vikingTON

Imrie stated that he'd be happy running with a squad of 18. I don't think that Garrity is really included in that head count though and sub performances have done nothing to suggest that he's equipped for Championship football.

The contribution from Dalrada isn't necessarily identical in Year 2 to what it was in Year 1 though. And I doubt that they were paying for *one year* naming rights to Cappielow regardless of any other ties to the club going forward.

Where to begin with that utter horseshite? The most obvious fail: 1) The Celtic game. This was already accounted for in last season's budget - including the addition of new players at that time, and the club recording a profit for the second time this century. You don't get to count that revenue again this season - that's not how finance works. Ditto the Dalrada investment - only ongoing funding and sponsorship contribute to this season's budget. 2) You point to improvements on the revenue side without even once considering the other side of the coin: an inflationary environment where costs have risen by 10% across the board - and likely much higher for utilities. Simply retaining existing squad players increases costs for the club: they will quite rightly want an increase in their wages based on performance as well as their own bills to pay. The club's balance of income to outgoings is a constantly moving target - the costs do not magically stay the same from one season to the next, least of all right now. 3) 'Back the manager or lose him'. Utter nonsense - the reality is that the club will lose the manager regardless because he is a young, ambitious and clearly effective coach. Imrie is under contract for the foreseeable future though and signed up under conditions that were far more difficult than right now. While Imrie has every right to fight for the needs of the first team squad, we need to ensure that there will be a club years and decades after the current or any other manager has gone - that's the primary goal that GMFC has to ensure, every single year. Which leads us to the logical black hole in your foot-stomping tantrum: what is your causal explanation for the current budget stand-off? Do you believe that the GMFC board are squirrelling money away in illicit offshore accounts? Are they asset strippers looking to run the club into the ground? Why else are they withholding funds that you and others insist are definitely just sitting around waiting to be used on wunderkinds like 'Frankie Deane'?

The only failure here is with the ability to comprehend statistical chance. Given that your principal grounds for complaint is that people will be taking their hard-earned annual leave to make their way to the game rather than on God's given day for football which is a Saturday, the sum total of fixtures in the data set you yourself have defined is 20. That is four seasons of Championship football played on a Friday night x five fixtures on matchday 36 - with an equal chance of being randomly assigned home or away*. That a 6.25% chance (four away games from four) shows up once and once only within that set is not in fact an anomaly as you have stated. It is in fact just about the most probable outcome. Just as if you ran a coin-toss experiment with the exact same sample size, the most probable number of outcomes where four heads were produced from four tosses would be 1. The genuine anomaly would be if 3 or 5 outcomes produced all heads - suggesting a bias within the coin being used. It's really not my fault that the statistics don't support your claim that an anomaly exists where it does not, in the same way that it's not the SPFL's fault that a randomised fixture generator doesn't plug in an AA route map guide from Greenock into its calculation. * The calculations above of course simplified to a degree, because in the case of fixtures each outcome is not fully independent of each other.

I'm not talking about the club's internal conduct towards the fans under the Raes (which was abysmal for large parts of their tenure) and couldn't care less about tweets which did not in fact make GMFC Scottish football's laughing stock this or any other week. You are both vastly overstating the degree to which the rest of Scottish football actually takes notice about the internal politics of our club. I'm talking about official statements by GMFC that regulate our relationship with external bodies - such as other clubs, the SPFL and the SFA. Which in response to most of our own clowncar travails, the death of Rangers, the reinstatement saga, the COVID shutdown etc. have been more or less professional in tone and strictly necessary in form - rather than the plethora of pointless, self-aggandising bollocks club statements churned out by certain clubs at this level and the one below. This is an official club statement given to the Tele gurning about the SPFL, err, having a fixture list that sent the team away from home on the last day of the season again. It is indeed risible that someone at GMFC responded to that non-story in an official capacity and I hope that restraint will be restored in the near future.

You clearly don't understand - or are pretending not to understand - statistical probability if you are expecting a second example of a 6.25% shot to occur within a set of 10 outcomes. Try running your own coin toss experiment into this anomaly that the club must stand up to. I'll await your results with interest.

But not quite so much at the front of their thoughts as to actually consult the fans, which would add substance to their otherwise empty statement. Nor do these thoughts and prayers actually convert to meaningful pressure on the SPFL to change anything at all. So the emptiest of empty gestures then. One thing that the old regime did quite well was maintain the professionalism of our official club communications. With the exception of the O'Connor interview in 2014, we don't do airing our dirty linen in public or issuing ludicrous/self-aggandising club statements. McKinnon and plenty of other clowns were allowed to spout nonsense in the press, only for the truth to vindicate the club's stance. The new board has largely maintained our club's dignity and left that sort of nonsense to the Scot Gardiners of this world. So when the Tele comes calling on the slowest of slow weeks for the sports desk to ask whether the club had a comment to make on a handful of folk on social media gurning about the injustice of the fixture list, the club should have said 'Nope, not really'. Hopefully this sidetrack into giving meaningless self-aggandising 'club statements' will prove the exception and not the rule.

What has the arse end of nowhere got to do with anything? The statistical chance of GMFC or indeed any other club getting an away fixture four years in a row by random chance is 6.25% It's the same as tossing four coins and getting four heads. Given that there are always ten clubs whose final fixture is being decided by random chance, it is really not remarkable at all that one club GMFC experienced this outcome. No anomaly, no injustice, no grand conspiracy at work - it's plain tough luck. The rest of your increasingly desperate attempt to get a bite falls down on that straightforward reality. If Inverness or Partick were throwing their toys out of the pram in a club statement then the ludicrous nature of their complaint would be quite rightly highlighted. Well here we are with the same nonsensical line of thought being applauded as some sort of welcome and forthright stand against the SPFL. Who doubtless haven't even bothered to take note of it.

