EanieMeany

Cameron Blues being half way to a testimonial is about all anyone needs to know about Morton have fared for the last couple of decades, tbh.

Aye, can't say I find it particularly appealing. Charging the same for a standard off-the-shelf number as for the custom-designed ones of the last few seasons seems a bit shoddy too, although that's the way these things go these days.

Been a while since we’ve encountered third tier minnows, Grangemouth. Pretty good group overall, would maybe have preferred somebody else (Aberdeen probably) instead of Hibs since we’ve played them a few times over the last few years but I’d much rather them than fuckin Motherwell again.

I didn’t mean that as endorsing this scheme that’s being proposed btw, as far as I can see it all seems very dubious and unclear. But broadly, if Morton is going to progress it has a much, much better chance of doing so if it can have the likes of the Easdales on board as backers.

If there’s ever a point where a proper footballer doesn’t get a place in the match day squad at the expense of Easdale then there might be may be a significant issue but he’s there because there’s nobody else. I guess you could argue that that was what happened in the last game at Arbroath but that was evident Dougie making a point as much as anything, and also again due to the lack of other options. Again, it really would be best if the boy had some sense of personal pride, but I don’t think there’s any question that managers are being forced to play him or pick him, so in the grand scheme it’s just a thing that’s there and of little consequence. It’s certainly not worth rejecting investments over.

Aye, I really could not care less if their daft boy warms the bench on occasion if it keeps the wallets open tbh. It’s not ideal but Jnr wasn’t getting a game at the end of the season because of dodgy dealings, it was because there was quite literally no other forwards. Again, not great but it’s almost certainly not costing the club an extra penny or detracting from the main wage budget. Anyway, as a general point I think we could all live without all this weird, overblown, pearl-clutching hysteria about two hugely successful local business who’ve been long-term backers of the club and who have extremely deep roots in the local area being involved in the club tbh. The idea that Morton, as a club, should not be wanting people like that inside the tent is just nonsense.

I don't really know much about the intricacies of these things, but aren't MCT members meant to be the shareholders? Meaning they're entitled to know the details of "commercial" concerns? MCT isn't a vessel to put a small band of people in a wee position of power, if something like this is going to be kept secret from the membership it seems like a bit of a problem. Similarly, if these investors don't want people to know who they are then they should be told to do one straight

As for Pignatiello, dunno anything about him but the fact that Imrie will know him well and that he's had a few loan spells to get first team experience seems quite encouraging. If we signed him under any of the previous managers we'd probably be a bit wary of it given their track records of less than great signings, but if Dougie knows him and rates him then that's good enough for me.

Yeah, I think the idea of a "lack of chances" is a bit of a myth tbh. Ugwu in particular had more than enough to have scored a lot more goals, and on top of that his lack of any kind of awareness or movement to attack spaces and chances meant that what would have been chances for a decent striker went begging. Reilly is the only one who can feel a bit hard done by on that front, he definitely would fare a lot better in front of players capable of using the ball better.

Tangential, but I see the loathsome Aidan McGeady has been citing Brian McLean not getting pelters for playing for N Ireland as an example of the abuse he got being Something Sinister. Which is just very, very funny and more than a little bit deranged.

Aye, I don’t particularly think the plan I suggested is actually the case but I also don’t think it’s outwith the realms of possibility either, even if it’s just in a passive, “we’ll keep an interested eye on it way”. I think it’s more likely people are just reading far too much, as it stands, into a pair of local businessmen who’ve been long-term backers of the club continuing to back it, in all honesty.

Indeed. 18 months for Dougie wasn't unreasonable to begin, but I think the job he's done* has been more than good enough that another year at least should be on the table right now, with a better wage. *Avoiding relegation was obviously good in itself, but the way he done it and the qualities he displayed were what was really exciting and encouraging. As I've said before, I don't think the way we went about the task was really what Dougie fancies at all, which is what made it all the more impressive: there's very, very few managers that can come into a mess, take a look at what's there and find solutions that get the job done whatever way it can be done with a really disparate and unbalanced squad. Shiels leaps out as a particularly obvious example of somebody trying to enforce something totally different on a team in trouble, but football is littered with similar stories of managers that try to do a different job to the one that's in front of them at every level. There's never guarantees with a manager over the long-term, but what we've seen from Dougie already is as close as you'll get to such a thing.

