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SpoonTon

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Everything posted by SpoonTon

  1. Wilson had been our best midfielder over our good run. We've lost our main point of connection in attack (Oakley) and in midfield (Wilson). Probably our best two players this season. And losing those players has had a knock on effect on the roles of Muirhead, Crawford, and Blues - taking them away some of their strengths. We've also got players playing who are not fully fit. I'm not surprised that we've struggled to adapt, but I'm confident that it'll turn around soon.
  2. It's a bit gutting that injuries come back to haunt us now. I think most of us would have had Oakley and Wilson as frontrunners for PotY at this point. They've been massive for us and so pivotal to the way we've been playing. It's a shame that our attacking signings this season haven't worked out, it's really left us struggling for a plan B without Oakley. I think it shows just how difficult a job Dougie has. The margin for error is so small.
  3. Yeah, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Dougie is tempted to go with a line-up like that. So much of our great form, and the win over Motherwell, has had its foundations in not giving the opposition time or space to play. Without Oakley leading the line, that makes everyone's else's job much more difficult. Muirhead is a good player but isn't that guy, and Quitongo got nothing out of balls played up to him on Tuesday (although I'm not sure how match fit he was after his illness). There isn't really an obvious alternative to Oakley up there to underpin the intensity at which we want to play. It would be a risk to change to the back 5 but I can understand the temptation. In any case, if Oakley can play I think the only real question is whether Broadfoot comes in for O'Connor. Otherwise there are a few decisions for Dougie to make.
  4. I like that the highlights put in the bit when Jai kicks the ball off Grimshaw to go behind for what should be a corner, only for the referee (who has a clear view) to give a goal kick. The standard of refereeing recently has been beyond awful. In the first half last night there was a lengthy stoppage for an injury, a long wait to restart after the goal, and plenty of other time wasting from Dundee Utd (with the referee pointing to his watch to indicate this 2 or 3 times). And then he only adds about a minute on at the end of the half. The Cowshed linesman was hopeless, it was as if he was refusing to watch the match - there was genuinely very, very little skill involved in what he did last night, any person with even the most rudimentary grasp of the rules could have done the job as well as he did.
  5. Tuesday night was Power's first 90 minutes since November. He had played nine 90 minutes up to that point of the season. Whether by choice or necessity, we're using Power in a much better way now and really seeing the benefits. He came in without a proper run of pre/early season games and was playing full matches. By his own admission he wasn't fully fit, and especially by the latter stages of matches he was struggling (you can still see that now when he has tried to overplay things later on in hand and gets caught on the ball). He's been giving us excellent performances for 60-70 minutes every game recently and had become an important part of our outstanding form.
  6. Putting aside what night we'd like the game as fans, from a football point of view it's good news for us.
  7. I had brought this up previously. In a number of different situations you can have fans trying to move between different areas (if there is a penalty shootout, for example, or even half time and the change of match direction can do it). And even without any other circumstances, you might have more people wanting to be in the Cowshed than the Sinclair Street end. If you are filling areas to capacity then any level of movement would be problematic - but that's never actually been a problem in the past. I see no reason why at a decently organised event you would have a problematic rush on any particular area of the ground and I see no reason why rain would be particularly problematic either. I don't know where this idea has come from or where the evidence behind it comes from either - it would be good to have that explained. I don't even think you'd need to sell different tickets for the Cowshed and Sinclair Street end. You'd just have to manage the areas and flow of people. Unless I'm missing something (which, if I am, I wish they'd explain), there's a non-existent problem that's been invented here.
