dunning1874

I'd never really cared much about Partick, no more than I did about Dunfermline or any other clubs of a similar stature. The whole twee cuddly toy shite could be grating but so are Fifers, football clubs being allowed to exist in Lanarkshire, etc. Their conduct in 2020 changed that. Like Hearts and Stranraer (and to a lesser extent Rangers, ICT & Falkirk) their behaviour that summer should never be forgotten. Hearts were the main culprits at the time, but at least they've managed to shut the fuck up about their baseless sense of injustice for a few minutes in the years since. You'd have thought being established in the second tier again as a credible top half side with the budget to match, showing there was no long term harm done, might have had McCall cutting out his incessant whining about how hard done by they were to be relegated for being the worst team in the league.

When Partick released him I thought Crawford would make sense for us, presuming Sibbald has pretty much the whole division after him and the odds of us getting him are small. If true that would finally give us a playmaker for the midfield three, but with the crucial difference to last season that unlike Oliver he is actually a central midfielder and has the legs to do the defensive work too when required. Escaping Ian McCall's tendency to play central midfielders out wide and actually getting to nail down a place in his best position would hopefully see him hit his stride too. In terms of moving central midfielders on, as before we don't know how exactly Imrie envisages the midfield and front three working but you can broadly say this would give us two options for each role in the middle: Holding midfielders: Jacobs & Gillespie Box to box: Lyon & Blues Playmaker: Crawford/other new & McGrattan Obviously you can't entirely pigeon hole players to one role like that, but with Lyon and Blues having played in all of them while Crawford or McGrattan may be used further forward at times, I think those six is the right amount of depth. That then allows King to go on loan, assuming he's not having to stay around as left back cover.

Saw some people saying across social media that the trialist who scored was PJ Crossan. Relieved to report that this is most likely complete bollocks which someone has made up, as he is under contract at Forfar.

Kabia would be much better news. I reckon we could be realistically looking at an XI like this now, leaving aside the debates around how exactly the front three will be set up for the sake of simplicity: Schwake Pignatiello - O'Connor - Baird - Strapp Lyon/Blues - New - Jacobs Muirhead - New - New (Kabia?) Cover: New youth GK Lithgow, Hynes, New LB Gillespie, Lyon/Blues, McGrattan, King Muirhead/New, Quitongo, Garrity, McGrattan, McGregor, Easdale You'd think that number of players should allow King and McGregor to get the loan moves they need to develop. If the players you're parachuting into the new slots in that starting XI were to be, to pluck some names out the air, Craig Sibbald and Euan Henderson, that would look like quite a handy XI with reasonable cover. If instead the remaining new signings are no better than what we have and we get a first choice midfield three of Jacobs, Lyon and Blues with Quitongo the first choice centre forward, we'll have gone backwards. Have to trust that Imrie knows what he's doing as he's given us no reason not to, but I'm really eager to see quality come in now.

Both those signings can be considered fine in isolation but make it vital that we get some real quality with the signings still to come. We needed another holding midfield option and Gillespie is acceptable for that as cover, despite the hope we could have had someone closer to Wilson in quality with Jacobs as cover rather than bringing in someone to be cover to Jacobs. Similarly Quitongo is a massive gamble, but we basically needed a whole forward line including cover and if he's going to be taking Oliver's place as impact sub rather than being an Ugwu or Reilly replacement then we could have done worse, such as keeping Oliver. We still need cover at left back, ideally through someone who can cover centre back as well. Otherwise every other signing to come needs to be someone coming in to go straight into the starting XI, with serious creativity and goals needing added. As it stands those three or four signings could be the difference between 4th and 10th. Some Craig Sibbald level coups and we can look up the way, more Jai Quitongos and you've got a team which ended last season with only 7 goals in 11 games looking considerably weaker creatively.

Underwhelmed is putting it lightly. Hopefully we've got much more quality to come and he's only here as cover.

I'm not slow to criticise the Raes and on the face of it someone offering six figures for a player like Quitongo is a take the money and run scenario, but it's worth noting the offer we reportedly turned down on the last day of the window was £100K and we made considerably more than that by getting to the League Cup semi. When you consider his goals in that run there's a reasonable chance we wouldn't have managed it without him, particularly when there would have been no time to replace him. None of which is remotely an argument in favour of bringing back him now, of of course.

