EanieMeany

Not condoning anything but I think we could all be spared that kind of pap, tbh. It might not be nice but when somebody makes such a fuckin clown of themselves at every turn, then I think we can do without the high and mighty whinging about them inevitably getting called a cunt. Certain people might do well to reflect on their own actions before starting to get on their high horse, tbh. As for pictures on the pitch, honestly who actually cares. McEleny can ram his “but I’ve got black pals” patter right up his hoop though.

Rightly so. It's a commercial transition and the club shouldn't and can't allow itself to be dragged into justifying itself every time it hires out a space to someone people don't like. Salmond is an arsehole and anybody that latches on to a party that exists to serve his ego is no better, but nonetheless they're a substance-less irrelevance to anybody outwith their tiny band of followers and whoever it is who needs to use them as a scare story on any given day. It's not some fascist group or the like, it's just some has-been wanker coughing up a few hundred quid to use a room to pretend he's still a big deal. It'd be doing their slow-motion car-crash a favour to cancel it and give them more attention than they'd ever manage on their own. If the club were to make the decision in the summer to remove all party political advertising etc and not accept any bookings or sponsorships etc on behalf of political parties then sure, I'd have no real complaints there but that's a different thing from arbitrarily cancelling a booking because people don't like somebody. There's more politicking going on in threatening to withdraw money from the club etc than there is in taking the booking, frankly.

The implications of impropriety on the part of a club employee are pretty distasteful tbh.

I’m glad Morton have rejected VAR as it stands as I have no faith at all that it’s going to result in an improvement to the game in any sense beyond a handful of decisions here and there, but the explanation offered is a wee bit bizarre and incoherent tbh. Complaining about the price when it’s not going to affect us any time soon is particularly odd, and just makes the club look a bit silly.

If “fans” withdraw funding from the club for this then that’s an audience you have to live without, tbh. I’m no fan of Alba but they’re a bunch of irrelevant cranks except as bogeymen in the heads of unionists and pearl-clutching liberals alike and it makes no difference to anybody if they hire a room for a while. Meanwhile, a serial sex offender wears the captain’s armband every week

The lower the wage, the fewer excuses there are for being an officious arsehole.

Been meaning to ask btw...at the Kilmarnock game there was a handful of stewards lurking about in all-black rigouts, their badges had something about "consultancy" on them. I seen somebody asking one of them something at the turnstiles and they said they weren't involved and they seemed to just be around that area. Wonder what that was about? Had thought maybe they were there to observe our own, given the club had said they were looking into it after the Partick game.

Since we criticise them (not unfairly), it's only fair to mention the guy at the front of the Cowshed just at the end of the roof towards Sinclair Street who was really good. He helped one wee boy get a high five from Cappie and get a tshirt, and also had another bunch of wee guys in front of him who weren't causing any trouble as such, just a bit lively now and again and had a bit of a laugh with them and was able to quietly say to them if they were getting a wee bit much just to stop any of them falling and getting hurt. It's what stewarding should be, so good on him.

I’d be inclined to lean towards no as it’s not going to improve the standard of refereeing. The money would be much better used on funding full-time officials, regular review meetings etc etc instead of having the same rubbish officials still managing to get things wrong watching a TV. I don’t think it’s a solution to poor officiating, it’s a way to not have to bother finding one and the same old whinging and moaning will carry on as normal (or worse) when wrong decisions are still being reached or when something or other isn’t reviewed. It’s a waste of time and money until such times as the core problem is addressed.

