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It's obviously best for us to have St Mirren down, but Partick are also Satan incarnate who tried to murder the rest of Scottish football, faced no consequences then had the gall to play the victim card about it. They're a hateful club who deserve nothing but misery. While St Mirren being relegated would be extremely welcome, having the two of them in the final definitely does feel more like a lose/lose than a win/win scenario when you could have had St Mirren relegated without anything going well for Partick, and had the added bonus of fewer trips to Fife.

OOH! DUBIETY! OOOOOH!

This reads a bit like cutting your nose off to spite your face; either a player who once didn't cut it in the Championship has improved in their time playing at a lower level and is now considered good enough for another crack at it or they aren't. If they are good enough (which remains to be seen with Lyon) then not bothering with a worthwhile signing just because they played for you already and left 4 years ago would be an odd approach to recruitment. In the last 3 years alone that would have ruled us out of signing Ali Crawford and Lewis Strapp for second spells, who were both very worthwhile signings with the former being massively improved on his return after being piss poor in his first spell.

Disappointed but not surprised.

I know you're joking but in case anyone from the club is reading this, I would demand a refund of my season ticket and cancel my MCT subscription if this happened.

Referee deciding that if you commit enough fouls in a game - on both sides - that cards no longer apply. With Naysmith leaving, the time is ripe to get a token of payback by wrenching 12 points off Stenny on their inevitable way back down. Better day out too, so happy with that.

I'm happy for Mr Duncan to continue to bleat to the tele as much as he likes, so long as his involvement with the club doesn't extend beyond paying in at the gate.

I’m fine with this and don’t see how it represents any risk. If he is going to be here anyway as a coach the we might as well have him registered as a player too. Definitely wouldn’t expect him to be a regular starter but good experienced guy to have around the squad and he showed several times this season that he is still capable of making a valuable contribution on the park. He still managed as many goal contributions this season as Moffat & Garrity despite having significantly less game time

Clocked this recent interview in the Greenock Telegraph by Mr yoyo himself. On and off more boards than Monopoly night at prison. I'm convinced he's on constant factory reset mode. Was he not on the MCT board at the time the club was hamstrung by delays, because Toby was only elected in August as far as i recall. As we've come to expect, we're in the phase of backseat criticism in Stuart's wheel of being on and off various boards. Join > take huff > leave > criticise from the back seat > rejoin board > rinse repeat. Toby of course likely wont want to comment here, and im not bidding for him, but it comes across as a very strange attack and certainly very specific from a guy with more faces than a dodgy pound-shop Rubik’s Cube who's achieved hee haw meaningful at Morton. He could of course propose a vote of no confidence, but that would require actions over words.

Dunfermline Neil Lennon's Athletic carry the hope of a nation on their broad shoulders.

Yeah we're all familiar with youth players being overrated just for being youth players and I've been guilty of it myself, but there's maybe the opposite effect with Lyon that we're still judging him on the player he was at 21 when he's now 26. If we were linked with a player who'd never played for Morton before who was widely agreed to be the best player at the club finishing 3rd in League One, who'd scored 9 league goals/13 in all competitions from midfield, was considered to be one of the best players in the division by fans of other League One clubs as well and had already turned down a new contract with his club because everyone knows he's going to have offers from the Championship, I don't think anyone would be looking at that as an unreasonable signing. Far from an obvious marquee signing that anyone's going to be doing cartwheels about and demanding we build the team around, but still a logical gamble for a club with one of the smaller Championship budgets to take on a player who's shown they're probably too good for the league below and might have it in them to make the step up again. If that player had been punted by Partick, Ayr or Raith four years earlier, with concerns about attitude expressed by some managers at those clubs, we probably wouldn't care and would think there's a reasonable chance they've improved both as a player and in their mentality in that time. If they had an increased end product over their seasons in League One and had already made their way back into full-time football having gone part-time initially that would be an easier argument to make. Plenty of players have made the step down to League One after flopping and come back to the Championship as better players, even without resorting to ridiculous examples that were almost entirely down to attitude like Shankland or Nisbet. Dylan Easton never had as prolific a season in League One as Lyon has just had, for example. Of course, there's every chance that the only reason this rumour has started in the first place is the youth player connection and he's not on Murray's radar at all, but I don't think Lyon is in the same category as players who've done nothing to suggest they've improved since leaving Morton like King, McGrattan or McGregor.