I don’t think for a minute there’s anybody scamming anybody here, but I do think it’s very possible that a certain pair of local businessmen were interested in the club but not on the Raes’ terms at the particular moment in time for whatever reason, and when MCT came along they identified that it wasn’t (in their opinion at least*) likely to be up to the job but would take over the club in a relatively clean way, and therefore if they held off a few years during which they could establish themselves as prominent backers (see last year’s kit launch) then they’d be able to acquire the club in a better position than they would have directly from the Rae family. *The jury remains out on the capability of MCT (purely due to the early stage, I’m not dismissing the project out of hand), but there’s enough doubt, if you can call it that, about the future of it with regards to its ability to transform the club into a top flight challenger/team that would make this a good time to make an opening gambit such as a small share acquisition in the name of investment imo…if that was the strategy you were pursuing. To be clear, I’m not saying I think this is definitely what’s happening, but I do think it’s a realistic possibility and if this is the strategy of said businessmen, I’d say it’s a very astute one, in all honesty, and not something that we should see as a particularly bad thing as a concept. It’d be utterly absurd to be dismissing the possibility of a takeover by such a party if the price was right, imo.

On the plus side, at least the McGills sponsor looks a lot better than Millions. Also, combining season tickets, MCT subscriptions and strips, that's now a whopping £495 that the club is asking for. Nobody is obliged to buy a strip of course, but nonetheless it's a lot of money for a club that's putting Alec Easdale on its promo material, isn't it?

Ahh, yes, this sounds familiar. It’s properly huge and also a really lovely bit of silverware, if memory serves. Now that you mention that’s what it is, I remember being struck by the grandeur of the trophy for a relatively minor competition, although I guess it was maybe a much bigger deal at the time than I’m aware of. The RC trophy is a belter too, seems a real shame not to compete for it for that reason alone. Can’t think of many other trophies that are a match for its intricacy.

That would be a target for this season though, not a vision for taking the club forward. My point is that conditions compared to the last few years are very good and the club are taking/asking for a really significant amount of money from fans and therefore they really need to have something to show for it on the pitch. I'm not saying we should be going on a Rae-esque signing binge, I'm saying that turning round and saying "here's Cameron Blues, Gary Oliver, Alex Easdale and Kyle Jacobs" again is not justifying the expenditure they're asking for. If there's not going to be a significant improvement in the standard of the squad, at least 4/5 players better than what was there last season (which absolutely should not be hard, frankly) then there should at the very least be a clear vision/plan put forward of how the club builds towards being a genuine challenger to convince people that the outlay is worth it in the long-run. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I cannot imagine that the current MCT subscription levels will hold if there's no obvious improvement shown in return. There may well be a balancing act involved in running the club, but that also includes justifying the costs involved and the impact of what happens if people aren't seeing any tangible benefits, the prime one being a better team on the pitch than one which has just spent yet another season in a fight to avoid relegation. (All of this, of course, could be negated by a batch of really good signings but if we assume all the contracts offered are accepted (which they probably won't be, but one would imagine they've been offered with the hope they'll be accepted, so it's a reasonable assumption) then there's really not much room for the upgrades needed to move the team forward.)

Actually, I might be thinking of another trophy that is/was on display in Cappielow, although it was so long ago I seen it I can't really remember and I'm half-doubting myself on it, but I am pretty sure there is a really, really fuckin huge trophy in one of the cabinets? Might even be one that sits on a plinth type thing, but who knows, maybe I'm just entirely misremembering something from years ago.

There’s some folk who try to act all high and mighty about it but the Renfrewshire Cup is great. A pre-season match with a large dose of vitriol, what’s not to love? Also, I may be totally misremembering some other fact, but isn’t the Cup itself supposed to be one of the tallest in football? I do remember it being fuckin massive but maybe that’s just because I was wee at the time.

Aye, perhaps so, but I’m not sure it’s something that should just be accepted as given either. Again, the club/MCT are asking for a lot of money and the footballing climate has improved a lot compared to the last few years so if it’s going to be much of the same it could do with being explained rather than just taking people’s money. There has to be some kind of vision outlined of how things are going to improve, you can’t rely on blind goodwill for too long.

