TRVMP

Ritchie laying into Muirhead a few minutes ago on commentary. In fairness they've also said McKay has been very quiet.

That all sounds perfectly reasonable. It also sounds completely, 100% incompatible with a two-year deal and aims of managerial stability.

I'll repeat what I said earlier in the thread - I'm less interested in who gets it and more interested in what the club actually wants. What are their aims and what are their metrics and what is their vision for the role? Their public words are, the aim is survival in the Championship. We're still very much in the fight for that. So why did they punt Gus? Was it over style of play? Was it because he lost the dressing room? Right now I have no idea what the remit of the manager actually is, because prior to Saturday at 6pm there was no indication from the club that they were unhappy with the results or where we were in the table. So what's the actual plan, what do they actually want the manager to achieve and how?

At least he seems fairly enthusiastic.

The closest analogy I can think of was ages ago now - when Craig Levein went to Raith Rovers. He'd just left Leicester and was still a big name, but he basically came in as a favor to the club since he supported them. He was there for two months or so, during which time he had an appalling record (one win in seven.) But it didn't do him any harm as they were seen as in dire straits at the time. (I'm sure we beat them at Starks while Levein was there?) That was a long time ago, 2006. I can't think of any similar situation in Scotland since then. And at that point it was made clear that this wasn't even an end-of-the-season thing. It was basically an until-a-job-opens-up thing, and that's exactly what happened. For McInnes the risk far outweighs the reward. I'm sure he remembers his time at Morton fondly and I'm sure he's a very decent guy but ultimately he's a professional manager and I think he'd steer well clear. It costs us nothing to make an approach, of course (except maybe a bit of credibility?) Same with Warnock. No harm really in reaching out but unless we know what we're asking him for it's a bit of a waste of time.

And more to the specific point: if the focus - not the requirement, not even the aim - is survival in the Championship, then sacking Gus was extremely harsh on him because too wee, too poor, too stupid Morton are currently in the lofty heights of 8th place. These guys need to figure out what they want and sharpish.

I didn't say this at the time but when Chris Ross was talking about all the success stories so far he made a point of noting that hospitality at Cappielow was hard because Cappielow is small. It's such a minor thing but it says so, so much. Why even bring that up? Was that a surprise to him, or anyone? Did he think when he took the job he was getting the capacity of the Armadillo, or perhaps a Tardis? Does he think nobody else in the world has been inconvenienced by space during this, The Age Of COVID? Is there any reason - any reason at all - to even mention that in what was supposed to be a positive message except as yet more of that same attitude that everything's shite and everything's a Sisyphean struggle because Morton are just hopeless and nobody knows the troubles I've seen? They need to get all of this so far to fuck, I'm absolutely sick of hearing it. If they're fighting such a losing battle maybe they're the fucking losers.

Poor wee Morton having to sign players. Every club at this level does the same thing. We have a 25-man squad. Excluding those players who haven't yet appeared (Bysouth, Stafford etc.) it breaks down this way: 20 total players, of which, 5 loanees who, almost by definition, only signed this season 3 new signings (Hamilton, Ugwu, Lithgow) 12 who were here last season. A majority, then. And several of those have been here for ages. That's nowhere near unusual. Why is it taking its toll on us and not the opposition? Hamilton, who are struggling mightily, have even more settled players than us. Why aren't they winning more than they are? What I will say is that Inverness and to a slightly lesser extent Arbroath have pretty settled squads. Perhaps this does contribute to their success. But the alternative can be just as dangerous. Falkirk gave a three-year deal to Brad McKay only to discover he's basically a competition winner. Stability and a settled squad are great ideas on paper but, as with everything else, it comes down to execution. There are people at the club who for years have resented having to sign players each summer. That mindset needs to go - we operate at this level of the game where one-year deals are a regular thing. (And how many of those one-year deals have been amazing players who we've lost for nothing and have gone on to bigger and better things? Remarkably few, in fact.) We need that flexibility, and we need people who view it as an inevitable thing - and perhaps even an opportunity - rather than yet another thing to feel hard-done-by about.

By the way. I still rate Darren Young, despite the awful season he just had with East Fife.

Goodnight sweet prince.

I don't altogether disagree. If the poorest PT clubs sit at the bottom of the wage table and the richest two FT clubs at the top, there's going to be a mid-table pack that overlaps a bit. In that milieu in which we find ourselves, a hybrid model can offer the best of both worlds if done correctly. It can, however, also end up a complete mess in which wishful thinking dominates. This is a significant risk when you look at the current make-up of the club's Board, for whom playing local youths is an end in itself rather than something to augment the first team. (This isn't necessarily a bad idea but it's something very easy to get wrong, as we're currently doing.) Beyond the aforementioned wishful thinking about having a team with a large number of youth products in it I'm still completely at a loss as to what the board's vision for the first team is. I'm increasingly concerned that they don't have one.

I'm not anti-Rice on an interim basis but I'm more pro-the board figuring out what the hell they're doing than focusing on who gets the job.

There's a few Falkirk fans on P&B who seem convinced that Rice is going there, not Cappielow.

Since our highlights aren't up I watched those ones. Falkirk had two good efforts at 2-0 down, right at the start of the second half. But other than that it was all QP. They really could have had more. As soon as that third goal went in the floodgates opened. Their defence is even worse than ours, Falkirk. Genuinely inexplicable how they're full-timers. Inexplicably Paul Sheerin is still the manager of Falkirk. edit: Watched the second half highlights again and this is the kind of game I was talking about yesterday where there's two ways of looking at it. Was this a 6-0 game? No, not really. Falkirk should have had at least two. But they didn't. It's not because the fine margins went *against* them but because they didn't take advantage of their chances and they didn't take care at the back. Queens on the other hand *exploited* those margins. That's the difference between a winning side and a losing side, and the difference between a decent GD and a terrible one.

It's a possibility we need to be open to but it's also not a silver bullet. There's a reason why FT teams tend to congregate where they do in the leagues and the outliers are just that - outliers. (Arbroath on the top end, Falkirk hilariously on the bottom end.)