I'm not sure if it's just because the current strip really stands out, but it feels like you see a lot more people around the town with it, so if we can get more children wearing them too even if it's just because they've went to the training camps or whatever then it definitely adds to the presence, if you will, of the club on the streets. It'd be a perfect time for the club to be getting on top of the training/leisurewear etc too, on that front: the more Morton stuff you see about the place, the more it makes it look the club has a big presence in the town. If we can kick on next season as we hope we're going to, then a combination of that and getting posters in shops etc*, then you have the ingredients to generate a really big buzz about the place and get more punters along. *Whilst we're obviously not Barcelona (or rather, they're not us), if you go around the city you'll find almost every wee shop there is selling some kind of Barca-related stuff which is maybe something we could look at (I'm sure other cities are like that but it seems more apparent there). It wouldn't even be money-spinning as such, just wee things that make club seem omnipresent that newsagents etc could stick on their counters be it pens, bouncy balls or whatever else - hell, even ask Golden Casket to knock up packets of blue and white Millions and put them in a wee box with the badge on it. Just have Morton stuff absolutely fuckin everywhere it can go, and fuck it, even devise some sort of grandiose "Greenock is blue and white" type slogan. Flood the place in Morton, make it look like every cunt that lives here supports the team and eventually they will (maybe). On the first and second paragraphs, I think that could in theory be a worthwhile approach if you had all the right circumstances: for example, if we got off to a flyer and were around the top of the table come the end of , say, October and had the closest rival or whatever at Cappielow, then possibly a reduced price could be worth a punt to try to entice casual punters back along and hope the game goes sufficiently well that they then come back for more. It'd be a gamble, but if you're going to cut prices then that'd be the best place to do it I reckon. On the bold bit, maybe a, say, 6 game ticket that saved £9 compared to the gate price in being available in the summer could be a way to get money in the bank right away. It'd probably be difficult to do with the current ticket website if you were basically letting people have pre-bought vouchers seeing as it can barely handle normal sales, but it'd maybe be something out of town fans etc would buy up front, people who don't make many games but might manage a handful.

This article contains a bit more of his comments, culminating in the quite magnificent, Hagrid-esque "I shouldn’t have told you that.” It's absurd to start with but that just elevates it to a higher plane altogether. Incredible stuff.

Not a new thing by now, but Gareth the social media guy (unsure of his surname, sorry) has been doing really spectacular work since he took over. The graphics for the Cup stuff in particular are excellent, really well done. That it’s taken until 2022 for the club to fully embrace the internet is quite an indictment of the previous regime but even at that, the standard now is remarkable by any measure and both Gareth and Chris Ross deserve a lot of credit for the improvement.

Not really a major thing as such, but you’d have thought the SFA could have stuck blue and white ribbons on the Scottish Cup when they sent it down to Cappielow.

There's maybe some circumstances were a reduced price could bump the crowd up, but even at that it's rarely likely to be to such a degree that it covers the loss. Perhaps for a game of significance a small deduction could bump the numbers up a bit, but even at that I wouldn't be sure. In an ideal world, prices would simply be cheaper but I guess there's not a great deal anybody can do about that. The best way to go about increasing attendances for next season would be making some really good additions in the summer and the club making an absolutely fuckin huge noise about how great things are and that the aim is to win the league as well as having strips and season tickets etc on sale early. I don't think anyone in the town who might have some inclination to go to games could have missed the buzz about the place since Imrie came in, and building on that is the key to increasing attendances. Apart from the summer after winning the Third Division, this is by far the best placed Morton have been in a summer for some time in terms of genuine optimism and belief in the coming season. Tl;dr: Put a good team on the pitch, one that's a genuine contender and exciting to watch and that's how you get people to come and watch.

Saw one of their players, Anton Dowds, liking a tweet with a link to the article about their mutant fans and players’ treatment of Dean Shiels. Even their own staff hate them. It’s all just incredibly funny, it has to be said.

Assuming the season ends with the same kind of mood around the place as there is, that could make a cracking public event with a few other bits and bobs around it. Oliver and Strapp, god love them, seemed like they were struggling to read the questions at times never mind answer them Good on them though, it's entertaining viewing and it's good to see players having a laugh with each other. I'd guess that these wee contests might not have worked so well a couple of months ago.

