EanieMeany

I'd name a stand after him, the wonderful, wonderful man that he is.

We really should being him back. What a joy it was to watch him play for us.

Bollocks to that. If another club's player isn't pulling his weight (allegedly) or the manager decides he isn't fully focused, they should be booted back to their parent club immediately.

I'll still give him pelters but I couldn't really care less about this tbh. As a loan player who was just here for experience, there's little reason for him to be bearing grudges or owing anybody any loyalty. It's one of these things. Edit: I'd be more inclined to question why Morton didn't send him packing when it became clear he was planning on going to a rival.

Was on of the rent-a-goons a while back not shouting about how they had a wide range of contacts in England that they'd be tapping in to? Needless to say, that came to nothing. If a manager has a good scouting network, has contacts who can tip them off to availability etc then they'll maybe do some business; otherwise, they won't regardless of how long their CV is. Every time we get a new manager we hear this kind of patter and nothing comes of it.

You really think "I used to play there 30 years ago" is close to the top of the list when it comes to deciding where to send players? Or that Hopkin will be sitting going "I really need to send some players to Morton"? Managers don't give a fuck about the well-being of other clubs and won't be making decisions about the fate of their young players based on where they used to play.

We always hear this patter about how some ex-employee is going to send the next Messi on loan, or that whatever diddy's turn it is in the dugout will be able to snap their fingers and their old clubs will send their top starlets. None of these things ever happen. If anybody had good young players Morton will be at the very bottom of the list of destinations on account of being absolutely shite every year and having zero track record of developing players for the top level.

Tell Him He's Pele seem to think Lee Robinson is the 9th best goalkeeper in the lower leagues. Very good.

Did you play for Gretna?

I had forgot about that. A truly great Scottish footballing moment, although it's not quite Pedro in a Luxembourg hedge.

True enough, but by all accounts their performances were significantly better and they were still starting to pick up points before then. Certainly getting new, better players will always help, but only if you're doing something right in the first place.

Craig Levein's daft beard. Aside from managing St Mirren, I quite like Jack Ross tbh. Although these rumours can get overblown, story was he was the brains behind Murray at Dumbarton, done well at Alloa and a phenomenal job at St Mirren..funnily enough, taking a squad rooted to the bottom of the table to comfortable survival, despite the fact that "he didn't have his own players" and then a really impressive title win. We could have had someone like Ross if we weren't fannying about pretending Jim Duffy was the answer to our prayers,

Comes as no surprise at all that he's an arsehole, tbh.

Not to be a bore, but don't the minimum pricing laws apply to pubs?

The Lighthouse is an absolute shitehole, populated by and ran by gormless wallopers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8e3Xz1zVsg Skip about a minute or so in there. You'd be apoplectic if it happened to you, but it's pretty funny all the same.

So not only did Stenhousemuir beat Falkirk, they done so without a manager? How lovely.

Wonder if they'll be finding an alternative route for their buses into the Grangemouth Bus Shelter? Anyway, going to be some laugh when we go there a couple of weeks. Poor old Raymond will be getting pelters from all sides.

Lamie deserves all the success he gets. He was hung out to dry big-time by Duffy playing him at left-back for so long, a position he was so blatantly uncomfortable with, kept plugging away and took his chance with both hands when he finally got moved inside. Good on him, wish he had stayed with us but I wish him the best of luck. We've had enough arseholes over the years, if we had a few more like Lamie over that time we'd be miles better off.

Two extremes there, from all-round good egg Lamie to the absolute fuckin weapon that is Craig Reid. Horrible bastard.

Indeed. The friendly against Northern Ireland a few years ago always sticks out as the best/worst example of that, we were totally devoid of any kind of attacking strategy, no movement at all in front of the ball. Fletcher was constantly dropping back to take the ball, looking up and getting absolutely no options and ended up having to go backwards and sideways and got pelters for it whilst every other attacking player stood spectating. Fletcher is neither the root nor the epitome of our failings.

You really can.

There's far too many points in there to acknowledge them all, but I wouldn't say that people necessarily credit Vogts for the 2008 campaign; just that it's fair to acknowledge that he gave players a lot more playing time than other managers would have. The experience those players gained and the trust shown in them and the confidence he gave them certainly benefited us, so it'd be harsh not to doff your cap to Vogts on that one whether it was enforced or not. Just as an example, we had Strachan playing 90 year old Shaun Maloney in a 2016 friendly and even with a failed and failing team didn't do a great deal to bring in new players, so it's not a given that a manager will give new players the time and space they deserve. I read somebody saying that it was harder to get out of his team than into it, which just about sums it up.

Yep. If you want a defender at full-back there'll be somebody better and if you want a full-back who can actually cross the half-way line and make a positive contribution then there's somebody better. It's also pretty questionable whether or not you can be a good defender if you keep giving the ball away all the time with spaces in behind you - it's 2018 and pretty much everybody wants full-backs who can get up and down the line. A passable player for a mediocre Duffy team Doyle may be, but if Morton have any genuine aspirations of progress then guys like Doyle are not good enough not matter how nice they are.

Yep, agreed. Always got a rough time of it from some quarters which seemed to stem from the notion that because he played for Man Utd he should have been winning games single-handedly, but by and large he was an excellent player for us and is perhaps the perfect role-model for younger players. This might have been discussed in the national team thread, but for all Berti Vogts' flaws, he deserves a lot of credit for the belief and trust he put in Fletcher and McFadden at the time. I could see a similar situation unfolding with McLeish, whereby he's had to blood a lot of young players then somebody else comes in a takes them on much the way he himself did in the '08 qualifiers.