Looking at where we are with ins and outs now: Out: Russell, Ledger, McLean, McEntee, Brandon, Wilson, Reilly, Ugwu, Oliver In: Schwake, O'Connor, Baird, Pignatiello Fair to assume Hamilton will probably join the players out and Schwake is a replacement for him, while I'm not counting Bysouth as it's safe to assume he was on buttons as a youth player and will be similarly replaced on the bench by a youth player on buttons. Laying it out like that I'm a bit more comfortable with the scope we've still got to add depth to the squad - adding Hamilton to the departures makes it 10 out with only four in, so even if we can only match up the numbers we had last season there's still the room to add six. It's possible we could even stretch that further, if there's truth in the rumours that Ugwu and Reilly were both on decent wages - perhaps the wage for the two of them could be spread between three new signings rather than two, and maybe Schwake comes cheaper than Hamilton too. Having had five defenders out and three in, we could be okay with one more. We still need left back cover but if that player can cover centre back too then we've enough depth in defence. If that was to then leave us five signings to go, that's enough for another holding midfielder, a playmaker, a couple of centre forwards and a behind the striker or winger type, the numbers of each depending how exactly Imrie envisages setting up that front three. If there's some real creative quality among those signings then that leaves us in a pretty good place. If they're all the level of Jai Quitongo...

As was explained at the EGM - which if you're who I think you are you did attend, although you may not have heard the answer as you were too busy conducting your own conversation which led to other attendees having to ask you to keep it down so they could actually hear the meeting - some people just want to invest in football for emotional/irrational reasons. If they want to invest far more than the shares are worth so they can massage their egos by saying "I own X% of a football club and contribute £Y to the budget" that's clearly a stupid decision on their part in business terms. It doesn't make it a bad thing for the club or mean that everyone doing so has a nefarious ulterior motive, and MCT can have safeguards in place to guard against anyone who does, such as a retaining a minimum shareholding to ensure that one investor could never for example launch a hostile takeover.

Even accounting for mostly playing on the wing when he has been fit enough to feature for Queen's Park, if someone with no prior connection to Morton with Quitongo's record in Leagues One & Two was linked to us we'd be filing him in the bin marked 'Orsi and Omar'. This far into his career the injury record also exacerbates that rather than being a mitigating factor. It's not a case of saying if he just gets the chance to get fit enough to play 30+ games over the season he might really hit the ground running and turn into the player he looked like he had the potential to 5 years ago. It's more that there's no reason to believe he's likely to manage much more than half a season again and asking why we should bother spending money on someone with that injury record, if there's nothing to suggest they'll make a big difference when they are fit enough to start.

Pleased with that, very highly rated at Edinburgh and looked excellent on the rare occasions I saw him; I thought he'd be an obvious target if Hamilton was away. Like Pignatiello it's bringing in a player from a lower league who has been a standout for their club and has shown credible signs of being ready for a step up, rather than the Hopkin approach of launching contracts at players who couldn't get a game at Brechin and were released by them.

Absolutely terrific news. Still need left back cover, preferably from someone who can cover centre back as well, but that's the defence pretty much sorted. I really had no hope of keeping him and this means he'll be away for nothing next summer, but that's fine. If the club have played hardball over compensation looking for a substantial fee and no club was willing to pay it then I'm good with that. We get another season out of our best player and it's a sign that the club has moved on from the previous regime who had the piss taken out of them on transfer fees and displayed gross incompetence in letting players we were entitled to compensation for leave for nothing.

Passed 182-13.

Over the course of his time with us McLean's been a solid player despite a very poor first season, but that's definitely good news. There's too much to be done to the squad to retain a fourth choice centre back who's 37, spent a long time out injured last season and can't cover any other positions. Even if Strapp stays we still need left back cover; use McLean's wage on someone who can cover both centre back and left back and it allows that money to be put to greater use elsewhere in the squad.

At most one of Lyon and Blues should be starting games every week, and if you were looking to build a squad to target the top four rather than survival there's an argument for neither in the first choice midfield. Wilson was brought in to do a job that Lyon and Blues couldn't in stopping us conceding so many goals from loose balls outside the box. After a pretty dreadful first few games when he wasn't fully fit, as soon as he was up to speed he did exactly that job and stopped us conceding like that. There were question marks about him in possession, although this also improved over time and that was far more an issue arising from the shape and the players around him. Imrie was wedded to both a back three to compensate for pace in the defence and a front three to maintain a high press, leaving us short of bodies and at risk of being overrun in the middle of the park. That it didn't happen often is credit to how well Wilson was doing his job of disrupting the opposition, but this did mean he had more responsibility in possession than you'd have wanted him to have. The far bigger culprit in failing to step up to that challenge and seeing our goals scored drop off a cliff though was Blues: you need whoever is beside the holding midfielder in that system to take responsibility for driving us up the park with the ball at their feet and he wasn't half as good as Lyon at that. Lyon losing his place in the team 100% made us poorer creatively but looking at Wilson as the one keeping him out is missing the point - that's either on Imrie for preferring Blues to Lyon or Lyon himself for whatever he was doing in training that made Imrie lose trust in him. Next season we wouldn't have had that issue, as going to a back four means Imrie can have his front three without leaving us short in midfield, and there won't be the same onus on the holding midfielder to contribute in possession with two players in there with him.

