dunning1874

I reckon he's another heading for a Kelty, East Kilbride or Darvel type club that are launching money around below the SPFL. I mean, we're talking about a 29 year old who has literally only had one good season in his career (in England's League Two), has a reputation built entirely on the fact he came through at Rangers as a youngster, has done nothing of note since and is now a Clyde reject. That's got marquee signing for a non-league club written all over it.

Are Clyde rejects going to be the new Brechin rejects? Hope there's no truth to this, and I doubt it since as of Wednesday last week MCT said the club still hadn't finalised the budget for the season anyway.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53375596 MacKinnon's comments there: We know the budget isn't finalised yet and if the club get more clarity about when fans could be back in grounds then it could change, but am I reading too much into this by thinking MacKinnon is preparing us for having a massively reduced squad this season? Cuts are obviously inevitable with fewer games and therefore less income, but reading between the lines here I wonder if we're going to end up with any new signings being gambles on cheap loans while relying heavily on youth players for cover beyond the starting XI.

They were already operating at the bare minimum, operate at break even and put no money in budget. I genuinely don't see where you're coming from here; there's no tap for Golden Casket to turn off. In terms of MCT funding for the first team budget, it's true that they may decide to divert some of their subscription income to building up a cash reserve rather than putting it all directly to the first team budget, although they've also been clear that could only be decided by a vote of the members. However they've already had an increase in membership of 110 in under three days since announcing the ownership deal, and they announced back on 22nd May that they'd accumulated £25K over the course of lockdown, while they aren't contributing anything to the club due to furlough. That was seven weeks ago so they must have a considerably larger amount now. It's feasible that they could build their own cash reserves and continue to contribute to the first team budget. It would be sensible to hold something in reserve anyway given the uncertainty around income for next season.

GC were already cutting back to avoid running up more debt. It shouldn't make us any worse off in that regard - GC's position in terms of avoiding debt is the exact same as it was when setting the budget for 19/20. Obviously every club is going to have to make cuts this year due to the Covid related loss of revenue, but that's a separate issue.

Updated Q&A in response to some of the questions they've had: https://mortonclubtogether.com/question-and-answers/

Clubs outside the Premiership aren't going to be back in training until mid to late August and I doubt most will start making signings until the end of July, when furlough stops automatically covering 80% with no employer contribution and the extended contracts are up. Hearts and Dunfermline are the only clubs making new signings so far, and many others extended contracts to 31 July. Hopkin will have targets in mind regardless, although I was concerned to hear that the board still haven't finalised the budget. Again that's fine if it's confirmed in time for most recruitment getting underway, but I hope it's not led to the club withdrawing offers already made to players at the club until it's finalised. Maybe Dunfermline have seen doing business early as a way to appeal more to players, but in these circumstances I'm happy enough for the club to wait. You don't want to saddle yourself with wages to pay when you're months away from the start of the season and still don't know yet when you'll have revenue through the gate. Although I suppose it's possible that Dunfermline are announcing these signings now while the contracts don't formally start until a later date, eg August 1.

Dunfermline signing Thomas is possibly good news for us given their rumoured interest in Nesbitt. While he was in and out the team in the first half of the season he really hit form and cemented his place from January onwards, and with Cadden away he's pretty much going to be a stick on to start games for us barring a total collapse in form. At Dunfermline they've already got Dow and Thomas as well as options through the middle if he was to be used as a number 10. He's a better player than Thomas so would have every reason to be confident of earning a place ahead of him, but considering the Dunfermline tendency to hype up sand dancers or wasters and ignore genuine talent right under their noses (see Cardle, Joe; Barrowman, Andy; v Forbes, Ross) he'd be risking moving to sit on the bench for much of the season. Also good recruitment can only get you so far, and his record to date suggests that Crawford is a poor manager.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/07/08/the-pro-privatization-shock-therapy-of-the-uks-covid-response/ Long but interesting read on one of the reasons the UK has fucked this up so badly.

No idea if it updates automatically or someone does it manually, but going by the membership counter on the website it's gone up about 30 already since the announcement. That's pretty impressive and you'd expect another boost today as word gets around and it's picked up by more media outlets.

The stadium is the big downside of this. I'm not at all comfortable with Cappielow passing out of the hands of the club, but if the lease agreement ensures Golden Casket can't either raise the rent to an exorbitant amount or sell it from under the club's feet then those are good safeguards to have in place. Questions about the costs of any future redevelopment do need an answer. Frankly I'd still prefer to wait a few more years to get to the position of community ownership and have to raise a significant sum to buy GC out with the stadium remaining in the hands of the club than have MCT getting the club for £1 or whatever the tiny nominal fee is without ownership of Cappielow. However I also don't think those valid concerns are a reason not to support this. We've known for years that the club is effectively in a managed decline with the Raes in charge and ownership had to change. Now we've got that opportunity. This is a chance to build a more sustainable club and possibly a more successful one - fan owned doesn't mean fan run and overhauling the culture of the club from top down with new and above all else competent faces could be exactly what we need for the club to progress.

I said after Cadden leaving was announced that it didn't massively change the job Hopkin had with recruitment this summer, but Nesbitt going too would mean our first choice front three is away. We could really do without this. We're not going to be back in training until mid-August at the earliest so I'm not expecting to hear anything about new signings for weeks yet, and I expect most clubs at our level won't really have much movement on that until August with Dunfermline and Hearts being the only exceptions so far. Not hearing anything about renewals is becoming a concern though; what's stopping the players already here signing new contracts?

Parma style kits are great, but we'd probably be better off having them as third kits. I doubt the SPFL would sanction having that much blue in both.

Regardless of what you think of the Challenge Cup generally (the correct answer is that the inclusion of foreign teams is brilliant and the only change needed is binning the colts in favour of more Highland & Lowland clubs) there's surely an argument for running it as a pre-season tournament this year with Scottish teams only, also on an opt-in basis. This would obviously have to remain flexible to be decided some time in August when we have a clearer picture of whether crowds will be back at games, but if you get 16 teams interested it could run from mid-September before the League Cup starts? If clubs are back in training from the start of September and would be playing friendlies at that point anyway they're as well getting a trophy and prize money to play for, however meagre it is. In the also realistic scenario that even distanced crowds aren't possible and/or teams aren't interested, scrapping the whole thing is obviously the way to go. There had been rumours about it not starting until 2021 but I'm not sure it's sensible to be planning fixtures for midweeks in March when there'll inevitably be postponed league games over winter to cram in.

That is an absolute beauty.