Partick's strategy of selling off assets/stakes in the club to pay the wages of Watt, Chalmers etc. is reaching the end of its road. Another promotion failure only weakens our direct opposition (not a rival). St Mirren going down this season will most likely be like St Johnstone last season. I have zero interest in some extra money and four derbies, en route to their title clinching campaign. St Mirren can go down next season in 12th, after appointing another couple of donkey managers.

It's not evidence that he's good enough for the Championship. It clearly is evidence that he's improved as a player over the last 4 years, because he was better this season than in his previous three in League One.

I’m aware it’s now a cliche to bring up Shankland, and he was a loan player rather than someone we released. But he failed at us, went to league one and came back out of it a far better player. It happens, especially when players are still relatively young. Josh McPake just dominated the division and is on his way to Hearts, after a stint at Stirling Albion when he was 23. I see no reason why we should rule out players performing well in that league, if it’s someone we would otherwise look at, purely because they played for us before.

When Luke Donnelly returned to the Championship he continued to be shit, which confirmed that League One is level. Maybe that will be the case with Lyon too, it's up for debate and we'll find out next season whether that's as a Morton player or another Championship club, but I also don't think it's obviously a terrible signing in the same way that signing Darren Hynes just because he's an ex-youth player would be. I competely agree with the gist of your point 1 and especially point 2, but don't agree that either of those points being fundamentally correct necessarily make Reece Lyon a bad signing in 2026. There is no evidence that Lewis McGregor or Alex King are better players than they were when we released them, and even suggesting signing either of them could only be put down to being desperate for a Morton academy product to make it at Morton. There is evidence that Reece Lyon or to take another example Josh Cooper are better players now than when they were punted. They're in different categories, one of which could only be put down to the subjective bias you point out which absolutely exists among the kind of weirdos who think it's still the 90s so we can sell teenagers for half a million every summer if we just try really hard, and so berate managers and potential investors about that fantasy at public meetings. The other can be put down to the well established phenomenon of some players who've previously not been good enough to play in the Championship becoming better footballers over a period of several years.

Nah, that was the 2nd time.

I don't see the issue with this signing. The guy is already in a coaching role at the club, we could probably offer basically nothing extra out of the playing budget in order to have him in the squad. As long as Murray sees him as an additional squad player and not someone who's ever going to be a regular starter it's fine.

It's a no from me on O'Halloran. Same with Longridge. I think both are poor options who I'd be surprised to see playing for any other full time side in our division. Not a good start for me, especially on what will be a tighter budget.

If Lyon has dropped down a level, screwed the nut a bit and become a more effective and better player then I wouldn't mind him signing. We're not going to have loads of better options of goalscoring midfielders at that level I reckon.

Not for me. Not good enough & injury prone.

Lyon, King, McGrattan and Strapp were all allowed to leave by Imrie. I think he questioned attitude and effort for the first 3 and Strapp just didn't see eye to eye with him. Did Imrie replace them with better players? I'm not sure about strapp but the other three, yes. In saying that Lyon has went away and seems to have grown as a player, getting very positive reviews at QotS. I wouldn't be against him and Strapp coming back.

Stenhousemuir fans would say that Gregor Buchanan has had an excellent season for them, en route to conceding a very small number of goals, finishing a country mile ahead of Queen of the South in the league campaign, and knocking them out of the play-offs too. Oh and they horsed us in the cup as well. So how many people would be happy if we re-signed that braying carthorse, off the back of recommendations by seaside league diddy fandom? The key difference between that scenario and our Prince in the Borders is guid local roots for the latter, rather than any objectively greater merit as a player. Which is not a sound basis for transfer policy.

