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EanieMeany

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Everything posted by EanieMeany

  1. I wouldn't be letting Strapp leave in January unless it became impossible to resist for whatever reason (such as a really big fee or him really forcing the issue), but given how unlikely a move like that would be I think it'd be hard to stand in his way if he wanted to go. Chances are you'll get plenty of offers from the "normal" type of suitor, but you won't get too many of this ilk....assuming there's any hint of truth in it, which is a big assumption. It wouldn't surprise me too much to discover that he's on the radar of clubs across Europe given the recent flurry of Scottish players moving abroad, and the stream of full-backs in particular, but even at that, it would still be amongst the most unexpected transfers you'd be likely to see from the lower leagues.
  2. Griffiths is to all intents and purposes an ex-footballer. I’d be stunned if a team with its sights on the title and which is so massively built upon the group rather than individuals would go near him when nobody else has after so long. There’s some players who reach the end of their careers and can plod along doing a job on the strength of their natural talent alone, but I just don’t see Griffiths as one of them even if you were to get past everything else. Gary O’Connor, for example, was a pretty extreme case of a player being out of shape, but even at that he still showed some moments of sublime quality and hypothetically could still have been useful to somebody if he was even a wee bit lighter due to the inherent talent he possessed; there’s probably a number of other examples who’ve proven useful on that basis, but he’s an obvious one in our context. I guess you could apply this to Peter Weatherson to an extent, although in a different way. Griffiths, though, is not somebody I could really see having that bit of class to fall back on, that ability to still produce something special in a key moment. That kind of thing won’t just disappear, and if he had that capacity his last few years likely wouldn’t have been quite so awful. He dug his own grave long ago and it’d be very surprising indeed if we were to go near him. There’s got to be better options for a team in our position.
  3. Very pleased with this, good bit of business to get him tied down.
  4. Agreed, it really has been excellent and it seems a team effort too although Gareth who does the socials has obviously made a huge difference since taking over. It's only a small thing, but the wee video of Dougie before the Partick game really helped make me feel it was a big game, and that we're right in this league for real - again, it's a small thing, but getting those right are what really makes the difference rather than just the odd picture of ticket prices or whatever. On a slight downside, I do hope the website can get rectified at some point. It could do with a proper revamp rather than the half-arsed botch job under the previous regime.
  5. Raymond "Ray" McKinnon has been appointed as the new manager of Forfar, who currently sit bottom of the third division. Nothing against Forfar, I tended to quite enjoy the away trips up there back in the day, but it's gonnae be really fuckin funny watching that prick take a club right out the SPFL.
  6. Ian McCall throwing a tantrum because Ayr tweeted “good header” about an OG by a Partick player.
  7. Dunno why anybody is even wasting time on the idea of Griffiths. If there’s a risk with Ambrose it’s simply down to it being near the end of a long career and a natural decline, but Griffiths chucked being a serious proposition as a footballer years ago. If somebody else takes a punt on him and he’s somehow able to do a job against all odds then good luck to them, but it’d be an absolute mug who would do it…what’s that, you say? Falkirk did? There you go then.
  8. With the disclaimer that you can’t always get the full measure of things via watching the streams, I’m not really sold on the idea of Grimshaw having shown his worth either. He done well on Saturday in an unfamiliar position which was definitely encouraging from him, but as a full-back I think the jury is very much still out on whether he’s so good that he’s worth a wage to bench Pignatiello if he’s not going to take the obvious place in midfield. At the risk of splitting hairs over @dunning1874’s post about Grimshaw not putting a foot wrong, he was pretty suspect in the only real chance Hamilton had near the end of the first half in that game - only one moment, tbf, but typical of his play in previous games. As for Ambrose, it’s definitely true that the reputation he has for clangers is a bit exaggerated and also from a miles higher level against better forwards, but at the same time it’s not without merit either, and it’s also true he’s not had the best of times recently. The difference here compared to his last club though, is that he’s coming into a team with a more than competent manager who has crafted extremely solid units out of not very much, and who can find solutions to different circumstances. Look at the difference in Lithgow last season under Dougie, the transformation there was huge so you have to fancy that he’ll also be able to get the best from a significantly better player with so much experience at the top level…so long as there’s still a best to be had.