With Wilson gone - and what a shocker to lose out on him to Queen of the South - that's us looking weaker in every area of the park as it stands. We're retaining players who aren't good enough to start and losing those who are. There's a long way to go, most contracts will have only expired in the last couple of days and we could feasibly pull off a signing that's an upgrade on Wilson, but this is the first one that's set alarm bells ringing.

It’s not an approach I’m fond of but regardless of what’s being paid over two years (I hope to god we’ve been sensible enough to put relegation clauses in all of these contracts), if two players are willing to accept say £50 a week less in exchange for the security of two years when they wouldn’t have with one year, that’s £100 a week more to play with within the budget for the season. You can then stick that £100 a week on top of the offer being made to a marquee signing of a playmaker, centre forward or Lewis Strapp. Maybe this isn’t the thought process and we’re actually giving two year deals out to certain players because Baird, Blues, and Muirhead are going to be the spine of the team, but I’m choosing to look at this optimistically rather than facing the consequences of not having better players than that at the moment. If we haven’t added any better signings around them come late July I’ll absolutely be lumping money on relegation, but I’m not going to panic when we’re not even out of May.

I’m hoping this is an approach of balancing a relatively poor wage with the security of two year deals, enabling us to offer more to some targets who would otherwise be out of our reach and are only likely to accept one year anyway in the hope of attracting better offers after a season. The alternative is players being given two year deals as they’re going to be considered the spine of the team who we’re looking to build around for a couple of years, when they shouldn’t be considered guaranteed starters.

Confirmation that each individual deal with investors will be put to a membership vote before it goes through has tipped me back to a yes vote, but I do still think there are points to be raised about this. Before voting yes I’d like to see exactly what the wording of the new article will be that ensures the membership get to vote on each and every sale, and what exactly will be disclosed to the membership about the sale along with the identity of the investors. Will we get to see the terms of the deal in relation to other points touched on in the Q&A, such as the length of time before the shares are permanently theirs with no further investment required? If not, how do we know someone’s not only compelled to invest £18K for 2 years rather than 10, for example? We need a concrete answer on what the voting mechanism will be for that because the Q&A only says “likely” by email while flippantly dismissing the need for another General Meeting. If the membership want it there’s absolutely a justification for an EGM to hold the vote on any sale of shares, if necessary with the prospective investor in attendance as well so the membership have the opportunity to ask them questions in person if they have any concerns.

It also states that the confirmatory vote of the membership will take place after a deal is agreed, so the terms for each investor will surely be put to the membership for that vote as well as disclosing the identity of the investor(s). If the MCT board aren’t providing a satisfactory level of transparency about any individual deal the membership can still vote no to individual investors at that stage.

May as well carry on the list for everyone with double figures: 1. Weatherson - 43 2. Peaso - 25 3. Campbell - 21 4. Oliver - 21 5. McHugh - 18 6. O'Brien - 18 7. Tidser - 18 8. Wake - 17 9. O'Ware - 16 10. Johnstone - 14 11. Forbes - 13 12. Jenkins - 13 13. Russell - 11 14. Graham - 10 I've gone with fewer appearances as the tiebreaker for players who are level.

Aye, it's O'Brien. Always thought he was hugely underappreciated but even at that I was surprised to see him that high.

Rattling through the other guesses: Wake - 17 in the league, 3 in cups. The third best second tier goals to game ratio of those mentioned here behind Peaso and Johnstone, and the best goals to starts ratio of anyone even if you make it all competitions, including McManus in League One. O'Ware - 15/16 in the second tier, depending whether you include the playoff goal v Dundee United. Also scored 3 in League One and 6 in cups. Johnstone - 14 in the league then didn't score in his second spell, but that gives him a better goals to game ratio than everyone there other than Peaso. 3 in cups. Forbes - 13 in the second tier, plus 1 in League One and 5 in cups. McManus - only 5 goals in the Championship. 20 in League One and 3 in the Challenge Cup. The players not mentioned who have a better goals to game ratio than anyone here are Greg Kiltie (6 goals) and Martin Hardie (9 goals), but still waiting on the answer to the player joint with McHugh and Tidser. More appearances than McHugh and fewer than Tidser.

1. Weatherson - 43 2. Peaso - 25 3= Campbell - 21 3= Oliver - 21 5= McHugh - 18 5= ??? 5= Tidser - 18

1. Weatherson - 43 2. Peaso - 25 3= Campbell - 21 3= ??? 5= McHugh - 18 5= ??? 5= Tidser - 18 This is league goals only for the record, discounted cups.