  8. The smaller central gantry was a big improvement on what went there before, that was helpful last night. There's no ladies toilet or catering in the Sinclair Street end, that's probably the immediate issue there. But I don't see why you can't have stewards restricting the access between the Cowshed and Sinclair Street end (it has been done before). As much as fans might want to be dry on a terrible day, we've never had an issue with fans choosing to cram in too tight over getting wet. The fact of the matter is that getting a bit wet in the rain is actually far more pleasant than being too tightly squeezed under the Cowshed. I think the overall question surrounds finding the comfortable capacity to allow for a good balance. I mean, what happens on a beautifully sunny day when we're shooting towards the Sinclair Street end? Or if there happens to be a penalty shootout at that end. You could make plenty of cases for fans wanting to be in different parts of the ground at different times. We have to have plans in place to manage those situations. There also needs to be some trust in the fact that spectators know to choose the area which isn't full. If you go to a concert you know that you can't all rush towards the stage - there are plenty of events where you have to manage where people go and have some trust that they won't all go to the same place. As long as you don't actively funnel them all there, you'll be fine.
  9. Cammy Blues' knack of being exactly where we need him to be is outstanding. Imrie obviously knows he can trust him to do that. And the way he played that bouncing, spinning ball right into Oakley's path for the second goal shouldn't be underestimated either.
  10. So if we get through and get a home draw in the quarter final, we only get a big crowd if there's no rain in the forecast? Or if we're in a playoff final, our capacity could be severely restricted by a rainy day? Only a couple of years ago we had restricted movement between the Cowshed and Sinclair Street end. We could have a larger capacity with that type of restricted movement in place. There's really no trust in football fans, is there.
  11. That's wild. I wonder how many cameras do they have in those areas. And I assume they must be using the far end of the cowshed for the presenters again. The Sinclair Street must hold about 1500 usually. Doesn't seem like there's going to be much space in the cowshed at all. Can't imagine the BBC is going to get a very good reception tonight if they've denied us that much space. We had over 12,000* at Cappielow for a televised game 25 years ago. *or 14000 or 13500 or 15000. I can't find a reliable attendance figure for that game.
  12. What hasn't made sense to me for a while is why the the barriers in the Cowshed haven't been moved back to where they were before they put up the banner to separate fans when they had the away fans in the far end of the Cowshed for a while. There must be a capacity of over 1000 in the unused area of the Cowshed. Which, being covered, would be very handy to use. If that's the case then it seems likely that the total capacity of the Cowshed/Sinclair St. areas has been reduced by at least 2000 for tonight. That should, as you say, still leave around a 5000 capacity in total for the home support. So it seems strange that it would be limited at this point. And I do feel for anyone who was planning to buy a physical ticket tonight - not a great point to be putting out that message.
  13. I'd certainly like to think that this is the case, but managers also know that their stock can rise and fall very quickly in football and opportunities to make a move up can be hard to come by. I'd hope that Dougie would see an opportunity here in the next few months that would outweigh the risk of Ross County in their current state, and I'd also hope that Ross County will sets their sights elsewhere, but I could understand if Dougie was tempted by a move like that.
  14. Ross County are exactly the type of team that I'd be worried about losing Dougie to. Teams like Aberdeen, Hibs, and Hearts don't come looking for managers from clubs like ours. Dougie would need to establish Morton in the Premiership before they'd look at him. Clubs like Ross County would be his most likely option of a step up. There's maybe a chance of League Two in England or something like that, but I'm not sure how realistic that would be either.
  15. We've not actually had a really big game. My, pretty non scientific, calculations are that it could take up to 2 hours to fill the Cowshed/Sinclair Street (based partly on it being about 40 minutes to get it about a third full on Saturday). Efficiency could cut that by a bit, but by this point we should all know that a full house would be a disaster - I mean, they always were a bit awkward (thinking of Dundee utd and Peterhead games) but I'm not sure how it works be manageable at all now.
  16. I think you've misread a few things, to be honest. I wish you'd go back and re-read things without whatever assumptions you seem to have brought to it. On point 3, my repeated point is that people need to be shown those things. So I'm not sure why you're rewording what I already said. But, yes, once you understand how it works it's very easy (and that is precisely about learning how close is too close). Why there isn't more instruction on this, I have no idea. And the main reason for my original post was about the club blaming an issue after the game that they didn't even try to mitigate beforehand. On point 2, btw, I suspect plenty were late to the queue because of the traffic problems around the ground.