  9. Hard to really know how this will go, but I think i’d be more content about it if it didn’t seem like Ambrose was coming in as a guaranteed started with the injuries we have as he’s not really done much of note for a while. For all he’s known for his calamities, Ambrose has had a very good career and brings a wealth of experience to a squad which has very little of it so I reckon it could work well for us. It’s a shambles that we’re in this position though, Gus being allowed to give Lithgow a 2 year deal was always likely to leave us with a dead weight this season and so it’s turned out. One year was a risk for a guy of that age and with his injury record, two was just stupidity on a par with giving the same to Gus himself.
  10. Tickled by Falkirk tweeting about their victory over "higher level opposition" after beating Maryhill minnows Partick. Poor wee Falkirk, languishing in the third tier, eh. Get it up them.
  11. Blues absolutely is culpable in the second goal, and it sums him up to a large extent - he's so utterly irrelevant to the action, so peripheral and so ineffective that he manages to avoid looking like he's done something wrong when in reality the simplest understanding of positioning, awareness and perception would most likely see a credible Championship midfielder dealing with the danger either via an interception or blocking a space. Having the nerve to turn round and shout at Schwake was laughable and all so typical. A lot's been made of him at the first goal but the bit at 1:20 of the highlights is him in a nutshell (although credit where it's due, the wee pass before was very well spotted and executed), he just stands watching their player coming out their box to win a ball uncontested before letting them stroll right up the half-way line. The idea that he works hard just isn't really true at all, he constantly gets by-passed either due to having absolutely no positional awareness or by not bothering to make a challenge or both (off the top of my head, look at the lead-up to Clyde's penalty where he just stands watching their player win a loose ball around the half-way line and then picking a pass; look at almost any chance we concede and you'll see the exact same thing happening), he hides from being a passing option, again probably a mix of not having a clue where to be and just not actually wanting the ball and forces everything round him to have to adjust. Pointing at other players and shouting at them isn't actually working hard or getting stuck in. We really should not underestimate just how pivotal Wilson was with his ability to cover the whole pitch, nor the fact that he shouldn't have had to do that and his own game was hampered by having to do everything instead of his own thing - there was many occasions he'd literally run past Blues from the opposition box back to ours to make a challenge that Blues was much, much closer to to begin with, and he'd routinely be back in the defensive shape before Blues if an attack broke down. The same thing applies to Lyon with Gillespie in the team - which isn't to say Lyon is/was blameless - but whilst Gillespie plays his own role with aplomb, it's by definition a relatively fixed one and the gaps are there all around with Blues' invisibilty and Lyon does not posses the attributes of Wilson to plug them. Even at his best that's not going to happen. It's a structural issue that isn't going to go away as long as Blues is in the team even if another player can cover sufficient ground to mitigate it, so complaining about another player not following instructions when that exists and impacts on the other player’s decisions is somewhat myopic and at the very least it was surely worth giving Lyon one last shot alongside Gillespie and Crawford to see what he could do with real footballers around him before booting him out. If that didn’t work, so be it, but we’re in no position to write off a player that was very justifiably given an extended contract months before. Whilst there's not much point dwelling too much on Lyon and there's a risk of getting into the "Griffiths could still be a 20 goal a season striker" Celtic Da territory by spending too much time talking about him - it has to be acknowledged there's a bit of a recurring theme with him, although in doing so there's also other factors there such as previous managers being utterly fuckin shite - I think it just seems pretty jarring to be so completely ostracising the player who was absolutely crucial to the initial run of under Imrie that ultimately proved decisive in the end whilst Blues gets to play every minute of every game no matter how bad he is, and then getting rewarded with a new contract especially when Imrie is always talking about repeated errors. I think that's got to be pretty demoralising for the likes of McGrattan and King, even leaving Lyon aside. The overwhelming majority of what Imrie's done and is doing has been and excellent and taking the Lyon situation in isolation, I'd be more than willing to trust his judgement being right even if I think it's a shame it's turned out that that way, but when you put in the context of a far, far worse player playing every minute of every game at the expense of others (again, McGrattan has more than earned a go in his place), getting a new contract and even getting the captaincy for a game, it's not quite so clear that it's being handled correctly. If we see Blues starting again on Saturday ahead of King or McGrattan after the comments about repeated errors, it'll be hard not to see it as a rare example of poor management from Imrie and compounding a far from convincing transfer window, and unlikely to do much for the moral of other options. You can't maintain high standards when you keep allowing one and only one player to get away with failing to meet them. Cameron Blues is one of the very worst players to get a regular spot for Morton in recent memory, and there's no mitigating factors for his presence in the way there has been with most other diddies.
