TRVMP

Yep, we're being sliced open down the flanks now and lacking the energy to counter it. Like our goal in the first half, theirs has been coming in the second. It's far from over yet but this is now worrying.

Dave Timmins is history's greatest monster.

That's as solid a first half as you'll see at our level. They barely had a sniff and it's not because we were sitting back. They look shellshocked, frankly. Power's been very good in bursts but he's starting to tire already. But the good news is we have Gillespie on the bench so there's options.

Blues and Oakley were both raging there that they didn't get the pass when we forced another corner. You love to see it. Everyone absolutely frothing to twist the knife into the luvvies.

That's been coming. Great work from Crawford to win the corner in the first place and he follows up by being in the right place at the right time to bundle it in. Just need a red card for Graham or "Bannigan" then a bunch of lightning strikes in the WDE to cap off a perfect afternoon.

Angle's not great on the stream to judge these things but it did look offside to me, our disallowed goal. Our high press is rattling them but we'd want a goal sooner rather than later, can't see us keeping this pace up for 90 minutes. Watching Power skin Graham then shrug off the latter's shirt pull was pleasing.

What a guy.

Hamilton's comeback was a proper feelgood story, glad he made it good again. Unlike some (Dunning) I was confident there was a player in there and unlike some others (also Dunning) I'm delighted to have been proven right, as some (such as Dunning) were not.

That's great news.

I was giving the benefit of the doubt and thought it might be true because I thought it would be much earlier. Dutch football wasn't professional until the 50s and well into the 60s the regional clubs would have had part-timers. But a club with a European record giving an open-ended "trial" to a 37-year-old (they never asked his age?) at a time when they were back in the top flight? Aye, alright. You wouldn't catch Arbroath doing that. The saving grace to the story might be the amateur teams. A lot of pro Dutch clubs to this day preserve an amateur team or even two in the Saturday or Sunday non-leagues. From looking at it, ADO were actually split in two in the 70s through to the mid-90s, with FC Den Haag being the top flight mainstays. Maybe ADO themselves dropped into amateur football at that time, I don't know. It'd be pretty funny if he was being tried out for an amateur team and thought he was actually with FC Den Haag. Actually I'm now 50% confident this is what happened, an amateur team with a coach called "Robbie" invited him to training, and he took that to mean the city's professional club, staffed with a World Cup star whose job it is to mentor the 37-year-old rough diamonds, were offering him an open-ended trial after which they'd consider giving a professional contract.

I assume this is EBITDA? They've made a 2.8m loss just off regular club business, that being mitigated by a one-off of "disposal of player registrations" (a posh way of saying transfer fees)? That's utterly incredible. Premiership TV rights, annually, wouldn't plug that gap. And remember, even 12th in the Premiership gets prize money of well over 1m. Honestly, given that the prize money for 1st in our division is about half of that of 12th in the league above, teams can be forgiven for cutting their cloth in the top flight. Or they can just do what "thuh Urubs" do and spend millions on absolute dross and gamble on going back up. Also an option!

They need to get their website updated - not least the feedback loop thing - but they've said the aim of the MCT board is to aim with some aspects of running the club and also to provide the "bench" for MCT members who take on GMFC board membership. The day-to-day running of Morton lies and always should lie with the GMFC board, and MCT's role as owner is therefore to provide investment, volunteering, and to fill our allotted Club board member slots as and when needed and desired. I don't think it's a huge problem that MCT isn't actively tramping about Cappielow daily, but I do think they need to make this aspect - that MCT are the custodians, their job is serious, the need for finances are ongoing, the need for club stewardship and scrutiny is constant, and the need for people to graduate from MCT member to MCT board to the GMFC board is inevitable - clearer now that ownership is fully cemented. It seems like a fairly major deal, to me at least, perhaps naively, that the GMFC Board primarily comprises MCT members. That more than anything is what MCT are "doing" - providing the elected members to run the club's business.

Where are we on this?

He's a total fanny. I've had him on ignore for weeks but he posts about 90 times per thread, usually about himself and not about Morton, and I see it quoted. Calling it "bullying" is laughable and has inspired me to click to show his posts and red dot them. Also, the Dutch story is so weirdly specific that I think it's probably true, and there's a higher chance that the charlatan in the story is some jaked-up youth team coach at ADO pretending to be World Cup star Rob Rensenbrink.

MCT are doing a good job and this thread has reminded me to up my contribution since last year was a prosperous one. Therefore it has done some good. It was a bastard getting set up in the first place, being overseas, and there are some PayPal fees being taken from it. Given the tiny number of us abroad I don't expect them to go to any expense for us, but I do wonder if, at times when there's a good feeling around the club, they couldn't get a few extra pennies by making it easier for us. Locals as well. I could log into PayPal and find my recurring payment, then cancel it, then restart it with a slightly higher amount, and hope that it's still linked with my membership... or I could just sit here and watch a documentary about trains in India*, which I am doing, and not bother. It's not a completely unreasonable question to ask. Even if there are only 50 of us "impulse" buyers a year, that's a significant percentage of a customer base of 1,000 and a potential customer base - being extremely generous - of 3,000. *Darjeeling.

Riker? I hardly even know her!

Oakley's third is all the more impressive because that Broons-reading bastard defender had his shirt halfway off him.

Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to see Oakley have a Grimshaw-style move in the summer. When he's on his game he's so clearly a cut above.

There's every chance Edinburgh will drop back out in the next few years, the way things are going. Someone else will take their place

No, it's a decent heuristic that he was a good youth player but it's not a reliable way of determining Championship quality. Ruben Sammut was a superb youth player but couldn't make the grade at even high non-league level in England. We had that one guy from Spurs who made the bench for a CL game but was out of his depth for us. Sean McGinty was captain of the Manchester United youth team that won a bunch of stuff and never had a chance in hell of their first team. There are also question marks over guys who make it to the age of 19 or 20 and don't get loan football. They might be, for reasons of physicality or time on the ball, excellent at youth level but will never quite make the jump to the men's game. (But, to be fair, there are other examples, where clubs will keep them in the youth team to win trophies when they are ready for a loan spell.) The vast, vast majority of excellent youth footballers will never play high-level football, and a decent percentage will drop into non-league or even just recreational football. It is key to remember that. Certainly you'd expect, all else being equal, a guy from Celtic and Burnley to be a better prospect than a guy from Livingston and Brechin (for example) but it's just that, an expectation.

Looks like he's getting his money's worth - three seasons in Europe, including a famous win over AGF of Denmark back in 2021 and also against HJK of Finland this season.

Aiden McAdams signs for Larne, having left Edinburgh City due to their financial crisis. The Larnemen* are reigning champions of the failed statelet league and are in a close battle with Linfield for top spot. Scott Allan is over there as well, along with, oddly, some Mexican defender on loan from Real Salt Lake. Wonder where the money's coming from. *sub, check nickname

Wheezing at this

Ŧђŕ𝔢έ 𝓰ŕε𝓐𝓣 𝕘𝐨𝓪𝕝s 𝐅卂€ 𝐓ℍ𝔼 𝐛ι𝕘 ŕ𝐨𝓑𝕤т𝓔ʳ. ☠

QP, ICT and Arbroath all losing they're in danger of being cut adrift. As it is we're now much closer to 4th than we are 9th. 2,252 attendance, not bad.