  17. They didn't do it in any way I noticed this week. I've already pointed out the fact that many, many fans arrived after I did at 2.54. And at no point did I say that the only problem was the time that fans turned up, or that the solution to the issue of only having 4 turnstiles was to forever saying turn up early. The point I was making, and I'll try to be clear because I really don't want to argue about something I agree with, was that the club can't complain about people showing up late of they didn't make it clear that they wanted them to turn up earlier. The queue lines, or lack of, have been another annoyance of mine for years. It's so badly organised. We're certainly in no way making the best of a bad situation. It's the least we could try to do. But, and I'll say this again, a proper solution is very obviously required.
  18. Well past that point or not, it would have helped. As would helping to ensure more people knew how to scan their ticket. The situation would have been far worse if the online ticketing situation hasn't been sorted in the summer. The club obviously need to continue to move on the right direction and it's fair to ask why progress has been slow, but much of it could have been mitigated by communicating a bit better and asking people to turn up earlier. You might not like where the onus is being placed, but it was the most readily available practical steps that could have been taken this week. It's not an answer to criticisms of the system, or a shield to say that they are right and the fans are wrong, but something pragmatic to help the situation at hand.
  19. I'm not really sure what you're saying here or how it's relevant to what you've quoted.
  20. The thing is, it's not really a daft angle and it's not difficult once you know how. Once you've done it once or twice you should know exactly where to hold it. As long as you don't hold it too close, it's very easy. My issue, and the issue with the last system too, is that it seems very easy to print and laminate a picture of where to hold it and stick it at the entries, and also post short videos of how to do it on social media before games. I have no clue why we don't do that. It's clear that not everyone will know how to do it without being shown, but it should be easy to find ways to show people.
  21. I joined the queue at 2.54 and got in just after 3.10. The fact that the queue was still all the way up to the ticket office and around when I got in shows that there were a lot of people that arrived with no more than 5 minutes to go before kickoff. Even with double the number of turnstiles, we wouldn't have cleared the queue till at least 10 past. I hadn't intended to arrive at the time I did, but I was held up before leaving and didn't expect to get in for kick off. I don't think we should deny that too many people turned up just before kickoff. But the club can't then complain afterwards when they didn't offer any clear and obvious advice on this in the lead up to the match. We all know there aren't enough turnstiles, and I have no idea how we'd handle an actual big crowd, but one thing we definitely can do is advise fans to turn up at an earlier time. We're in a rubbish situation which needs a solution or a contingency sooner rather than later, but right now the club needs to make a better job of planning for the situation we're in. That can start with advising fans to arrive earlier for games like this one.
  22. If he's only caught him as high as the achilles, then that's a yellow. Standing on someone's heel is painful but it's not a sending off offence.
  23. I don't think I'm being particularly generous to Oakley. It looks to me like he's got his eyes on the ball and he's stuck a foot out to try to get a toe on it. But there's the general issue - it all comes down to interpretation of intention, which only George himself knows the answer to. I think he's trying to get a toe on the ball, you think he's trying to make a foul to break up play, and perhaps the referee thinks he's trying just trying to stick one on him and has either been out of control and reckless or deliberately violent. There was a very similar foul in the Man City Crystal Palace game yesterday (before City's disallowed goal) which didn't even result in a yellow card. I interpreted that one in a similar way to Oakley's. Oakley has perhaps caught him on the heel, which I can understand would be a booking, but I think the problem for Oakley is that he's one of those players who the refs are always going to assume malicious intent - which I think is unfair.
  24. A big part of our success over the last week, and what we've done really well, is win possession back quickly by nipping in and getting a toe onto the ball when we can. As far as I can see, that's exactly what Oakley had tried to do but has been clumsy and missed (as forwards often do). I don't really see any need to talk of it as unnecessary.
  25. Either of those might be a yellow card offence, but where, specifically, is the red card offence there? Still just looks like a clumsy forwards challenge to me.
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