  12. Aye, I'll hold my hands up to that after reading it all over again. Fair's fair. Nonetheless, I do find it all a bit vague, and I'll always be wary of anything that chucks about a load of buzz words and jargon over actual detail tbh (modernising the social media output, for example: what exactly does that even mean?), and indeed anyone who buys influence in a club on unspecified terms. Anyway, I think it'll genuinely be interesting to see what exactly is involved with this as it seems to be going a beyond a simple sponsorship deal, to find out what the plan is regarding Dalrada's involvement and input, how far the money will go and ultimately how it all relates to the million and one questions there already are regarding how things are currently going. An injection of an unspecified amount of money doesn't necessarily mean it's going to radically alter the picture apart from kicking the current can of woes down the road. There's no question this could potentially be very good, but it could also potentially not be good at all, and again I'm not particularly confident in either the club or the MCT boards' abilities to a) make the right choices and b) avoid being taken for mugs: see their initial acceptance of Crawford's "we'll keep the ground" scam. Again, the real worth of this will come in the details, not just the press release PR statement.
  13. The money has bought a seat on the board though, and it would appear potentially a degree of influence on how the club is run although the extent of that isn’t particularly clear. That surely goes beyond the normal remit of a sponsorship agreement, does it not? I doubt many people would have been overly chuffed if the Easdales was granted those privileges off the back of sponsoring the strips.
  14. Golden Casket donated Millions. Sorry
  15. Yes, this is what I find a bit strange. When it was people effectively leasing shares with little obvious influence or involvement with the club being proposed, it was put to an EGM and we were told there would be a vote on all and any deals, and subsequently that anonymity was a deal-breaker. Now we have what appears to be a significantly greater intervention in the club and its activities and it’s simply presented as a fait accompli. There’s a clear discrepancy there, and once again not much in the way of significant detail regarding what the package actually is. If we weren’t to implicitly trust people simply donating money for shares, what’s different here? It’s very reasonable to wonder what the framework is here, which is very different from casting doubts upon it. Nobody at the club or MCT, far less a third party, has remotely earned implicit trust in their decision-making, to be blunt. I’m not saying there’s anything dodgy about Dalrada or this deal, but the double-standard is clear and once again leaves the chain of accountability between club and owner seeming to be extremely malleable/non-existent.
  16. I’m more interested in what all of this actually means in practise, tbh. It all seems a bit vague but the talk of reducing carbon footprints etc kinda sounds like the day to day work of the club might be being handed over given all the talk of energy bills and what not. It seems, for good or ill, that this is a variation on the share sales proposal but skipping the bit about fan votes or consultation. The money is certainly welcome but it remains to be seen what the test entails of.
  17. “Cappielow Park supported by Dalrada Technology UK”. Good god.
  18. As much as I agree a proper centre-forward is the clear priority, it's not impossible that opting for Crawford could end up being the best choice if we were only getting one more body in. A good midfielder isn't too far behind a striker in terms of urgency, so you could just about see the logic in picking a potentially really good option for the former over wasting money on a dodgy one for the latter...although that said, I don't think it's what's happened here. It's still a good couple of weeks to soon to be making that kind of leap, if nothing else. I think we'll get one more player in as I can't imagine we were seriously going to try to go without a forward coming in - no matter how tight funds are, the cost of someone who might score occasionally has to outweigh the cost of not having them - and Jacobs leaving will have freed up another space. I doubt Easdale leaving frees up enough for a player on its own but it may well allow release just enough funds to get a third addition that might not have been possible otherwise. If we can even just get a remotely competent striker in, then them and Crawford make the picture look a bit brighter, if still not particularly vibrant; if we're able to get two more decent quality players, then we should be able to feel a lot more comfortable with our chances than we have so far.
  19. This does seem a decent signing, but unless Imrie thinks/thought he can/would have been able to move somebody else on, then no matter what you think of Blues, it's just so hard to justify keeping him on when there is literally not a single recognised striker in the squad. Even if Crawford turns out to be really good, it's a signing which seems to add to the imbalance of the squad unless there's another 2 attackers coming in. We've a whole batch of midfielders and next to nothing up front...which isn't to say we don't need another midfielder, but that's a result of Imrie's choices. If he doesn't like what he has, he should have got rid of what he could have in the summer. Again, unless there's another couple of signings to come then the buck really has to stop with the manager for the mess we've got even if there is a whole load of other factors.