On a more general point, but sort of related to the rumours insofar as speculation about our budget is at the heart of them... We're heading into the first full season with fans allowed for a few years, COVID restrictions are over, there's a bit more prize money available, hospitality is back and fans are being asked to £290 min for a season ticket plus £10 min per month for an MCT subscription making it really quite expensive indeed to watch Morton, before considering buying merch etc... ...which leads us to the question of why the idea of a low budget being so casually accepted? I don't expect us to be offering top of the table wages, but nonethless if you want your fans to cough up over £420 between a season ticket and MCT payments, I think it's pretty reasonable for people to wonder why all they appear to be getting from it is the same team as last year. It's too early to really be making judgements, of course, we have no idea who is going to come in, but if people were wary of coughing up the ST money at this juncture then I think it's entirely understandable. You cannot keep asking people for so much money and not give anything in return (which to an extent takes us back to MCT as a socio-type organisation where there's tangible benefits instead of throwing money into a black hole, amongst other things). If it were the case that Imrie decides he has to leave for budgetary reasons, and I don't believe for a second that that is remotely likely at this stage, but if it was the case then I think it absolutely would be cause for people to immediately withhold money until an explanation is provided. But seeing as that's not happening, it's a moot point.

I think you've argued quite successfully against yourself there, tbh. Admittedly our budgets have dropped etc, but nonetheless the likes of Pease and Hardie were simply echelons above Blues, Oliver et al. Edit: On a broader note, I just can't see a play-off spot in itself necessarily being a mark of achievement. If you get promoted through it then yeah, sure, that's great but if you finish 4th out of 10 it marks you out as being a decidedly average side. If a team is genuinely serious about aiming for promotion as opposed to somehow scraping their way there, then it surely has to be setting its sights on being amongst the best couple of teams in the league over 36 games. The chances of getting through the play-offs if you just about scrape into 4th place are surely very slim indeed. 4th place might give you an outside chance but it's not a huge amount to shout about in the context of a 36 game season between 10 teams.

Aye, if there's good players around Baird it's not a bad signing...but for now it is yet another area where we need to hope there's better to come. It's unlikely we'll have more than 4 centre-halfs, so with Baird and Lithgow on the books already, it's putting a lot of expectation on the other two to be a decent bit better if we're serious about progressing. Whether Baird is a good addition or not is likely to depend on the other signings. Seeing as we don't know who else will be coming in yet there's not much point speculating too much, but with the new deals offered out and the players still under contract, places in the squad are potentially at a bit of a premium and there's going to need to be a significant amount of quality added to the gaps if next season to is to be a great deal better.

Was never impressed by Baird tbh, and I don’t see him as an upgrade or even as an equal of McEntee (not that we’re likely to be able to sign someone of his level permanently) or even Ledger. May well be he fits Imrie’s plan and will be a much better player for it though, so need to take his word for it for now but it’s still fairly uninspiring.

I don't think the club is a shambles, no, but I do think it was unlikely that Chris was going to be here long one way or the other especially with the low wage on offer. I should have highlighted that part in the quote, so apologies for any confusion from that. As it is though, the club may not be a shambles but it's not in the greatest position either, although I don't necessarily think that that will be why Chris has moved on, apart from that it's not a great stretch to think that there will be more appealing opportunities available for anyone who ticks all the boxes as a standout candidate. Changing the CEO a couple of times a year is not a strategy that's likely to lend itself particularly well to transforming the fortunes of a stagnant football club, although one would assume there will be a clear remit from the board about what they expect the person in the job to be achieving. I think there's an awful lot of questions about the viability of the ownership model and whether it's going to be capable of anything other than treading water at least in its current form, and if no obvious answers appear to those questions over the coming months then the question of how secure is the MCT project as a source of funding may present itself. Are people going to keep paying up for more of the same on top of expensive season tickets? This is a big, big summer for the club and a lot rests on what happens in the near future.

Not paying a decent wage to a CEO is something that raised plenty of eyebrows on here at the time the job was advertised, and with good reason. Anyway, the simple fact is that paying a fairly low wage is not going to work particularly well if it means somebody is going to leave after just over 6 months in the job and I think it would wise for the board to review the finances and try to increase the salary for the CEO position. It's probably unlikely that there's many particularly great candidates available for the wage on offer and for the size of the job involved, and there's probably also not a huge number of people in Ross' position, i.e. somebody with a bit of experience in other roles and ready to move into that kind of position for the first time, which means the chances of getting somebody good are reduced and if we do, they'll probably not hang about long either. There's been a turnaround in the club's performance for sure, but at this point it's still just about getting the basics in place after decades of neglect. It's not going to be easy at all to move things forward if we're not able to attract or hold on to people who are up to the job.