The vast majority of people do not finish work in Greenock at 5pm to attend games though, because it's not the 1957 any more. Two minutes ago you were claiming that they were elected to represent the fans rather than be detached decision-makers - I'll regard that as a climbdown. If GMFC presented its own organisational objection (or indeed Dougie's objection from a first team view) of the schedule then they'd be fully justified in responding to the Tele. By doing so on behalf of the fans, the club should have actually consulted the fanbase as a whole. As the club has in fact already consulted the fanbase on potential changes to the fixture schedule, it is no way more or less relevant an issue. More importantly, a genuine consultation would have provided GMFC with some factual evidence to support its arguments, instead of just vaguely gesturing at the loudest handful of voices on social media. Which would have avoided such a pitiful excuse of a statement which will achieve absolutely nothing other than minor ridicule.

In what way is it an anomaly? It is in fact statistically likely that if ten clubs were randomly allocated their final game home/away, then one of those clubs would get four in a row away from home. It is only an 'anomaly' if you don't understand how a statistical set works - or are trying to fabricate an utterly cringeworthy and groundless grievance. Friday night fixtures are now more common each season than Tuesday or any other non-Saturday fixture. That's the way it is and has been for several years. Your citing of Partick Thistle Family Club as a noble fighter against that cause only undermines your point further.

1) GMFC board members are not elected to represent the fanbase: that's the job of MCT which is a different organisation. 2) If the board want to invoke the preferences of the fanbase to criticise the schedule then they should use the exact same method of consultation about a change to kick-off times on a Saturday, or the Conference League proposal. If it had done so, then it wouldn't have had to resort to producing such fact-free drivel to the Tele, that makes the club look like a tinpot outfit.

1) Friday evening football has also been part of the game at this level for years. It is also generally accepted - which is why no other clubs are joining Morton in this utterly pathetic gum-bumping exercise. 2) Inverness is also accessible on a Friday night and will almost certainly attract a larger away crowd then than Kirkcaldy did on a Friday last season or indeed will manage again this season. Perhaps it's midweek games arranged on school nights that are fit for the bin instead.

It cannot even remotely be described as not getting an even spread of vital games across multiple seasons. For your Celtic-esque demand for fairness to be resolved, we would have still played two away games out of those four. The idea that GMFC are being harmed in a sporting sense by having played 2 more away games on matchday 36 of the season rather than 35 is ludicrous. As opposed to the 142 other games that were played which don't fit into this complaint at all.

Based on your sample size of *4 games*, this is a completely over the top assertion. There are also people who work shifts and can't get every Saturday off but can get a Friday off instead. There are lots of people who won't be able to make Raith away which is scheduled on a Tuesday evening. We don't run the fixture calendar past every single person's convenience. If GMFC wants to make an argument based on the inconvenience of the fanbase as a whole then it should have actually canvassed those fans' views collectively instead of flapping its trap to the Tele based on no credible evidence. It makes us look like a tinpot outfit concocting a ludicrous sense of injustice.

I really don't care what most people think. Can you answer the straightforward question please: in what way is it unfair that a club plays an away game at the end of the season in four completely separate campaigns?

In what way is it unfair? Are you planning to hold a candlelit vigil of protest if the coin toss at Cappielow turns out heads four times in a row this season? Because that's the exact degree of a foreseeable - and utterly trivial - probability outcome that you're wanting GMFC to 'let the heirarchy know about'. Still, I'm sure that the SPFL 'beaks' at Hampden never fail to get a copy of the Greenock Telegraph to see the court cases and River Clyde Homes scandals. So this risible 'statement' will definitely show them that we mean business.

https://www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk/sport/23625155.greenock-morton-anger-fixture-list-100-mile-trip/ Who signed off (anonymously) on this utterly risible statement? When did the club actually consult with the fanbase before expressing their concern about being assigned a Friday night fixture at the end of the season fully ten months in advance? Do they seriously think that away support would be higher if those matches at Arbroath/Inverness took place on a Saturday in February, never mind midweek? Given we're a fan-owned entity, there's no excuse for not canvassing the fans - if you don't do that, then stop pretending that you have taken their sentiments into account. If I wanted to read non-sequitur ramblings about the organisation of the game from a Scottish football club, I'd get Scot Gardiner's programme notes at Inverness, or any one of 'Partick Thistle Family Club' statements since 2020. GMFC should be better than this.

While I thoroughly approve of Imrie's parting blow, it's regrettable that his antennae weren't finely tuned enough to detect the sort of fucking loser who would choose to drop a level because mah family/bank balance/whatever bullshit excuse, to hound them out of the club in advance. I expect absolutely zero loyalty to GMFC itself from the vast, vast majority of our employees, but anyone who chooses to join the Titan submersible of Scottish football clearly didn't have what it takes to succeed in professional football in the first place. Hopefully Montrose Bay is attracting a pod of orcas this summer.

If you're Jim Duffy who doesn't know what a full-back is, sure.

They were selling ten year season tickets to their thick as fuck fanbase just last season, it's an easy grift.

Is that a high definition image - and if not, why not?

I got round to renewing yesterday and the fact that the process was relatively painless (a few minor glitches) and took about five minutes to get a legit ST for all of next season was a definite plus. If it weren't so easy I'd probably have left it a few weeks until I had enough time and patience to jump through annoying hoops (which is why I'm still a Scottish Power customer).

Hopefully not.

'Uncle Roy' couldn't help them put together a team that isn't completely fucking dung this season, nothing to suggest that they'll be any more competent at a lower level next season.