EanieMeany

Excellent news in itself, and also because there's already a dearth of quality in the squad as it is. It'd be a blow to lose Strapp from any squad, but even more so when it's one that's not got a great deal else to shout about in it. I really can't imagine he'd have shown any interest in staying under any of Imrie's predecessors going back...well, fuckin ages, really.

Indeed. Players that "can be a handful" are ten a penny in the lower leagues, and every other team seems to be able to find somebody who's some sort of goal threat. I've no doubt that Dougie will be able to replace Ugwu with ease, frankly.

Oliver and Ugwu going elsewhere has done us a huge favour. We need better players and I wish more of last season’s mob had done the same, frankly. As it is, it’s still early and Imrie’s moves so far have shown a level of preparation and shrewdness that’s been missing for years and therefore any panic is extremely premature, but….nonetheless, the list of players signed up is really, really uninspiring and Dougie is going to need to pull some rabbits out of hats to transform it into a decent proposition.

Given how completely Lyon dropped out, to the point where he wasn’t even getting off the bench in games that were crying out for changes in the middle, I think we can safely assume it wasn’t tactical and was due to something else. In light of that, Wilson was the difference between us staying up and getting relegated. He absolutely carried what was supposed to pass for a midfield post-Lyon, and once again the situation is that anybody coming in is going to need to be of a high standard to compensate for what we have.

I don't really buy this "two years means lower wages" thing. It doesn't really, does it? The club will be paying more money over two years than it would if it was paying a bit more for one season, unless the wage on offer is absurdly low. If the plan is to be increasing investment and raising revenue etc, it'd be extremely, extremely disappointing to be reaching next summer and not being able to afford better players than Muirhead, Blues and just about everybody else we have on the books next summer.

I think it’s very much the kind of thing you’d have expected tbh, if by December you mean pre-Imrie. This is a club that gave Gus MacPherson a two-year deal and had cheerfully doled out god knows many contracts to Blues and Muirhead for absolutely fuck all already. Anyway, I’m really not sold on this either. Muirhead definitely improved enough that another year was merited in the end, but at the same time I think the extent of his improvement has been, frankly, over-rated too. Enough for one year, sure, but two? I really don’t know about that and it won’t be a great surprise if we’re sitting next summer bemoaning not being able to get somebody else in. ETA: Also, if Imrie wasn't willing to play Muirhead up front instead of Ugwu by the end of the season it doesn't really suggest a great deal of faith in him, does it? Either that, or it doesn't show great judgement, to be honest.

Good proof of why nobody should fall for the idea that that level of English football is anything other than utter shite tbh.

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.

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.

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?

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.)

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.

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.

Aye, although I'm not 100% sure I see him staying. If he does though, then it's hard to see any case for McLean regardless of his merits,

It's probably right for McLean to move on, but using a game against the team that are probably going to finish 4th in the top flight (not really sure how you can try to spin that as making them anything other than a significantly better team than Morton, tbh) which spun on a dodgy penalty deep into extra time and *collectively* bad play to lose a goal in the last minute is just a very unfair example to use for writing a player off tbh. McLean is not prime-Baresi, but he's been a decent player for us over the piece. Far from perfect, but that's the level we're operating at and given the circumstances he's equipped himself pretty well in both performances (for the most part) and particularly leadership on the pitch. We're simply not going to get defenders who are flawless over a season and we're certainly not going to get ones who can go toe-to-toe with a top end Premiership side, so there needs to be a bit of realism here. If Lithgow were to leave and McLean was to stay on a fairly low wage as cover in case we were wanting to play a similar type of back 3 to this season at any point then it wouldn't be a terrible thing but nor would it be particularly catastrophic if he leaves.

Sadly I'm finding myself thinking along similar lines here too. Since around the end of last year there's certainly looked to be a transformation in the running of the club and it seemed Chris was starting to do a pretty good job, but it was very much only the beginning of the journey. People are going to move on, but whatever the reason it isn't really great news at all to be losing such a key figure such a short time with the club still a long way from being running at optimum level. There's a lot riding on the next appointment,

Was a bad mistake from McLean for sure, but there was also about 15 seconds between it and the goal and plenty of opportunities for the danger to be dealt with. It's something that shouldn't happen, but I'm not sure a hesitant touch so far from goal after 120 minutes of keeping a team that's qualified for Europe at bay is necessarily definitive evidence of anything, and it didn't happen in isolation. I'd be more inclined to wonder what the midfielders were up to in that whole episode tbh, Blues in particular. His position to start with is no use to anybody even if McLean had managed to knock the ball past the Motherwell player, and it takes him well over 10 seconds to get back in and when he does he's all over the place...as usual. Jacobs isn't much better, if he'd been a couple of yards to the left for the pass which McLean was obviously looking for and (rightly) expected to be there there'd have been no issue to start with. McLean should really have made sure he got the ball away, but the whole thing was as much an indictment of what was around him as it was anything else.

Yeah, the fact that he never really made a position or place in the team his own tells you something but I think he's maybe been a victim of circumstance too in some ways in that the overall makeup of our defences over the last two seasons has been a bit of an incoherent mess with no real natural balance in it. It was noticeable in the last two home games there that he would often try to find a teammate with headers from long balls he won etc, and would try to step up and snuff out spaces and even support attacks but with the way Imrie had the defence set deep and tight around Lithgow then that's something that he wasn't really able to do and nor was there a midfield able to come and collect wee knock-downs either. I reckon he'd fare a lot better in a more attacking (for want of a better term) back 3 that plays higher up the pitch with a better, more fluid midfield etc but I guess that's not something you can easily facilitate on our budget. Either way though, there's a decent defender there for somebody and he's been a really likeable player so I wish him well so long as he doesn't play against us.