I think your point would be valid if the players you mentioned went on to bigger and better things, but so far at least, they haven't Imrie is for sure stubborn and headstrong, but generally I think he has been proved right in releasing the players he did. His recruitment, on the other hand, was a lot more hit-and-miss.

The playing field isn't even at all, if just over a quarter of the teams in the national league system get an annual windfall while the rest (including those promoted to compete in the top flight) do not. This is a UEFA more than a Scottish football failing - but solidarity payments like these should be pooled by both the SPFL and the SFA to distribute to their entire memberships on a sliding scale.

Stenny promoted. Gregor Buchanan lucky (with a number of others tbf) to finish the game. Didn’t realise Kalvin Orsi was at Alloa.

Yeah, he never looked close to it but I remember Shankland looking like a really good striker in a game against us for St Mirren - scored a cracking goal down towards the away end at their ground. But you can't play to your potential if the fitness and motivation isn't there, and that applies to many players. Some manage to recapture it, many don't. If a player had a problem with his attitude, application or fitness and has improved that, then it's very possible for him to move back up a level or two.

The order in which the signings take place & are announced doesn’t neccesarily correlate to how high a priority they are. MOH is already in the building & wants to play for another season, Murray thinks he has a place in the squad, so I would imagine it was a very quick & easy conversation.

Stenny 3-0 up away to Alloa in leg 1 of the playoff final. Little dubiety as to who’ll be coming up now.

Assumption. Same assumption that was made last summer. That the pay bump for adding 'player' to his existing coaching gig at the club costs less than signing A.N.Other.

Stuart’s letter comes across as being very defensive despite Russell not mentioning or trying to put any blame on him personally. The view from the shed article is clearly written from a supporters point of view and not in any way claiming to be representing the views of MCT. Stuart mentions how Russell “offers little explanation” around the Millen departure only to immediately do the same himself by basically saying the board had to let him go “because reasons”. I don’t think anyone could deny that timing of the Dalrada deal negatively impacted our transfer business, Millens departure was poorly handled, and that Davies appointment brought zero benefits on or off the park, so questioning it seems like a strange hill to die on - especially when offering no meaningful information to the contrary.

I'm not really a fan. You can see the skill, ability, and bit of pace that's still there but I'm not at all sure what that adds up to anymore. He's not good enough to start matches. He's had some decent moments off the bench, but overall we're too weak with him in the team. We only won one game with him starting, which certainly isn't the be all and end all, but I'm not sure what position he's actually going to be solid enough in and I'm not sure that signing players for the bench is the best place to start. Symptomatic of Murray's neat football going forward while being defensively weak.

I enjoyed his overhead kick into the Sinclair Street goal against Queens Park. I will accept this if, and only if, he Peter Duffields a relegated St Mirren next season.

Makes sense O'Halloran is a good professional and has actually been more effective than the other sand dancers we have. Does some coaching and keeps himself in good nick so happy enough with that.

Maybe he's only taking buttons out of the playing budget besides the coaching role, but it's hard to maintain much hope of Murray being ruthless and having the clearout needed when the 35 year old fourth choice winger is hanging about. He was far better than expected when we feared getting another Niall McGinn, but ultimately he's not good enough to start games in the Championship.

Among others, Gillespie, Quitongo, Muirhead and Blues had blotted copy books at this level (or lower) and were still part of our best season in the last 13 years. There are players who've had poor Championship seasons in the past without being Ally Roy, Steven Boyd or Gregor Buchanan levels of obvious dud signings.

I hope not. The Estrella money is not the same thing as the Dalrada money.

For me Strapp was a massive part of that unbeaten run in 23/24 after we signed him, despite that only happening as we were without a left back and he was without a club. I agree he has limits and no one else seems that bothered about signing him but I always liked watching him for us. I'd happily see him back. I also always liked Lyon (and Alexander King!) and thought they'd both go on to do much better then they have, but accept that my memories of both are a bit rose tinted towards the games they played well in. But even though it's league one, if the fans that watch you all season rate you then you must be doing something right?

Hearing malicious rumours that he signed a PCA with Alloa.

Bring Mcginty home