At music festivals, stewards simply lift a rope up to stop people crossing paths/roads if a vehicle is approaching. Surely a similar thing could be done at Cappielow? Even if half the stairs are barriered off, leaving a section open until anybody is coming in or out the “dressing room” then raising a rope-barrier would allow people to move around during the game and also allow a good chunk of the crowd out before any opposition player even starts heading in that direction after going over to their fans? Also, I’d like to think clubs are kicking up a fuss about this dressing room room nonsense in general. It’s utterly absurd that it’s still in place.

Aye, it's night and day compared to previous ones. Seems Chris is getting settled in to things now and there's what feels like much bigger strides forward in the last month or so than have been made in god knows how long until then. It's really amazing the difference a month or so makes, and how much can be achieved in such a short time. Obviously the task is to keep progressing and not just settling for a few wee upgrades, but it seems there's a much better mentality around the club and the forecast looks promising.

Strip choices are rightly the kind of decisions that should be put to MCT members, but I do think the phrasing on the website article was a wee bit clumsy, i.e. in the way it was described as "fan engagement". Obviously MCT is a form of fan engagement, but it could have been worded a wee bit more clearly. Anyway, not the end of the world and it's a perfectly fair way to go about it.

On a slightly related note, which I've been reminded of by these strips... With McGills now being the main sponsor and their logo replacing the Millions one, what's the deal with the away strips still being sold with the Millions logo? Are Golden Casket effectively getting a free season out of it because it's too much hassle to change the replicas, or was there some kind of agreement to extend the sponsorship?

Just had a quick look at their the options on their website. I suspect you could get strips that don’t scream “pub league team with low budget” quite as loudly from Pro Star.

Those 4 choices are horrible, especially that red thing. I hope this isn’t just a case of taking the cheapest shite available as it’s just going to leave us in square one, but with worse strips than we already have.

Excellent stuff. There's still a lot of major issues on the commercial/marketing front, but the improvements in the last few week are really impressive and it seems like a corner has been turned. Again, a long way to go but it's genuinely pleasing seeing big improvements on and off the pitch. On a slight downside, can't help thinking that players not knowing the year and details of our Cup win doesn't really say much for the strength of the Centenary commemoration drive. Edit: Whilst this sort of thing is a good idea any time, I wonder if Imrie has maybe been involved in getting it going? Probably not I suppose, but given that the relationship between fans and players hasn't exactly been great for a while, these wee videos are a really timely addition in helping to try to remedy that as well as improving on the pitch. Obviously the main gripes with the squad come down to performances, but the anonymity (for want of a better word) of the players - at least partly caused by going so long without fans - hasn't helped either, so it can only be a good thing to share a wee bit of their personality to let people get to know them a bit, as it were.

Without knowing what the salary is, I don't see why not. There's so many glaringly obvious failures on show at every other turn, I doubt we're going to need Saatchi & Saatchi's best minds to remedy them and start to put together something approaching a coherent strategy that includes reminding people that the (really quite shite) club shop exists more than a day before Christmas.

What exactly are the major successes of the club's commercial strategy (if there even is one) over the last few years? What great initiatives have been introduced that aren't outweighed by the huge list of failures? Barely a day goes by on here without complaints about the club's commercial failings, it's well overdue that someone who can deliver tangible results was brought in. There's no real room for sentiment in this, we need staff that are capable of turning the club round and it's not going to happen with the same people who've been responsible for the myriad failures that are routinely bemoaned on here. I'm sure people will point to the overall structure of the club etc as mitigation, but the fact of the matter is if you hold the position and take the wage, you take the responsibility and Morton's commercial work has been absolutely woeful. If we seriously want this club to be a success on and off the pitch, backroom staff who've been in place for a long time without results are not a significant loss no matter how much people might like them personally. It's a business, not a social club. The short version, it is not a loss to the club to be hiring a skilled, experienced commercial/sales manager who can (in theory) finally deliver a competent, credible strategy that maximises the club's income in place of someone who demonstrably did not do those things.