dunning1874

Wilson missing is a huge blow but hopefully the legs out wide make up for it.

If there's one good thing about it it's recovery time for our players with playing Tuesday-Monday rather than Tuesday-Friday, removes any concern about Hearts being fresher, but in every other respect that is pish.

Livingston at home is clearly the best tie available. Would much rather have Hibs or Aberdeen than Kilmarnock.

Even if you're not wholly separating Sinclair St and the Cowshed or bringing the space behind the pundits back into use (and you can understand the risks of doing so), you could still comfortably have fit at least another 1000 people into the Cowshed last night, maybe even closer to 2000. Even with the space not being in use for the gantry, adding another 1500 would only have made it about as busy as the 2015 game v Peterhead which was a long way away from being dangerously overcrowded. 2500 is a ridiculously conservative estimate even we have a TV gantry and every single person with a terracing ticket does go into the Cowshed and ignore the Sinclair Street end. 3500 would be a far more realistic, but still probably too low, number of Cowshed tickets. If you find a way to segregate Sinclair St and the Cowshed then you can get another 1000-1500 in Sinclair St. I think in the past whenever we had Sinclair St separated (think we did this for the Celtic game in 2010 with 10,136 the reported attendance?) access to the main stand has been allowed for use of women's toilets there, but maybe the evolution in safety rules isn't going to allow that now?

What a sensational performance that was. 2-1 flattered Motherwell there. Lots of focus on the performances of the centre backs and Oakley, rightly so as they were all superb, but once again the man of the match for me was Iain Wilson. He is stupidly good and dominated that midfield. This is undoubtedly the best Morton team in my time watching the club. I do not expect to ever see a manager as good as Imrie at this club again.

"we have less than 400 tickets remaining for the home ends, which is why the decision was taken to close the ticket office this evening. The timing of this has been very fast paced in the last 24 hours due to the fact that we had only sold 800 home tickets by Wednesday this week and as of last night we were sat at 2,400 when I was on a call with our safety team at midnight." Well, obviously ticket sales shot up suddenly from yesterday. Without fans being told that the capacity of the ground had been reduced by over 4000, no one knew earlier in the week that they had an urgent need to buy a ticket or risk not getting to the game! There was no reason to believe there'd be an issue with buying the day before, on the day or even 30 minutes before kick-off. This is a Rae era level of complete disregard for fans. The absence of a grovelling apology in that statement for how they've handled this is noted.

Heard that Smiths are now out of tickets too, so with the ticket office closed at the ground, just under 6 hours to kick-off and comfortably less than half the capacity of the home end sold, there is now no way to get a ticket if you don't have a smartphone. This is a considerably bigger shambles than the turnstiles.

There'll be a not inconsequential number who are aware but now have no way of buying a ticket though. Imagine we get through and get another home tie in the quarter final, with St Mirren, Celtic, Rangers, Hearts Hibs & Aberdeen all potential opponents. A 2500 capacity in the terracing is completely inadequate.

Honestly, where on earth is a 2500 capacity coming from, even with a gantry? We must have had well over 3000 in the Cowshed against Rangers on BT 8 years ago. Can't believe they've managed to sort out the turnstiles and somehow created another just as bad PR disaster.

That's absolutely mad. That's a drop of over 3000 in the capacity!

The club have done a great job of marketing this up to today, but this really doesn't make any sense. They're just after saying late last night that "over 2000" home tickets have been sold. The three home ends of Cappielow combined hold well over 7000. Even if the capacity of the Cowshed has been reduced by something ridiculously huge like 2000 by the gantry, how on earth can there possibly be a limited number of tickets left today, unless thousands were bought overnight? Also pretty poor to only say today that the ticket office won't be open, when those without a smartphone might have been waiting until tonight to buy their tickets then won't have a chance to get to Smiths today, whereas they could have planned for it if they'd known earlier in the week.

https://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/24103369.dougie-imrie-blasts-mortons-disrespectful-rivals/ He's absolutely revelling in this.

That result really does change the narrative for them quite considerably. If they'd been coming here with only one league win in their last 20 games, you're at the point where a toxic atmosphere can really build for them the way it did for Baraclough in the League Cup tie, with a defeat getting Kettlewell sacked. Instead, they've emphatically gotten back to winning, they've a centre forward who's scored 6 in his last 5 games and rather than the lack of wins being the focus of their form, it's the lack of defeats: the only one in their last 9 was Rangers. They'll be coming here with confidence.

Aye, they've gotten faster and flatter, they really do bullet in like a good cross now whereas the big use of them before was just pinning the opposition defence into their box and hoping we could utilise the space that freed up from a second ball. Now that's still a huge threat, as with the second goal on Saturday, but we've just as much chance of scoring off the initial delivery of the throw too. Important we don't forget how good his crossing from open play is too. How many players spend about 11 months out injured and come back from it a better player? Ridiculous.

