we could get for him There needs to be a 25% sell on clause for the club that is going to get the young man for basically a song I would imagine.

The same place(s) where all our other rumours come from - the febrile imaginations of the resident sweetie wives/'in the know' merchants even loosely affiliated to the club. I'm sure that the 'club doesn't actually want promotion because they can't afford it' classic was being brought out in the aftermath of Saturday's result too.

Well 3 of the apprentices started in that Scotland schoolboys game at Cappielow, so start from there surely? Not sure what positions Niall Graham or Fraser Rodger play, but at least lets see them on the bench to get them accustomed to the first team environment. Been a bit of a bugbear of mine that. Even if you're not intending on playing them, get them used to what match-day prep looks like and have them on the bench, in particular when we've had 3 or 4 players on the bench at times this season.

1) We chose however to replace them with a string of 'skill players' (doubtful), despite already knowing from January the similar profiles of Davies and Reynolds who were arriving. We also chose to integrate Lyall immediately rather than having a more 'pragmatic' midfield combination (e.g. Gillespie, Wilson and Blues) to balance any problems in the attacking area. As the last couple of months have shown, we don't need a target man to be effective - we do however need pressing from the front which was missing and/or ineffective for too long in the campaign. 2) And let's not forget that the total waste of space pre-season - in our supposed 150th anniversary year - was touted as a 'minerals' based strategy to ensure that the new squad would be up to the task. Instead we got bodied by a League Two team straight away and were out of one cup before the Glasgow Fair was over - limiting our financial scope to strengthen the team. It has been a transition season for sure and we got there with a surprising degree of comfort due to the inherent strengths of our coaching. But the first team and club level management made their own errors of judgment that explain why a play-off run was never seriously in the cards.

Was always going to be a big ask so I’m not too bothered. From where this team was at the beginning of November and to be safe with 6 games to go is an achievement in itself.

Not easy to predict our lineups lately, no one guessed the team on Tuesday night, but my best guess would be Blues in for Garrity as the only change. Personally I'd like Gillespie in for Shaw as well and push Crawford forward, but don't see it.