  20. Incidentally, I would be a little surprised if Easdale's departure actually opens up a great deal of money for another player, to be honest. I suspect that at most it'll allow any potential signings already on the cards to get a few extra bob (which isn't necessarily insignificant in itself) rather than freeing up funds for a replacement, but we'll see.
  21. Yeah, I wish him well too. I've said this before, but as much as he's been very fortunate to be involved in football for so long, I don't think there was really ever any expectation for him to actually be playing and I don't think it was really serving anybody well to be repeatedly using him over the last while. I guess if you're going to be taking a wage then you can't grumble about having to play, but even at that, I think Imrie could have done without using him as a pawn and it was clear Easdale wasn't enjoying himself in the slightest. You can't really blame somebody for making the most of the opportunity his connections afforded him, and he's evidently got the awareness to realise it has ran its course. If this happened this time a year ago I'd say good riddance and not give it a second though, but regardless of anything else you might think about his circumstances, he very obviously was aware of his situation on the pitch and that can't be a nice thing to endure at all in such a public setting so I genuinely wish him well and hope he's much happier in whatever he does next.
  22. Aye, given his circumstances it could be that bigger teams are just a wee bit hesitant on him, so it's not impossible that if he's not got anything in a few weeks he ends up taking a 6 month deal somewhere to prove his fitness. It's the kind of situation Imrie will likely be on the look out for, I'd imagine, sometimes you just get that rare wee opportunity and manage to get someone you wouldn't normally get near. If he's wanting to prove his fitness to get back to a higher level, then maybe not. You'd imagine he'd want an full-time club for that, but it depends on how he sees things going for him and how much confidence he has in being able to get back to a top-flight team. If Kelty or the like were paying enough money and offering a several year contract and there's nothing else on the horizon though, it'd be hard to turn it down rather than waiting on something that might never come along.
  23. I actually don't think it's too much of a surprise, to be honest. I never really got the impression that playing football was really quite his thing, so far as the dedication to be a professional goes - I don't think he was lazy or unprofessional or anything but for some reason it just always struck me that he was one of these guys just doing it as a job that he happened to be half decent at rather than because it's his purpose in life. If he was an eyes-on-the-prize, all-in type, chances are he'd have found himself a wee bit further up the food chain. Nothing particularly wrong with that, to be fair, there's plenty of players in that category but it doesn't surprise me that Fjortoft's decided to go and do something else. He was alright for us and seems a decent guy so good luck to him.
  24. Yeah, I agree with this. I think there's real value in programmes in a lot of ways and costing a club money to produce is not inherently a good enough reason to stop making them. It could be, but not as a first resort. Aside from anything else, they're a source of income and if you're skint, the sensible thing is to explore all options for maximising it before even considering scrapping it. I suspect even just saying "here, gonnae start buying these to raise money" would have saw sales increase, tbh. Once again, it's not just the surface thing that's the problem here, it's what it represents. Could well be, yeah, but I really don't think it's a great idea for a director (MCT director?) to be shouting about something like that on such a platform and seeming to do so with his official hat, so to speak, on at a time when it's blatantly obvious there's big problems behind the scenes. If anyone at the club or MCT wants to discuss that idea from their position within either (if the post in question had simply been a personal one rather than stating it was a view from an official position, then fair doos obviously), they should be doing it via the MCT membership. As for hospitality, just scrap it. If hardly anybody wants to use it, then there's no need to keep doing it, is there? No, didn't think so.
  25. Wondered how long it'd be before we got something like this. Perhaps I'm being too unkind, but I find that hard to take particularly seriously tbh: I don't really see this is about "communication" so much as a totally dysfunctional, unaccountable board repeatedly making a cunt of a thing then backtracking on it when an apparently unforeseen negative reaction occurs. The big test of the viability of MCT will come in whether its membership allows this to carry on, or demonstrate the power of the organisation by forcing a significant review of just what exactly is going on inside Cappielow. If it turns out the purpose of MCT is simply to hand Gordon Ritchie his own football club to play with, nobody can have any complaints when it ends badly or with the club in the hands of a private owner.
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