Further comment on the incredible defensive record. As far as I can see 9 clean sheets in 13 games has only happened twice before in the club's history. The final 13 games of 2002/03, which was obviously in the Third Division, and 66/67 when we cantered to the then Second Division title while the top flight was 18 teams. So we've never done it while playing at this high a level, although in 95/96 we did manage 8 in 13 which turned into 10 in 15. We've also only conceded 5 goals in total across these games, compared to 8 in 02/03 and it was 5 again in 66/67. This really is the type of run you wouldn't expect to see again for decades.

At 12 unbeaten in all competitions (and you could argue 13 with the Airdrie game being decided on penalties after a 0-0) this is now our longest unbeaten run since 79/80, when we went 15 unbeaten to sit second behind Celtic on goal difference by one goal in November. We then fell away quite drastically and ended up sixth, a point behind fourth place and European qualification. That run was 11 wins and four draws, this run of 12 unbeaten has been 9 wins and 3 draws. We could genuinely emulate that here, albeit a division lower. Only five clean sheets in that run so we've smashed it defensively already. Our best run of results in 44 years. What a manager Imrie is.

That was absolutely immense. Dunfermline were abysmal and McPake is an appalling manager, but so much of how poor they were was down to us making them look bad. The pressing killed them with Wilson, Crawford and Oakley utterly dominating the game, but every single player in a Morton shirt was excellent today. The second half in particular was just ridiculously good, Blues had a spell where he turned into Iniesta and created a tremendous chance every single time he touched the ball. If that had been 7 or 8 it would have been a fair reflection of the game. We are firmly in the driving seat for the playoffs now. We will inevitably lose a game at some point and we'll see how the team respond when it happens, but the way they're playing there's really no reason to doubt their ability to respond to a setback. I will be stunned if I ever see a better Morton manager than Dougie Imrie. The job he's doing is fucking ridiculous.

The proof will be in it working come the day of the Motherwell game, but it's great to see the club addressing issues. While the size of queues has been a recurring issue for years, a massive delay has happened once since the new General Manager arrived and we're seeing a quick response to solve this. Halving the size of the gantry will go a long way in the Cowshed on the night as well, with a bigger crowd than usual for televised games meaning there's no chance everyone is going to fit into the other half of the Shed.

Only 6 league starts, while Stefan McCluskey made 24. Vintage Duffyball.

Blues on the right has been working perfectly well prior to yesterday. I understand the desire to switch the wingers when things are flat and see if we get more joy from inverting them, but I don't think you can do it with Blues - he is never going to be comfortable playing on the left, through no fault of his own. Certainly wouldn't be tearing things up and concluding Blues out wide in general doesn't work based on yesterday though. There is however a decent argument for Garrity getting a start after his performance.

Imrie's spot on to call out the first half performance, really flat and devoid of ideas. Garrity coming on saw us stretch the game much more easily in the second half and we were ultimately well worth the win while the margin could have been more comfortable, once we scored it was a question of how many. Good to have real attacking depth on the bench just now with almost everyone fit. You can tell the squads' feet will be kept on the ground with Imrie’s tone there, but we've got a brilliant chance to kick on with the upcoming games. We've already established a gap to 10th that would require a total collapse to end up worrying about it and we should be looking to pull away from mid-table now. Beat Dunfermline and we'll be in a very healthy position.

I don't think we should get carried away about new signings being potential replacements for Quitongo or anyone else. His injury history is well known and he's inevitably going to have seasons where his fitness breaks down and it's very stop start. The hope is that with the rest of the squad fit again and loanees back with us rather than the widespread injury crisis we faced earlier in the season, he can take as long as he needs to recover properly with ample cover in his position rather than us desperately needing him back they way it felt in October & November. It's why I'd be wary of too many players leaving on loan, for all that it would benefit their development; we're not too many injuries away from finding ourselves short again. I certainly wouldn't be writing his career off at this point for all that I might be writing off this season. Anyway looking at today, you'd hope Imrie specifically calling out the team being complacent against Montrose will mean there's no risk of that today despite Arbroath's injury crisis. Importance of keeping pace in the chase for the promotion playoffs aside, despite our recent improvement we could still end up only 3 points off 9th with a defeat today, whereas a win realistically banishes any prospect of 10th.

Magnificent news. I'd be very surprised if he hasn't left for a better offer by the summer of 2026, but it's great that he's committed for the time being and the club will get a better deal whenever that offer comes.

We actually haven't lost a home Scottish Cup tie since Celtic in 09/10, but then again we haven't played a top flight side at home since then either. The 11 ties v Premiership teams since have all been away.

At least it's at home for a change.