DumfriesTon

Was told tonight we've tried to sign Aidan Smith, striker/winger from Annan. Believe he got POTM for April in League 1 and double figures in goals. Apparently has rejected us (and Hamilton) as we can't cover the wages (based on his part time Annan wage and full time job).

Wow. Extremely surprised we've offered Broadfoot and Gillespie. I'd be extremely confident we'd be able to upgrade on those two. Fairly content with the others that have been offered and those that have been released.

If it happens, I won't be too down about it. I don't feel it's a signing that will improve Partick in all honesty. Would prefer we keep him but not the end of the world.

Robbie Crawford away to Partick according to Scott Burns.

And I actually think the persistence of giving Crawford and Muirhead 90 minutes every week has probably hampered them. Crawford's look knackered for months. I'm sure the likes of McGrattan and Bearne could play that role behind Oakley or out wide to replace Muirhead from time to time. My point is that they (Crawford & Muirhead) shouldn't be undroppable and the replacements for them are not as bad as you make out.

Perhaps I mean in comparison to other players. Crawford and Muirhead haven't really done much since January but are the first names on the team sheet and undroppable. Likes of Bearne, as one example, has a MOTM against QP, off game v Airdrie (like everybody else) yet is the only attacking player dropped for Ayr and doesn't even come on off the bench, yet Muirhead gets 90 minutes and Crawford moreorless the same.

The problem with Crawford, Blues and Muirhead is Imrie's loyalty to them. No matter how ineffective they are on the pitch, they're never dropped and rarely subbed. A spot on the bench for them would probably do them good, especially Crawford who does some amount of running. Macdonald - Release. Injured most of the season and was at fault for many goals at the start. Cheaper backup be better. French - wouldn't offer if released from Dundee. Can do better. Don't think he's as bad as many make out but we can do better. Albeit I reckon he'd be better at centre half. 2 games this year at CB if I remember and 2 clean sheets (I think). O'Connor - Keep. Solid defender at this level. Broadfoot - Release. Too slow and not got another year at this level imo. Good career but time to go. Waters - Release. He is solid enough but we can upgrade. Strapp ideally. Strapp - Keep. Best LB in the league. Although we should be less reliant on his throw ins whenever we get into the opposition half. Blues - Release. 5 years now and probably time for an upgrade. Runs about a lot but lacks quality. Thanks for the effort but we can do better imo. Gillespie - Release. Think next season will be one too many. Better than expected and probably our best penalty taker that I can remember but we can upgrade. Power - Keep. Probably. As a squad player but I think has probably done enough to merit another year. McGrattan - Release. Shame it hasn't worked out this season as there's absolutely a player there but I think his confidence is low and we haven't seen it this year. He'll probably want to go anyway and get regular minutes. I reckon he'd be a strong League 1 player. Garrity - Keep. I reckon a decent option and has contributed well since January. Muirhead - Keep. 15+ goals and assists speaks for itself. He shouldn't be unsubbable though and does need genuine competition for when he's not playing. But be silly to get rid with those amount of goals in the Championship. Crawford - Keep. Similar to the above. Competition needed for his place. But when he's at it, he's great. Just needs more consistency. Quitongo - Genuinely don't know but probably Release. Don't think we can afford to have him play 15 games a season. Seems to have lost the pace / confidence with the amount of injuries. Oakley - Keep. Obvious reasons.

Good listen. Glad but also sad to hear they both regret leaving us. Tidser especially - one of my favourite ever players and an absolute joy to watch. Wonder if he could still do a job as he is the type of player we are missing in the midfield. Probably too old now though.

Don't mind the plain yellow one. Others are a bit shit.

Good content. I've slated the social media side of things so credit where credit's due, output since the turn of the year has been tremendous.

Just seen the Twitter conversation - how embarrassing. Why is it taking the results of a fan survey for them to decide if we should be doing more to raise our commercial income? Baffling.

Was going to the say the same thing. I've spoken on this thread a few times about social media output - that post match video is an embarrassment. Now been nearly two months since Graham Barr said social media output has to improve on the MCT Q&A. Still no improvements. I'm sure I've heard on here before that Jonathan Mitchell had to buy equipment out of his own pocket - I'm assuming the club are hanging the current social media guy out to dry as well. What do these guys do? Simple stuff that these keeps on being neglected.

I'd had a look at when the Q&A with the MCT board was and had a wee rewatch- it was the 28th October so 5/6 weeks roughly. One of the questions was: What are the club doing to attempt to increase attendances? Graham Barr admits the club weren't doing enough. So what have we done since then to try and get more people through the gates? Fuck all is the answer. Content to promote games isn't a hard thing to do. It doesn't need months of preparation to get promotional campaigns for games started. Having a good product on the pitch was something he mentioned about increasing attendances. What have we done since? We've persisted with a dinosaur manager who hasn't got a clue, driving fans away with each game, yet he's still in a job. He mentions reaching out to the Inverclyde community to get them into games. Have we done anything? I don't live in the area (and I'm happy to be proved wrong here) but I'd guarantee you the club is doing nothing/very little to do that. He says the social media output needs to improve. What has changed? Nothing. As I said 6 weeks ago or so it doesn't take massive planning to get better social media content/timely news. At the moment we just get a 2/3 minute interview from Gus (to be fair, that's probably 2/3 minutes too long) from an interviewer who you can barely hear because of the background noise. It's tedious. He said they want 'new and engaging' content with insight into players/behind the scenes etc so where is it? Maybe I'm being harsh and it's not a dig at Graham Barr specifically - he's the commercial guy on the board so probably bears the brunt of my rant. But that's now 6 weeks since that update, never-mind the fact MCT have been in the door full time for 6 months or so. Then you get that ridiculous 2 minute interview with Chris Ross to which we're expected to be doing cartwheels because we've got Carol singers in next week. There just seems to be zero progress on anything at the moment - commercial side specifically. MCT are taking us for a ride in which we're expected to be happy with the absolute bare minimum.

Perhaps I'm being cynical but that was utterly underwhelming and a bit depressing. Seems a case of 'we'll do that later'. I could be wrong but haven't the club been carrying out the day-to-day running of the club since June? It's now nearing November and they're still pedalling the line of 'We absolutely need to improve this'. Take the question around social media output for example: that's not something that you need months and months of preparation to implement. I remember when Jonathan Mitchell came in and straightaway the interviews were much more in-depth compared to the measly 1 minute interviews we're getting now, the other content he produced was pretty instant when he arrived. I remember game advertising like when we played Dundee United in the cup and there were promos all around social media/the town of 'Gunning for Glory'. There's nothing like that now. Haven't we got a dedicated social media guy now? What's he actually doing? We've had ample time to get the marketing/social media side of things in place and improved so I'm not buying this 'we're looking into it' rhetoric. And that's before getting on to the depressing guff about McPherson. We wanted stability but give him a 2 year deal. Stability, if that's what they wanted, could happen with a 1 year deal. Then Nick Robinson's answer basically suggesting we don't have the money to sack McPherson. Makes the 2 year deal even more absurd. I have not been impressed in the slightest with MCT so far.